The Effects of the Iraq War Essay Example for Free

The Effects of the Iraq War Essay The war in Iraq was supposedly an act against terrorism. In one of the President’s speeches, he made it clear that it was a preemptive attack and that if we were not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people†(Crimes Against Humanity). This is the government’s claim but it was never substantiated by any evidence, thus keeping the Americans wondering what really is the cause of this massive bloodshed. Some reports say that this war is in large part an oil currency war. â€Å"One of the core reasons for this upcoming war is this administrations goal of preventing further Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) momentum towards the euro as an oil transaction currency standard†(Mother Jones). In order to stop the OPEC from doing this, the US needed to take control of the OPEC’s 2nd largest oil producer, Iraq. This means that the Iraq War is just another economic war. It is just another result of the struggle to control the means of production. The â€Å"domestic impact of any US war will be inequitably distributed, the workers and lowest economic classes carrying the burden of the social costs, while the upper strata benefit†(Swans). Even before the Iraq war, experts have already concluded that powerful corporate interests only see middle class families as the spoils of political influence (FromTheWilderness. com). When war struck, the burden was heavily felt by these same families. The additional burden came in the form of taxes. To maintain the Iraq war the government imposed additional taxes on the people disguised as national security taxes. This tax is imposed on all persons, however the effect on the upper class is not as drastic as to the middle class families simply because since they are the ones who can afford to pay and benefit from the big tax cuts. These taxes in addition to the economic pressures on the middle class—stagnant wages, the need to pull down two salaries to support a family, and the rising costs of the basic expenses—drive these families to turn to credit just to make ends meet. Credit in itself is neither bad nor is it taboo but the present state of the country prevents the middle class families from ever recovering (FromTheWilderness. com). The Iraq war brought about a change not merely on financial aspects but also in the way Americans perceive things. It has awakened the people’s social consciousness. Due to the doubtful claims the government are using to justify the war coupled with the suffering of the middle class, the masses are starting to wonder and ponder on the real issues that they are presently facing. A sense of awareness has donned on them, the people are slowly gearing towards social change. Having the freedom of intercourse, the people are slowly unearthing the reasons behind the war, the cause of their social helplessness and the means or solutions they are entitled to. Americans are becoming inquisitive, they are slowly transforming into persons naturally drawn to activism and sympathetic to an anti-war attitude and the Iraq War will present a new challenge of exposing the propaganda promoted by American imperialists, and in building an opposition (Swans). The change the Americans are experiencing after the war is neither bad nor good. It is a just a natural reaction brought about by the need for social justice and equity. Social justice is the concept of society in which justice is achieved in every aspect of society, rather than merely the administration of law. It is generally thought of as a society that affords individuals and groups fair treatment and a just share of the benefits of society. The Iraq war is not the sole cause of this change, several social forces are at work here but it may very well be considered as one of the factors that triggered it. After years of following the capitalist norm, the uneven distribution of wealth and power between the classes is already taking its toll. The delineation of the social classes is becoming clearer, each class is grouping itself together and yet, each one is dependent upon the other, without the bourgeoisies there would be no proletariat, without the proletariat there would be no cause for awareness, without a cause there can be no change. The social classes are now playing their important roles in this changes, they are setting the stage for their struggle. The United States is experiencing social change and it is inevitable. According to Neo-Marxism, strains are inherent in social structures and the source of these strains or contradictions is the inherent scarcity of certain goods and values. Thus inequality is a source of conflict. The conflicts caused by the inequality of the classes are starting to show. The ghost of communism is slowly rearing its head in our country. The Americans are preparing to experience a class struggle. The middle class is slowly becoming aware of the distribution of wealth and power between the masses and the selected few, they are realizing the exploitation of their class by a selected few using the government as an instrument. The country is now at the brink of a social revolution, just as how all revolutions came to be, the birth begins with the proletariat’s struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them and eventually the rise to power of the middle class. At this point however, the movement’s success cannot be ascertained. The thinking masses is too small to resemble a threat to imperialism but a war gone badly might alter public thinking enough to make such fundamental social change an increasing possibility. The ideas of Communism are based on actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on since time immemorial, it seeks to abolish property relations and to place power on to the working class (Mondo Politico). According to Karl Marx, this is the end result of all modern governments. Everything shall start from the bourgeois controlling first the modes of production hiring the proletariat only for labor, later on educating the proletariat so the bourgeois can use the knowledge endowed to the working class to remain competitive. Greed being the driving force, the bourgeois shall continue to teach and exploit the proletariat. Through this process, what the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. Communism is definitely an ideal type of government, it speaks of utopia where social justice reigns supreme and equity can never be flawed. The question now is that how come there is no country that has successfully established a perfect communist government? This might be caused by the degree of difficulty of implementing the transformation or it may be that eventually all systems shall need property relations of some kind. At this point, the social revolution in the United States is pretty far from fruition. Not all of the working class is willing to undergo change. After the United States has existed for so long, after having been accustomed to it and after achieving so much through capitalism, the premature abolition of property relations shall definitely cause its own downfall.