War is for Control

Not oil, not military-industrial profits, not the bankers; war is for the purpose of control.  Control of the most valuable, renewable resource on the planet – people.  Control through the toolkit of regulatory democracy if possible, authoritarian rule where the population is not as easily fooled.

The elite of the Anglo west pursue this objective; since the Great Rapprochement between Britain and the United States in the late nineteenth century the primary tool for western control of the world’s population has been the United States government.

Justin Raimondo is out with a post entitled “Why This War?”  In it, he describes Progressivism as the motor behind this push – progressivism rooted in early twentieth century America just at the time when the elite purposely moved their primary tool from Britain to the United States:

America’s ruling elite has been "progressive" since the dawn of modernity, right before the first world war.

Raimondo then cites Rothbard, writing of this period and movement; from Rothbard:

In his editorial in the magazine’s first issue in November 1914, Herbert Croly cheerily prophesied that the war would stimulate America’s spirit of nationalism and therefore bring it closer to democracy…. True, European war collectivism was a bit grim and autocratic, but never fear, America could use the selfsame means for ‘democratic’ goals…. As America prepared to enter the war, the New Republic eagerly looked forward to imminent collectivization, sure that it would bring “immense gains in national efficiency and happiness.” After war was declared, the magazine urged that the war be used as “an aggressive tool of democracy.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind I recall that when many use the term “democracy” (and here I refer to Croly, not Rothbard), they do not mean Switzerland; they mean something akin to communism.

Raimondo points out that it was usually the democrats – the liberals – that led the effort or push for war and for global-reaching institutions.  Wilson, FDR, Truman, LBJ.  Bush II could be considered an exception to this rule.

This ideology has a name: we call it "progressivism." It has a long history, starting with Teddy Roosevelt and his intellectual publicists, continuing through the Great War and the run-up to World War II – when it was the left that was screaming for US intervention in the European conflict – and its aftermath.

There was no US interest in the great wars of the first half of the twentieth century, not if by “US interest” one means of interest or benefit to the vast majority of people living within the geographic boundaries of the United States.  There was certainly a necessity for the US to involve itself in these wars if it was to fulfill its calling as the replacement tool for global government. 

This is why our foreign policy consists of "endless war," as Greenwald puts it: because if your goal is world domination, then the war to establish a global authority – with Washington as its capital – must be necessarily open-ended. That’s because there will always be resistance to such a project: once a rebellion is put down in the Middle East, for example, another one is more than likely to pop up in Africa, or eastern Europe, or someplace else.

It is the intent toward global control and the rebellion to it that is the answer to “why the wars.”  People rebel – not oil, not gas pipelines.  People.

It is the people that are to be brought under control.  Globally.

The empire builders will, in the end, fail; we are living through the transition – it may be a long one.