Yeah, in times of putative peace. In times of war, the kind in which people you know get killed or maimed, I think the reasons get muddier, if that's possible. In the run up to the invasion of Iraq, I heard people on both the left and the right say it was about grabbing oil. Apart from the 'kick their ass, get their gas' bumperstickers, Hitchens, for example, attacked the peace movement saying, "Have you, or your friends, recently employed the slogan 'No War for Oil'? If so, did you listen to what you were saying? Do you mean that oil isn't worth fighting for, or that oil resources aren't worth protecting?" Then there were folks on the left who said things like, "we'll have this kind of war as long as we in the U.S. use all these resources," a sort of Malthusianism for the green set.
>u.s. citizens benefit be/c of all this and it's because of all this that
>the u.s. is the empire. there is aboslutely _no_ connection between the
>u.s. standard of living resting on imperialism and plundering other
>people's lands and economies. in fact, if anything, people seem to think
>it's a gift, like an employee gives the gift of jobs.
Well, we didn't get the news bulletin about being an empire until 2002, I think it was. Before that, we were a benevolent republic with a few far-flung military outposts, just to keep an eye on things. OK, hundreds. OK, a few ICBMs, too.
Meanwhile, we need a news bulletin that the U.S. 'standard of living,' such as it is, is a goddam ripoff. Plenty of people elsewhere have more time, better health, better pay, cheaper education, more secure housing, safer lives, longer lifespans. People are willing to bear a lot of costs if they think they're getting a good return on it. But if the return is lousy, we'll be more likely to reconsider the costs.
>i dunno, though. that's just my experience. what I hear far more often from
>people is the fear that other people are jealous of what the u.s. has. they
>think in terms of individual emotions. the u.s. has stuff and other people
>want the u.s's stuff. it's just the way humans are, on this view. [...]
This sounds substantially accurate. Unsupported, of course (what exactly would these other people come and get, were they to come and get it?) but pretty widely held. There's a left version of this, too, which goes, roughly, 'come and get it.'
Jenny Brown