A War By Any Other Name

Wars are not simply a matter of who dies, who loses; who lives, who wins. Rather, the most significant question is who profits.

By Ninotchka Rosca

(Remarks delivered at the Women and War Forum, sponsored by Grassroots Women, Vancouver, Canada; May 29, 2002)

In the last 500 years, the Philippines and we Filipinas/Filipinos have been on the receiving end of wars under various names. War of colonization; war of pacification; insurgent wars, world war… and quite recently, the “war on terrorism.” We have learned that a war of aggression, by any other name, is meant to control territory – hence, resources, both human and natural. The control of human beings allows the warmonger access to labor (cheap or conscripted, as the case may be), of both the manual and mental kind. It also enables the warmonger to change the culture, way of life, and even the value systems of people so as to create demand, where there has been none before, for the warmonger’s products. Thus, a rice-eating people can be so changed as to eat bread and nothing but, with the commensurate increase in the demand for flour and wheat, where there had been none before.

In the 16^th century, under the pretext of “christianizing” the heathens of the Philippine islands, Spain transformed our women into both market and commodity. This was when we learned the concept of sex for trade; thus, we still use the Spanish four-letter word for prostitute to this time. However, four hundred years later, it was the U.S. military machinery which began the organized and large-scale sex trafficking of women in the islands. Thus we view with great trepidation and with great anger the return of U.S. troops to the Philippines. In the first place, it had taken nearly half a century of struggle to get them out; for the Macapagal-Arroyo government to allow them to return is simply to spit on the courage, tenacity and determination of the Filipino people to unchain themselves from U.S. control and domination.

In the 19^th century, two European scholars already anticipated the turmoil of our world today. Capitalism, they wrote, would remold the world after its own image, in its incessant search for markets. This seems so close to current fears about a war between civilizations (the West and the Middle East) that we are taken aback. But the remolding of the world has nothing to do with changing worldviews or belief systems or value systems; it has everything to do with simply the maximization of profits. Wars of aggression are extremely profitable for the warmonger.

War and the stockmarket

Here is a piece of news I received from California only yesterday. A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of workers against a high tech company called the American X-tal Technologies. The suit alleges that in its haste to fulfill contracts with the Department of Defense, American X-tal has been exposing its largely immigrant workers to chemical poisons. X-tal creates computer chips of gallium arsenicide, which supposedly works better in radiation-intensive environments. I hope that we will take full measure of the implications of that phrase “radiation-intensive environments.” The workers who slice the gallium arsenicide ingots to make the silicon wafers are only given smocks to wear; they have no breathing equipment. When taken into the body, the dust resulting from this process breaks down into gallium, which is inert, and arsenic, which is toxic and a confirmed human carcinogen. Because there are no shower facilities, the workers track the gallium arsenicide dust not only to their homes but to all the places they visit: train and bus stations, supermarkets, restaurants, shopping malls…

The high-tech industry, notably that of Silicon Valley, has been enjoying a resurgence in the demand for semiconductors and computer chips, in the wake of the so-called “war on terrorism.” These items go into the “brains” and guidance systems of smart bombs, fat bombs, heavy bombs, earth-borer bombs, etc. The U.S. stock market has risen from its stupor even as the government surplus gained in the eight years before the advent of Bush and the alleged “war on terrorism” disappeared overnight. No one seems to know where the trillions of dollars went.

Wars are not simply a matter of who dies, who loses; who lives, who wins. Rather, the most significant question is who profits. Since the advent of capitalism, wars of aggression have been launched for capital accumulation, for market expansion and over control of raw materials. Before, after and in between the two world wars, there were internecine conflicts in various parts of the world. Simply because war has been profitable for corporations, for multinational and for transnational corporations. If we look at Germany, the Third Reich has disappeared completely but Siemens and Krups remain, as profitable as ever, though there’s no longer a demand for death gases and death ovens.

We tend to think of profits as emanating simply from the sale and waste of weapons and ammunitions. Thus, we ask: who was paid for the airplanes, the ships, the bombs, the guns, the bullets… But that is only the first level. We can ask as well who got paid for uniforms, the shoes, the undershirts, the backpacks, the rations. And further, who was paid for the food dropped as propaganda in Afghanistan. And who got paid for the huge number of aid workers and social workers who came in at the wake of the war. And who got paid for the intelligence work, the translation… We can go on and on, to illustrate that while war is an economic activity, it has an economy of its own.

In the wake of the anthrax panic in the U.S., for instance, the biotech industry has been enjoying a resurgence. Obsolete stocks of vaccine were suddenly in demand, in huge amounts, and were bought and sold, using taxpayers’ monies. In addition to huge stockpiles of the antibiotics against anthrax, there was suddenly a huge purchase of smallpox vaccines, already considered obsolete because the disease is practically eradicated. How we got from anthrax to smallpox, no one can tell. But each time the U.S. public gets hit by ADD (attention-deficit-disorder) about the “war on terrorism,” a new threat is aired by some official or the other. Nowadays, it’s suicide bombers…

In any case, what is a mystery about this post-September 11^th supposed further attacks on the U.S. is precisely that: why do they remain a mystery. Within a week post-9/11, virtually everything was already known and every single person, men mostly, even remotely connected to that conspiracy had been picked up in various countries of the world. I say even remotely connected, because there were some 30 hapless Filipinos in Belgium who had been arrested and deported and how that connected with 9/11 only the Belgian king knows.

But despite the combined resources of all the intelligence agencies of the world – resources on which a small country can be sustained for a year or more – no one has been able to say who, where, when and why with regards to the anthrax attack. The only thing clear is that it so panicked the U.S. public that support for the “war on terrorism” reached 90% approval.

We have listened today to vivid portraits of Palestinian women waging the struggle of the intifada, for a Palestinian state; we have listened today to equally vivid portraits of the near-absolute victimization of the women of Iraq under the war and blockade launched by the U.S. I ask now that we also pay attention to how women are integrated in the very system which enables wars of aggression to be launched overseas. The slow poisoning of workers, many of them women, in the high tech industry, is but a small example of what is taking place as corporations scramble to obtain and fulfill contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense – which used to be called, pre-WWII, the Department of War.

In addition to this, we must remember that one of the most critical needs for wars is the existence of readily mobilizable groups of men who will themselves wage the war. To maintain this steady supply, the military establishment uses two categories of women, or indeed has created two categories of women attached to its system: the military wives, who ensure that the next generation of soldiers are being raised and nurtured; and the prostitutes, who provide the soldiers with entertainment and a sense of being “conquerors” of the flesh.

We Filipinas/Filipinos, whether in the Philippines or overseas, expect U.S. troops to remain in the country. And indeed, for the target of the so-called “war on terrorism” to increase in numbers and range. Already, U.S. troops have marched into the territories of the Mindanao Islamic Liberation Front – an extreme provocation. Already, peace talks between the Manila government and the National Democratic Front have been suspended. Already, there have been attacks even on legal and parliamentary organizations and parties like Bayan Muna. Meanwhile, despite nearly 3,000 U.S. troops and over a hundred thousand Philippine military troops ranged against the hundred-man band of the Abu Sayyaf, the latter has not been damaged critically. Instead, Abu Sayyaf men have been apprehended singly, not large-scale.

The United States may get away with bombing the Abu Sayyaf territories; they may even get away with bombing MILF territories. These constitute but a portion of the country. However, the NDF operates throughout the archipelago. Are we going to allow the bombing of 7,000 islands of incomparable beauty and the death of millions who desire simply a half-way decent life of freedom and justice?

Yours is the answer. Bulatlat.com

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