Standard of Living and Dead
Frank Anthony Ph.D.
On the other side of this crazy world, five young Marines were blown to pieces, literally, by a car bomb in Iraq. It was the Sunday that country voted on their first constitution. In revenge, an American airplane bombed bystanders who had come to look at the bombed out military vehicle. We shall never know how many of “them” were killed. No records are kept of the many thousands of “enemy” killed.
The numbers of our dead climb daily to beyond 2000. In Vietnam we lost about 50,000, the same in North Korea, the enemy lost hundreds of thousands. American firepower superiority is obvious. So long as this current war goes on, do we wait until some magic number of dead soldiers is reached before we decide to leave their country and get on to something else for our young militants to do? Or will we mutate into another war?
World War I, “to end all wars”, failed due to a failed League of Nations. Germany was ravaged, which led to World War II. Then came the North Korea and Vietnam adventures. Next, our war machine (Pentagon) advised arming Iraq to take out Iran as a threat to Israel. The state department told Iraq Kuwait was part of their spoils (April Glasspie), hence the excuse for Bush wars to conquer Iraq, huge war-prize of oil!
However, wars go way back before wars for oil. My Great Grandfather was Head Huntsman to Franz Joseph of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He got his family out of Austria by immigrating to America before World War I. My father could have been killed in that war. I could have also in World War II. There is no end to the international thirst for blood or the search for world fame as a dictator.
Now, we have a professional military that is linked to international industrialism. We may lose a few thousand professional soldiers but we can kill a million “enemy” if necessary. Historically, we may be the greatest, ever, empire of destruction. Our “interests”, not unlike the Holy Roman Empire, are linked to our standard of living.
