LOSING A MORAL COMPASS TO FOREVER WARS
"Making A Killing Out Of Catastrophe" is the subtitle of Antony Loewenstein's book "Disaster Capitalism", which I read about the same time I saw the Trash Boy show a few weeks ago. Continuing on the subject of war and fighter jets. In my previous post the artists brought us to look at the intersection of religion as the justification of wars. And in the book "Disaster Capitalism" privatization with little or no oversight turns out to be a major villain.
The book starts right off talking about war profiteers and especially how it related to our presence in Afghanistan, which seems not to have been much different from the point when the book was written in 2015 up through the point where we exited only a few months ago.
And while we did leave Afgahnistan, the USofA is still involved in a number of other wars, so our killing people in other countries is far from over. From the New York Times a few weeks ago: Mr. Biden came to office vowing an end to the “forever wars” — and has firmly defended his decision to pull American troops from Afghanistan in the face of withering criticism from lawmakers of both parties. But administration officials have been clear that combat missions in other countries will continue, namely those that do not involve large deployments of American troops or draw intense news media scrutiny. Here's a link to the full article: Biden Declared the War Over. But Wars Go On
The book talks about the outsourcing of the "war" to private contractors. The writer goes to Afghanistan and Pakistan and interviews officials of the contractor companies, the contractor foot-soldiers on the ground, as well as Afghans on the ground who were simultaneously the victims and beneficiaries of our presence. We had a very complex relationship with the Afghan people. While some who were interviewed liked some of the benefits of our presence in terms of support jobs and opportunities that the contractors brought, they were dead set against the methods employed by the contractors, including the way the contractors could kill people or make them "disappear" with complete impunity, never being held accountable.
The book goes on to talk about Haiti and other countries that are recipients of large amounts of aid that winds up being administered by corporate contractors. After talking about Afghanistan, Haiti, and other foreign locales, the book discusses what's going on in the major industrialized countries, such as the USofA, Great Britain, and Australia, with much attention being paid to the privatization of prisons.
In the post 9/11 world, we're in the middle of outsourcing gone wild, where private companies repeat the mantra that they can get the job done better than the government. The government then outsources to them, gives them lots of money, and follows up too little about what's going on with the money. Out of sight, out of mind. And maybe the plans were not thought out well enough to begin with. Maybe the outsourcing was more for the benefit of the companies involved than for the people on the ground that they were allegedly there to help. The book has a long list of documentation, references, and links.
In all these cases, whether it's the unaccountable war contractors killing people with complete impunity, or the prison contractors, who, for the sake of profit, deny medical care or food to those incarcerated, a recurring theme seems to be that there's no responsible oversight of these operations, some of which are questionable to begin with. Human life is placed as being less important than corporate profits. Losing a moral compass.
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NOV 28 2021 UPDATE Next look at how a work of fiction touches on religious zealotry and war profiteers in my next post are involved in the war machine.
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