{"id":44153,"date":"2023-10-07T05:59:48","date_gmt":"2023-10-07T13:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=44153"},"modified":"2023-10-07T05:59:48","modified_gmt":"2023-10-07T13:59:48","slug":"war-as-an-investment-the-bizarre-business-speak-of-mass-killing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/07\/war-as-an-investment-the-bizarre-business-speak-of-mass-killing\/","title":{"rendered":"War as an ‘Investment’: The Bizarre Business-Speak of Mass Killing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

Did you know the Russia-Ukraine War is a great \u201cinvestment\u201d for the United States? A terrific opportunity to kill lots of Russians and to destroy lots of their military equipment at a relatively cheap cost to us? (Just don\u2019t mention the price paid by Ukraine.) It gives new meaning to the expression \u201cmaking a killing\u201d on the \u201cmarket.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Gordon Gekko\u2019s infamous \u201cgreed is good<\/a>\u201d speech we must now add \u201cwar is good.\u201d That war is \u201cright.\u201d That it \u201cworks\u201d \u2013 at least for America, allegedly.<\/p>\n

War as an \u201cinvestment\u201d truly symbolizes the moral bankruptcy of conventional discourse in the U.S. political mainstream. Instead of war being a calamity, a catastrophe, a realm of death and destruction, dare I say even a mortal sin of grievous evil, we\u2019re told that instead it\u2019s an investment that\u2019s paying dividends, especially in that growth stock known as Ukraine.<\/p>\n

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We can\u2019t let MAGA Republicans stop the Ukraine \u201cinvestment,\u201d can we? Not when it\u2019s paying such great dividends<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Even body counts and truck counts from the Vietnam War era are being brought back to show what a great \u201cinvestment\u201d the Ukraine War has been for the U.S. In her latest, Caitlin Johnstone<\/a> cites war-lover Max Boot for his advocacy of the Russia-Ukraine War as a continuing investment opportunity for the U.S., including the use of body and truck counts as a measure of progress:<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia has lost an estimated 120,000 soldiers and 170,000 to 180,000 have been injured,\u201d [Max] Boot writes [in a <\/em>Washington Post op-ed]. \u201cRussia has also lost an estimated 2,329 tanks, 2,817 infantry fighting vehicles, 2,868 trucks and jeeps, 354 armored personnel carriers, 538 self-propelled artillery vehicles, 310 towed artillery pieces, 92 fixed-wing aircraft and 106 helicopters.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russian armed forces have been devastated, thereby reducing the risk to front-line NATO states such as Poland and the Baltic republics that the United States is treaty-bound to protect,\u201d Boot continues. \u201cAnd all of that has been accomplished without having to put a single U.S. soldier at risk on the front lines.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s an incredible investment,\u201d gloats Boot.<\/em><\/p>\n

At no time in his masturbatory gushing about how many Russians this war has helped kill does Boot make any mention of the immense toll<\/a> this deliberately provoked and completely unnecessary war has taken on Ukrainian lives. Their deaths and dismemberments and displacement are the largest price being paid into this \u201cinvestment\u201d by far, but Boot doesn\u2019t deem them worthy of even a footnote.<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been seeing this \u201cinvestment\u201d line being promoted with increasing frequency by US empire managers and their apologists. In an article published in the Connecticut Post<\/a> last month, Senator Richard Blumenthal assured Americans that \u201cwe\u2019re getting our money\u2019s worth on our Ukraine investment.\u201d A few days prior to that Senator Mitt Romney had described<\/a> the proxy war as \u201cthe best national defense spending I think we\u2019ve ever done,\u201d because \u201cWe\u2019re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money\u2026 a weakened Russia is a good thing.\u201d In December Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said<\/a> that funding the proxy war is \u201ca direct investment in reducing Vladimir Putin\u2019s future capabilities to menace America, threaten our allies and contest our core interests.\u201d Last November the imperial war machine-funded<\/a> think tank Center for European Policy Analysis published a report<\/a> arguing that \u201cUS spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia\u2019s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Imagine the vacuity, the bankruptcy, the venality, the sinfulness of writing about war and killing as \u201can absolutely incredible investment.\u201d And what is our ROI, our return on investment? A lot of dead and wounded Russians and Ukrainians, a devastated and poisoned landscape, millions of war refugees, and an increasing likelihood of a wider war that could possibly go nuclear. ROI, indeed.<\/p>\n

War is many things, but it is not an \u201cinvestment.\u201d People who talk and write like this have no moral center. They are soulless. They are automatons of war.<\/p>\n

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools. He writes at Bracing Views<\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. Did you know the Russia-Ukraine War is a great \u201cinvestment\u201d for the United States? A terrific opportunity to kill lots of Russians and to destroy lots of their military equipment at a relatively cheap cost to us? (Just don\u2019t mention the price paid by Ukraine.) It gives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-44153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44153"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44155,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44153\/revisions\/44155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44153"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=44153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}