Chris Hedges: A War of Self-Destruction

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“Financial capitalism is crashing,” wrote independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader. “So the lights are on late in Washington’s Federal Reserve, SEC and Treasury Department trying to figure out how socialism (your tax dollars and credits) can once again bail out these big-time gamblers with our money. ... Reckless, self-enriching capitalists get on your knees and thank the rescuing Washington socialists, for without them, you would surely be in chains.”

A war with Iran would also have grave political consequences. The specter of millions of Americans driven out of their homes, no longer able to afford basic necessities, out of work and enraged, would, as it has throughout history, embolden messianic right-wing and proto-fascist movements. Given the potential for social unrest, basic freedoms would be curtailed and in some cases abolished in the name of order and national security. The radical fringes of the Christian right could rise up with a vengeance. They would happily ally themselves with an assortment of oddballs, lunatics and corporate behemoths from Blackwater mercenaries to frightened capitalists at Halliburton. It was economic collapse, along with a climate of fear and instability, that was used to build the fascist and communist movements that plagued Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union during the last century. These same forces led to the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. We are not immune to these distortions.

But maybe those who advocate a war with Iran know all this. Maybe this is what they want. Maybe they understand that a war with Iran would finally kill off our weakened and anemic democracy. Maybe they see this as the dawn of a new era, an era when the last impediments to a global totalitarian capitalism can finally be removed and we can all be ground under the corporate jack boot, from Shanghai to New Delhi to Ohio. There are huge corporations that make obscene profits from human misery. They run our health care industry. They run our oil and gas companies. They run our bloated weapons industry. They run Wall Street and the major investment firms. They run our manufacturing firms. They also, ominously, run our government.