17 July 2007
Posted to the web 17 July 2007

Reason Wafawarova

The idea of good and evil dates back to the time Lucifer rebelled against the Creator, God Almighty, and from that time to this day countless wars have been fought against evil and for good and almost each of these wars would claim genuine legitimacy.

The modern-day international system is made up of ideologies and political processes that generally purport to be fighting for some good and against one evil or another. In fact, institutions like churches and mosques are meant to be powerhouses against evil and for everything good, while politicians would have all of us believe that they are the custodians of good governance and pillars against bad governance.

The billion-dollar charity industry is meant to wipe out evils like famines, oppression, disease, poverty, starvation and homelessness while promoting health, sanitation, justice, shelter and basic welfare. Likewise, political hegemonies like the United States will always claim a long history of fighting for freedom and democracy while getting out there to thwart what George W. Bush would today call axes of evil.

While many questions are asked about churches diverting into business and profit-making entities at the expense of the core business of promoting morality and uprightness just like charity institutions are often accused of siphoning almost every dollar before it finds its way to the intended beneficiary, the geopolitical powers at the forefront of promoting a "civilised" world order are also found highly wanting in terms of abuse of the concept of good over evil.

That the US is the current global superpower is as given as is the fact that their capitalist ideology executes the tightest grip on the global means of production. That the capitalist ideology is driven by the politics of imperial authority is as given as the fact that there is only one sun that shines in the skies.

However, those who subscribe and subject to imperial authority either as practising capitalists of varying scales or mere labourers would be of the opinion that the same sun actually orbits around the planet earth, something that obviously looks quite obvious from a common sense point of view. We all know that it is the other way round but every day the sun keeps appearing like it's doing the orbiting as we see it "rising" and "setting".

Are we not meant to believe that capitalism is the magic system that generates wealth and prosperity? What happens in the world of neo-liberals when this writer asserts that capitalism is rather a system that creates a club of selfish wealthy individuals who have hijacked the control of the planet's resources for purposes of profiteering? In fact, one would say capitalism is driven by a handful of profiteers who know the price of everything but have no clue on the value of anything, be it the value of the environment, life, culture, dignity, morality, equality, justice, fairness or heritage.

Capitalism as a system has created pawns out of the political elite of this world to the extent that the powerful owners of what we are made to believe is global capital are the real driving forces behind many of the interstate and intrastate wars we have seen since 1945. According to the profit-addicted owners of multinational corporations, capital has to flow unabated and uninterrupted so that the world's fate will be determined by the magical powers of free market forces.

All the countries that embraced IMF-prescribed structural adjustment programmes, from Ghana in Africa to Venezuela in South America, will agree that indeed the gospel that market forces can fix anything is cruel rhetoric that should never be taken seriously ever again.

Anyway, if one is of the persuasion that the spread of capital has to be regulated in as much as the market forces need to be regulated, they are deemed to be neo-liberal economic dissidents and the owners of capital front powerful politicians to thwart them without remorse on the basis of any pretext they may see fit, as long as such people are removed from the system that controls the resources of this world.

That pretext can be the fight against communism in Cuba, China, Afghanistan, Angola or dictatorship in Iraq. It can be in the name of pre-emptive attacks on outposts of terrorist organisations as was the case with the current Afghanistan war, or a switch of pretexts from developing weapons of mass destruction to sponsoring terrorists and, finally, to inhumane dictatorship, as was the case with Iraq.

To the capitalists, the pretext is inconsequential as long as the war is fought and the roadmap to the flow of capital is opened up.

The positive pretexts behind modern-day imperialist wars are mainly freedom and democracy. If one went to America's National Museum today, then they would see the massive power of capitalist indoctrination as tourists, children and the old line up to get individual overdoses of the vainglorious message that America has a long history of fighting for freedom and democracy.

In fact, one is greeted at the main entrance by the inscription, "Price Of Freedom: Americans at War" and one shudders to think what the power of omission and silence has done to America's history, never mind that the country prides itself as the number one free media society.

The US has indeed fought for "freedom and democracy" in the most notable way as evidenced by Nagasaki and Hiroshima where the US instantly built Japanese freedom and democracy by the atomic bombing of a million lives. What swiftness and precision! They repeated another freedom and democratisation project in Vietnam in the late sixties by deploying hundreds of thousands of soldiers to massacre the communists in Vietnam and they have done a double on Iraq where the Bush family has presided over air strikes of unprecedented precision on poor Baghdad.

First is was George Bush senior having a go at Iraqis in 1991 before his bloodthirsty son George W chose not to be left out of the fun in 2003, taking with him to Iraq his friends in Tony Blair of Britain and John Howard of Australia. While the three have taken turns to sneak into Iraq for photo shoots, they have somewhat brutally committed other people's children to the dirty and deadly work of fighting Iraqis and some of the young lives lost have included non-citizens serving in the British army.

Since 1945, the US has been so much of devoted "freedom and democracy" fighters that it had 50 attempts at overthrowing sovereign governments it deemed to be wrong or of one evil or the other. It has helped crush popular movements fighting oppression as it did in apartheid South Africa, and it armed and trained gangster rebel armies in Guatemala, Angola and Mozambique.

To cap it, all the Americans have invaded 35 countries in 56 years.

For Iraq, the US has spent US$378 billion in four years promoting "freedom and democracy" and the results are indeed astounding: 655 000 Iraqis dead, over 3 000 US troops killed, 1,7 million Iraqis displaced, 2 million Iraqis exiled, unemployment estimated at 60 percent, almost no water and electricity supply in Baghdad, health and education delivery almost non-functional and infrastructure collapsing daily.

Amid all this, the US State Department (God bless Rice) acknowledges that its own poll indicates that the majority of Iraqis think that the occupying forces should leave immediately and that 52 percent of US troops are for the idea of an immediate withdrawal.

It is a pity that the opinion of the troops and the Iraqis is not shared by the capitalists owning the big companies interested in Iraq, that includes US Vice President Dick Cheney's construction company that stands as the sole contractor to rebuild Iraq and to benefit from Bush's proposed US$1 billion for reconstruction announced in his latest so-called new policy on Iraq.

Of course, there is no corruption in heartland America!

It is this capitalist system that has created Bush, who has created Blair, who has created Morgan Tsvangirai, who is trying to create rebellion in Zimbabwe. Is it not a shame that Tsvangirai did not discover his bravery in the seventies when he was in his twenties?

No doubt he would have taken a go at commandeering a legion of fury-filled freedom fighters right into Ian Smith's bedroom at the then Rhodesia House. Who knows, the war could have easily ended in 1974 and many lives lost until 1979 could have been saved. Now that "bravery" seems to have been hijacked for the furtherance of imperialist interests and we see the man relentlessly fighting for the cause of that handful owners of a few hundred multinational corporations so that "Zimbabwe can be reintegrated in the international community".

That is the wording, like Condoleeza Rice's idea of international community and a new Middle East.

The successful but painful way for Zimbabwe is to gain control of its own resources, empower its own people and trade those resources at its own terms, simply put, have total control of its economy just like the industrialised countries do.

The disastrous but easy way is the MDC route, which is to surrender and apologise to the owners of global capital, promise to be loyal providers of cheap labour, beg for aid, loans and foreign direct investment and subject to political benchmarks from Washington via London.