Kill the State

In a recent interview article on Counterpunch by Sameer Dossani to Noam Chomsky, when asked if the U.S. will be able to carry out its economic agenda in Iraq Mr. Chomsky replied that it wasn’t "very clear" but basically what America wants to do is control the oil in the Middle East and if it does then the U.S. "controls the world" because the "world needs the energy resources". (In the mid 1940’s American leaders thought that having the atomic bomb would be our "master card" and gain us "absolute control of the world.")

We might console ourselves with the fact that America is losing the war in Iraq so we won’t be "controlling the world" any time soon which doesn’t mean it won’t keep trying. The consequences of such idiotic hubris are obvious.

To launch a war upon Iraq seems a bumptious way to go about "controlling the oil" in order to "control the world." The war has had precisely the opposite effect, Iraq itself is an uncontrolled state. America more "controlled the oil" in the Middle East when our war upon it was one of sanction and embargo. When Saddam was a compliant puppet of the United States, although Iraq’s oil was nationalized, the American and British oil companies had even greater control of the oil, better access and better profits. Why invade a country that you already controlled?

Basically our leaders have no real reason for why we invaded Iraq. They could not tell us the true cause even if they were submitted to our now popular methods of torture which is why I disagree with people who assert they know the reason. In its history America has gone to war for no reason and then comes up with the reasons afterwards. All sorts of "plans" are perfunctorily revealed in acronyms or florid titles. And always before our wars are launched we are treated to the familiar rhetoric which is a broken record stuck in the same groove of the Truman Doctrine. Our "vital interests" are at stake. Our "national security" is threatened. The same lies stemming from one doctrine repeated over and over by politicians of either party. And it always works. The Truman Doctrine itself has taken on its on life and drives the State to endless inexplicable wars. But the doctrine is neither the reason nor the cause for any of these wars. It serves as one agency of an inexorable State.

Good people who are rational human beings attempt to supply reasons why America launches a war. The key here is they are rational. Leaders are not. The mistake rational people make is to think that leaders are themselves rational, that the State they lead is somehow rational in itself and that therefore the State has to have some kind of rational reason for taking us to war even if the reasons are wrong and the outcome is a tragic "mistake." Most commonly our intellectuals come up with economic motives for war, the easiest or most "rational" explanation of all.

But we are not dealing with rationality. We are dealing with a State that propels itself mindlessly, dangerously. Certainly there are people within the State making certain decisions. If every American died tomorrow the State would no longer exist. But as we do exist we exist as a society that has centralized itself to such an extent that the State itself exerts a force that is beyond the control of everyone including the leaders.

We can examine any war America has fought say, from the first world war through all the wars up to the present and see that the foreign policy of America is a confusion of motives, a delusion of reasons, an orgy of lies all for the power and prestige of the State.

The State has only one reason for existence, to take to itself, for its leaders and their small number of beneficiaries everything we own, our property if it so chooses, our freedom, our lives. It can give us nothing in return. It tricks us into thinking it could possibly be benevolent if only the right people were leaders. It is particularly efficient at tricking those who consider themselves rational men.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that should America ever become a centralized State it would be the most dangerous country in history. History is not yet over, but at this point in time, I would not argue.

Christian Mohn can be reached at cmohnc@comcast.net.