taken from: http://www.counterpunch.org/killflag.html
origianally from Alternative Press Review http://www.altpr.org/
March 21, 2002
The Stars & Stripes:
Killing for the Flag
By Jason McQuinn, Chuck Munson
and Tom Wheeler
The U.S. is the only nation-state to have been condemned
by the World Court for international terrorism. The U.S.
vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling on
governments to observe international law. After deliberately
targeting the civilian public health infrastructure, the U.S.
military imposes a continuing economic blockade on Iraq
which has directly resulted in the deaths of
hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of children. The U.S.
government is the primary financier and arms supplier for
the decades-long Israeli war against the entire Palestinian
people. The U.S. armed forces and U.S. organized and/or
financed ally or proxy forces have killed millions upon
millions of civilians since the end of World War II. This is the
not-so-hidden meaning of the Stars and Stripes as the vast
majority of people around the world understand it.
Now the U.S. government has begun what it bills as an
open-ended "War on Terrorism," which conveniently ignores
the fact that in the late Twentieth Century and the beginning
of the Twenty-first Century it is the United States of America
that, by its own definition, is the most prolific terrorist force
in the world. While at the same time U.S. leaders are
choosing to target whichever individuals, organizations,
regimes and/or nation-states--among the wide array of
opponents of U.S. policies--are deemed most convenient this
week, leaving the rest for next week, next year or the next
decade. This is, of course, a recipe for perpetual war, which is
as well understood by President Bush and the other
architects of the "New World Order," as it was by the
architects of a similar project of world empire that was
proudly proclaimed the Third Reich, under a flag with a
similarly not-so-hidden meaning.
Perpetual war serves a number of purposes for the present
administration. It is under wartime conditions that the U.S.
state will, at least initially, face the least resistance as it
finishes the now over two century-long process of gutting the
Bill of Rights and voiding the inconvenient parts of the U.S.
Constitution. It is under conditions of war that the campaign
to defeat the anti-globalization movement can be fought with
increasingly militant and dirty tactics. It is under wartime
conditions that all opponents of U.S. policies anywhere in the
world, including within the U.S. itself, can be most easily
labeled "terrorist," at the same time that the mass media can
be most easily mobilized as a total propaganda machine. And
it is under conditions of war that the arms production, oil
production and military technology corporations that funded
President Bush's election by the Supreme Court will be most
handsomely rewarded without too many questions ever being
asked. And best of all, wartime conditions lend themselves to
the easy mobilization of xenophobic, politically reactionary,
flag-waving patriotism. The kind where a complete and utter
absence of popular intelligence is made up for by the
cathartic release of long pent-up anger at being forced to live
under frustrating conditions in an alienating world with no
real hope for any beneficial social change in sight.
However, while conditions of perpetual war may be fortuitous
for the fortunes of the current regime and its backers right
now, there is little reason to believe that the game won't end
a lot earlier than they think. In fact, there are already clouds
on the horizon that will only grow more threatening: the
unhappy reactions of regimes the world over that are
disquieted by an American rogue state increasingly out of
control, the pleas of would-be allies that will continue to be
destabilized by their bullying, rapacious "friend," the glaring
failure to derail the anti-globalization movement around the
world (with only a partial exception within the U.S. itself,
where it has been slowed more effectively), the meltdown of
the Argentinean economy under the conditions imposed by
the IMF (with the threat of others always looming), the
failure of the current Israeli strategy of an accelerating
campaign of war crimes, and the growing wave of
international opinion condemning the American project of
empire-which the massive, ongoing covert and overt
propaganda war has so-far failed to dent. Waving a hundred
million flags all around the country won't make these
problems for empire go away.
And even within the U.S., it's only a matter of time before
the population tires of a war without any foreseeable
resolution against enemies that must be continually
manufactured. The longer the war on terrorism continues,
the less enthusiastic will be the flag-waving and cheering for
more bombing campaigns, the mass starvation now in
full-swing in Afghanistan, and the continuing delays and
frustrations demanded for internal security. Even with the
full complicity of the mainstream U.S. media in its efforts to
promote perpetual war, dissatisfaction and dissension will
once again arise, until even the biggest, most impressive
American flags fail to cover up all the crimes against innocent
men, women and children throughout the world required to
keep the empire of American capitalism growing.
Jason McQuinn, Chuck Munson and Tom Wheeler serve as
the editorial collective at the Alternative Press Review.