White Man's Wars, Past and Present

"We must cease collaborating with the engines of death."

We used to call them the "White Man's War's." Now that phraseology is out of favor, but I think it still applies. Racism is the fuel in the engine that drives the popular appeal for the White Man's wars, now centered in the Middle East, previously in Southeast Asia, but...who knows where next? The real motive is profit, but the people who reap the profit are a very small group, who need a much larger polity to support their aggressions around the world.

Our children are told that the last five centuries of European conquest of the planet are the apex of civilization - when, in fact, they have been the nadir of human relations, resulting in structural racism that destroys everything that does not conform to its piratic imperatives. The United States, the superpower, continues the mission, long after the Europeans have been largely exhausted by the game of slaughter and pillage. The Americans - and by this I mean white Americans, the people who support war - are conditioned by their own aggressions throughout their history to expect retaliation, and to blame the victim. Thus, the Indians, the native owners of the land, were demonized as savages who had no right to life. In the same way, the Africans, who were kidnapped and sent into the eternal hell of chattel slavery, were deemed to be animals with no more rights than cows and chickens. On this basis American "civilization" was born.

"The great obstacle in setting the planet right is the United States white public."

The United States has sliced and bayoneted its way through more countries than Hitler ever dreamed of. We hear the echoes of white American Manifest Destiny in every phrase uttered by the ranks of the Democratic Party that are allowed to speak on corporate media. Barack Obama wants 100,000 new troops to protect "American interests" in the world. John Kerry assures folks that America will "be there" to protect "our interests," whatever the cost. Hillary Clinton and the rest affirm the dictum. They all use the same language of imperialism: "our interests," an open-ended phraseology of thievery, that says: I will steal whatever I want, whenever I want.

The Bush regime prescribes eternal war. That's really just an extension of the global war that has gone on for half a millennium, since the European breakout of 1492. However, the world is rolling back on that horrendous offensive, and reclaiming itself. It will take time, and there will be uneven development. The great obstacle in setting the planet right is the United States white public, which thinks it has a mission in a world whose countries they cannot even find on the map. They kill people whose homes have no addresses that they would recognize. This is truly the banality of evil. But the edifice of white racist rule of the planet will crumble - is crumbling - and a new humanity will emerge. In the interest of the human species, we must cease collaborating with the engines of death, as personified by the Republican Party and the "top tier" of the Democratic candidates for president. The genocides must end - and they end, here.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.comThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .