Even Lost Wars Make our Corporations Rich

Chris Hedges, having been there, done that, knows enough about wars to understand that power does NOT rest with the electorate, nor does it reside with either of the two political parties. It is NOT arbitrated by a judiciary that protects us from predators. Power rests with corporations, and these gain a very lucrative profit from war, even wars that we have no chance of winning. All polite appeals to the "formal" systems of power will NOT end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must physically obstruct the "war machine", or accept a role as its accomplice. The moratorium on anti- war protests in 2004 was designed to help elect the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry. It was a foolish and humiliating concession. Kerry snapped to salute like a windup doll, when he was nominated, and talked endlessly about victory in Iraq, assuring the country that he would not have withdrawn from Fallujah, but by the time George W. Bush was elected for another term, we had another sad lesson in incredulity. The Democratic Party, once in the majority, funded and expanded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Barack Obama in 2008 proved to be yet another advertising gimmick for the corporate and military elite. All our efforts to work within the political process to stop these wars have been abject and miserable failures. While we wasted time, tens of thousands of Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani civilians, as well as US soldiers and Marines were traumatized, maimed and killed.