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"All the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
By Ron Jacobs
12/03/08 "Counterpunch" -- -- -Recently, the Boston Globe
reported that the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR)
had set up an offshore company to hire close to half of the men
and women working for KBR in Iraq as contractors. According to
the report, this enables KBR to avoid paying social security,
unemployment insurance and other taxes. When workers complained,
they were essentially told that they had already signed a
contract with the offshore company and therefore had no
recourse. On the other hand, at another time KBR argued that
some of its workers that sued the company after being exposed to
dangerous chemicals in Iraq were KBR employees and, because of
laws granting contractors doing military work overseas, the
company was not legally responsible. Like the lawyer for the
nine men suing KBR said, "When it benefits them, KBR takes the
position that these men really are employees. You don't get to
take both positions."
Of course, this is exactly what KBR wants to do. After all, this
corporation and most other companies involved in what is
euphemistically called contracting in the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan and “homeland security” are much more interested in
making money than they are in being fair or even patriotic. The
bounty provided by what London and DC term the “war on terror”
has moved the money grubbing of these corporations to an even
higher level of greed. The executives of these companies are not
interested in seeing this war end. If it did, then they would
lose the gravy train it has become.
This is what Solomon Hughes makes quite clear in his new book
War on Terror, Inc. Corporate Profiteering From the Politics of
Fear just released by Verso. Hughes is an investigative reporter
that does that title proud. His work has appeared in British
newspapers and the journal Private Eye. What he does in this
book is nothing less than rip the mask of false patriotism and
concern for the world's well-being from the faces of the
corporations that constitute a major part of the today's war
industry. In the process, he exposes the shallow greed and
willing corruption of the politicians and government bureaucrats
who hand over their nation's coffers to those companies, despite
their public ineptitude and chicanery—not to mention the lies
the whole shell game is based on. Meanwhile, people die for no
reason.
A topic of conversation amongst some Boston Red Sox baseball
fans a few years ago was the revelation that a member of one of
the ownership groups was a man named Philip Morse. It seems that
Morse owned at least one plane that was leased to the CIA for
rendition flights. This revelation didn't cause any Red Sox fans
that I know to end their support for their team -- given the
irrational nature of sports fandom to do so would make too much
sense -- but it did serve to illustrate just how connected the
dots are between corporate American and US intelligence.
Furthermore, it showed that money is more important to those
businesses involved in the military-industrial complex than
morality or even legality.
Hughes' book takes these connections even further, suggesting
that the corporations' drive for profits is what might very well
drive the US government to attack a certain country, even if the
government believes there might be other methods it could use.
Now, when I was younger a teacher once explained to me the
difference between Soviet-style communism and fascism like this:
under the former the state is the corporation and under the
latter the state serves the corporations. The litany of
corporate involvement in war and preparing for war described in
War On Terror makes it clear that the US and UK are certainly
headed towards the latter. Furthermore, Hughes suggests (and
documents with a long list of supporting facts) that once the US
is in a country, its policies are driven as much if not more by
private contracting companies' desire for profits than by a
government policy that might actually make Washington's
intervention less bloody and shorter in duration. An example of
this scenario, suggests Hughes, can be found in the policy of
separating societies along ethnic, religious and tribal lines.
This was done in the former Yugoslavia and continues in the case
of the occupation of Iraq. If one accepts this theory, what
becomes even clearer is that the sectarianism now apparently
rampant in Iraq is more the result of the US/UK intervention and
its complementary use of mercenaries than it is from any intent
by Iraqis to foment a civil war. Whether or not this widening of
the sectarian divide was Washington's intention or not it no
longer matters because it has created a situation Washington
seems to prefer--a country divided amongst itself.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Hughes' work is that one
can see his thesis played out in the daily news. Walls dividing
neighborhoods in Iraqi cities. Airbus gaining contracts to build
refueling planes and being challenged by Boeing on the grounds
of unfair business practices and a false patriotism. Airplane
charter services lending their services to Homeland Security to
fly prisoners being held in private prisons by private
contractors out of the country so they can be tortured in
prisons overseas by private interrogators. Just recently, a
story crossed the wires about a $30 million dollar wall being
built in Iraq to protect an oil pipeline from insurgent attacks.
This occurred despite several Iraqis (and others) stating that
the work of guarding the pipeline could have been done much
cheaper just by hiring local tribesmen to guard it. Of course,
the latter choice would not have put several millions into the
coffers of whatever western corporation is building the wall.
War On Terror, Inc. works on at least two levels. Hughes
challenges the legality and morality of the roles played by
these firms and, as mentioned above, he also exposes their sheer
ineptitude and gross corruption. The collaboration of western
politicians in this conspiracy is something that should be front
page news and provoke the outrage of every citizen of these
countries. The fact that it doesn't is witness to the
effectiveness of the neoliberal myth that privatization is
better than anything any government could do. The narrative in
War on Terror, Inc. is proof that that myth is a brazen lie.
Ron Jacobs is author
of
The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground,
which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill
Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art
and sex,
Serpents in the Garden. His first novel,
Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can
be reached at:
rjacobs3625@charter.net
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