Why We Still Have War.

In the next few months we will have the opportunity to participate in a number of anti-war marches, peace vigils, or rallies supporting the troops.

I don’t want war but I do understand that sometimes we do have a need for war. What I’m not sure of is in this time in history do we need to be at war?

I see three reasons why we still have war; people not caring; people not wanting to get along; and people trying to make a profit. There may be other reasons but on these three we have the common denominator of “people”.

“Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.” -- Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshal and Luftwaffe chief, at the Nuremberg trials

A few weeks ago a small group of people put on a community forum in which two UCR students, one from Israel and the other was Palestinian, would have a dialogue about the mid-east conflicts. Audience participation was encouraged through a Q&A section. The only problem was despite a massive effort to get the word out about the event by the students of UCR and local peace groups very few people actually showed up to the event. What if we threw a war and no one showed up. Not a lot of people cared, did they?

Recently a local church that offers services to the homeless in Temecula put out a call for donated supplies from their community at large. Specifically sleeping bags. When another local church answered that call by gathering and purchasing about 50 sleeping bags the first church refused to accept the sleeping bags. They stated that after some research they found that the second church wasn’t Christian enough for them. They didn’t believe enough of the same things. Poor homeless. These people don’t want to get along.

According to the Wikipedia Halliburton is the only company mentioned by Osama bin Laden in an April 2004 tape in which he claims that "this is a war [in Iraq] that is benefiting major companies with billions of dollars."

The Wikipedia also states that the firm's contracts in Iraq are expected to have generated more than $13 billion in sales by the time they started to expire in 2006. The contracts in Iraq will be more profitable after the US Army reimburses them for costs that were originally investigated as potentially inflated.

KBR has contracts in Iraq worth up to $18 billion, including a single no-bid contract known as "Restore Iraqi Oil" (RIO) which has an estimated worth of $7 billion.

Being an entrepreneur myself I understand the need for an honest profit but an audit of KBR by The Pentagon’s Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) found $108 million in "questioned costs" and, as of mid-March 2005, said they still had "major" unresolved issues with Halliburton. These people are profiting.

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