As everyone knows, there would have been no Iraqi War if George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had to fight in its trenches. Eugene V. Debs put the principle nicely:
Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder . . . the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. . . . They are continually talking about their patriotic duty. It is not their duty but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches. (Quoted from Who Benefits from Global Violence and War, by Marc Pilisuk with Jennifer Achord Rountree. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Security International. 2008. p.1.)
For a brief biography of Eugene Victor Debs, click here.
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