Preface, this is my attempt to break out of critical style writing and just go with my train of thought. Please do not grade me on grammar here.
After the civil war was over life was not pretty in the South. Heavy structural damage, population and labor loss were difficult on everyone. Why did things fall down around the Southern way of life? Because the source of free labor was cut off. That could have been prevented had we never enslaved a race and built our society dependant on their free labor in the first place.
Who owned the most slaves? The plantation owners benefited the most from slavery, the richest of the rich. The few with the power to influence and manipulate people to their will. Not everyone in the South owned slaves in the 1800’s. Not even close to every man that fought in the civil war was a slave owner. In fact, I’m sure most of them weren’t. I doubt a rich plantation owner would let his son go fight, or go fight himself for that matter. I naturally deduce from this that the common man was out fighting a war so the rich could preserve their way of life.
This sounds familiar. Back to Rome, Caesar restricted the slavery trade and forced the nobles to hire commoners for wages. His logic was that there was so much free labor from slavery that the common man was starving in the street. He could not find work. Why would someone pay him to work when they have slaves to work for free? Of course the nobles were outraged by this because it cut into their profits. They hatched a plan to kill Ceaser and try to maintain their way of life. Of course they reasoned that he was a tyrant trying to destroy Rome but hey, everyone has their own brand of logic. And no doubt Caesar had his own agenda. But my point is who benefited from slavery here? The nobles. The few richest people that had power and influence to manipulate others.
I could also insert the Iraq war into this scenario. Who is benefiting from the war in Iraq? I’m not sure I’d say the Iraqis. They are pretty much sitting in a war zone. The good of humanity was served because Saddam is gone. That’s true. And our economy is picking up which is natural for war time. I’ve personally not seen any benefit from the war. The only thing that has affected me so far is that the price of gas has gone up. Which I won’t blame entirely on the war. But I do see some benefiting. The people who make the guns and tanks. The contractors that get to go over there and rebuild after we’ve destroyed it all. They are all benefiting for sure. But I think we are still too close to this to really see it for what it is. We might not ever really the whole story. But it will come out in history. Just like it always does. What I can see is that a few people with enough influence and power to manipulate got us into a war.
Dig a little deeper into the politics of Iraq and you’ll find that the former ruling party, the Sunni’s, were the few wealthy while the Shi’ites were the many and poor. They are having their day now aren’t they. Just like all the others have.
I’ll sign off with a question. When was the last time the US pursued a preemptive military strike against another country?