{"id":227197,"date":"2016-02-26T21:02:39","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T21:02:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=227197"},"modified":"2016-02-26T21:02:39","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T21:02:39","slug":"war-good-absolutely-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/war-good-absolutely-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

 <\/p>\n

It may be hard to believe now, but in 1970 the protest song \u201cWar,\u201d
\nsung by Edwin
\nStarr<\/a>, hit number
\none<\/a> on the Billboard<\/em> Hot 100 chart. That was at the height of the
\nVietnam antiwar movement and the song, written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett
\nStrong, became something of a sensation. Even so many years later,
\nwho could forget its famed chorus? \u201cWar, what is it good for?
\nAbsolutely nothing.\u201d Not me. And yet heartfelt as the song<\/a>
\nwas then \u2013 \u201cWar, it ain\u2019t nothing but a heartbreaker. War,
\nit\u2019s got one friend, that\u2019s the undertaker\u2026\u201d \u2013 it has little resonance
\nin America today.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the strange thing: in a way its authors and singer could hardly
\nhave imagined, in a way we still can\u2019t quite absorb, that chorus has proven
\neerily prophetic \u2013 in fact, accurate beyond measure in the most literal
\npossible sense. War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
\nYou could think of American war in the twenty-first century as an ongoing
\nexperiment<\/a> in proving just that point.<\/p>\n

Looking back on almost 15 years in which the United States has been engaged
\nin something like permanent war in the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa<\/a>,
\none thing couldn\u2019t be clearer: the planet\u2019s sole superpower with
\na military funded and armed like none other and a \u201cdefense\u201d budget
\nlarger than the next
\nseven countries<\/a> combined (three
\ntimes<\/a> as large as number two spender, China) has managed to accomplish \u2013
\nagain, quite literally \u2013 absolutely nothing, or perhaps (if a slight rewrite
\nof that classic song were allowed) less than nothing.<\/p>\n

Unless, of course, you consider an expanding series of failed
\nstates<\/a>, spreading terror movements, wrecked
\ncities<\/a>, countries hemorrhaging refugees<\/a>,
\nand the like as accomplishments. In these years, no goal of Washington
\n\u2013 not a single one \u2013 has been accomplished by war. This has
\nproven true even when, in the first flush of death and destruction, victory
\nor at least success was hailed, as in Afghanistan in 2001 (\u201cYou helped<\/a>
\nAfghanistan liberate itself \u2013 for a second time,\u201d Secretary of Defense
\nDonald Rumsfeld to U.S. special operations forces), Iraq in 2003 (\u201cMission
\naccomplished<\/a>\u201c), or Libya in 2011 (\u201cWe came, we saw, he died,\u201d Hillary Clinton
\non the death<\/a>
\nof autocrat Muammar Gaddafi).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  It may be hard to believe now, but in 1970 the protest song \u201cWar,\u201d sung by Edwin Starr, hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. That was at the height of the Vietnam antiwar movement and the song, written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, became something of a sensation. Even so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-227197","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}