How Wars Get Started

Here's how Rhett Butler thought wars got started, according to Gone with the Wind (p. 231):

"All wars are sacred," he said. "To those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is 'Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!' Sometimes it's 'Down with Popery!" and sometimes 'Liberty!' and sometimes 'Cotton, Slavery and States' Rights!'"

President Bush and company jumped on the "Liberty" justification for the war in Iraq, when weapons of mass destruction failed to materialize. However, Bush has taken a few lumps for implying that "Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen", i.e., a Christian crusade, was also a justification. At least they didn't claim that we were fighting in Iraq for "Cotton, Slavery and States' Rights." Draft dodgers Bush and Cheney are certainly a government of "stay-at-home orators." And money was certainly a motive for them and their friends at Halliburton, the post 9/11 security industry, and the rest of the military-industrial complex.