One of the defining characteristics of an empire is that it is almost constantly at war. War is the great excuse for the State to expand its power. Need to increase taxes? Start a war to justify the increase. It might seem like a bad idea due to the expense of waging war but if you plunder enough from the other nation you can walk away with a tidy profit. Are you a politician who needs to line you pockets with some cash? Start a war and watch the campaign contributions and other perks roll in from the defense contractors. Do you want to expand your surveillance powers? If you start a war, you need to search for enemy spies!
As Randolph Bourne said, “For war is essentially the health of the State.” So it should come as no surprise that the United States, which is already engaged in a series of wars, is positioning itself to enter another:
Mr Dumont said calculating “even the roughest” potential casualty figures would be extremely difficult.
He also gave some detail on what the first hours of a war would involve.“The only way to ‘locate and destroy – with complete certainty – all components of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs’ is through a ground invasion,” he wrote in response to Congressman Lieu’s questions about a potential conflict.
The risks involved included a potential nuclear counter-attack by North Korea while US forces attempted to disable its “deeply buried, underground facilities”, he said.
A potential nuclear counter-attack might sound horrific but you have to remember that nobody involved in developing this assessment and nobody involved in issuing the war order would actually be sent to fight the war. Casualties are easy to justify when other people are the ones dying.