What the Gaza war means to me as an American victim of US military power

To some states and other geopolitical and socioeconomic actors and entities, poor people are dangerous. Enclaves where they are concentrated will be policed. Military operations are sometimes deemed necessary. That sometimes they are concentrated in camps allows for some striking literary irony, whatever else it involves. Ethnic, religious, and other differences between populations may play a role in articulating the rationales. From the point of view of those who want power, and to protect their prosperity, people, generally, are material to be used or obstacles to be cleared, perhaps "eliminated," as NYPD operatives for obscure reasons threatened me (though they carried out none of their more extreme threats and I am alive).

This is how I see the current war on Gaza, an American proxy war that our government has been trying in ineffective and slight if not half-hearted and mere publicity-managing ways to limit and manage. If this war broadens, as in recent weeks it has begun to, the pattern of recent wars in which the US was involved (not only but especially those) will probably be followed. This pattern is to make everything worse.

The excuse of 'liberating' a foreign people from their own domestic national government because it 'oppresses' them, a declaration that is undoubtedly verifiable, is a poor one. The problem here basically is that this is not how liberation generally works. Perhaps Americans will think of the models of the Civil War (as entered into and fought by the United States as such, the "North") or the second world world war (if not also the first), as in these cases "we" did "liberate" a people elsewhere from an oppressor regime. This model is falsified by the broad experience of US foreign military engagements during the Cold War.

That war was legitimated largely by the division of Europe, which the US and UK supported. (The Soviet system was brought down with little help from the US and UK, as a result of the work of intellectuals, artists, activists, students, workers, and citizens, in a series of events in the long period from Stalin's death to the collapse of the USSR. The Cold War was not "won" by the West; what happened is one form of police state capitalism was brought down with, rightly, few regrets then or now, and an often predatory neoliberal capitalism bought out much of what was left behind, with mostly damaging results, it would become increasing clear. The end of "Communism" in itself was a victory for the left, not the right). The military interventions occurred in other parts of the world and were directed at limiting or opposing socialist and nationalist movements that threatened to move outside of US economic hegemony. (The Iranian revolution was one such movement). Those movements were all flawed, in various ways, often sharing the trait of being oppressive politically and socially in their own way. The US can exploit those facts ideologically to support a war. It is not likely to lead to a democratization or liberalization, if it does at all, without causing enough loss to life and other damage that the people directly affected in such countries would not, if asked (they won't be), would surely say, no, it's our affair, leave us alone. The US did not of course end "Communism" in Central and Eastern Europe through military engagement, and the threat thereof was, if a factor at all, not the most perspicuous one. There is ample reason to believe that oppressive regimes are effectively overthrown or transformed into ones that are better from the standpoint of their own residents, only by those people, and not by an external military power claiming to act for them. That might be why Napoleon's army encountered so much resistance in Spain. The US did help the intellectuals in opposition to Stalinism by providing some covert support for their work, such as the Ford Foundation did in Poland. If the US just provided support to Iranian dissidents, it would be harder to find cause for objection to that, and maybe it would do some good. Another middle eastern war will probably make everything worse. The US has an economy in which the military is very central, and this is one of our biggest problems. It is one of the world's biggest problems, because our government still considers itself the world's police man, and it is one of the American people's biggest problems, because of its repressive domestic consequences, which extend well beyond the direct problems of bad policing and mass incarceration, and the tendency to solve all problems with social control and sanctions, rather than democratically.

The warring state will declare a legitimate enemy. For Israel, that is Hamas. The legitimate enemy is all it needs. It then claims to be at war not against the people of that territory, but against its government or even a military-political entity lodged there. The people are collateral damage. That is how Kissinger thought of war. Israel reads from his playbook.

That way of war leads to massacres and refugees. The refugees become migrants, when they are not kept in camps for displaced persons managed by the humanitarian arms of the major powers. As migrants, they are scapegoats for the problems of the people in the nations where they try to settle, usually with the principal aim of staying alive.

Imperialist wars are always brought home, the domestic military forces then using the same techniques against the nation's own workers and people. We gotta do more to stop it!