This is an article from the June 2025 Civitas Examiner (Volume 2, No. 3) and was written by one of our students, Hank F. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue. To read more Civitas Examiner stories or to submit your own, click here.
Recent threats of violence by the Trump administration regarding Iran continue the reign of U.S. imperial wars overseas. The U.S. military-industrial complex turns human death and suffering into profit. Foreign interest, through the means of super PACs, can lobby the U.S. government with impunity, legally allowing the private interests to convert wealth into control of the U.S. military-industrial complex.
Defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman rake in billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars we will never see again. These dollars went towards taking 8,289 allied casualties in the war on terrorism, 12,000 Iraqi military and, not to mention, the over one million civilians linked to the famine and suffering in the conflict alone. This war resulted in zero substantive gains for the U.S. and where we have pulled out, we left famine, fear, and unrest.
After the end of World War II, the Allied powers split up the former Ottoman Empire, creating brand new nations, regardless of any existing racial or political lines. As a result of this botched attempt at nation-building, the Kurdish ethnic group was devided butween Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria and is now the largest ethnic group without a state. This made it significantly easier for ISIS to target this group for genocide.
Between the United States’ wars in the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, we have been in a perpetual state of war since the end of World War II. This state of war has bred an entire industry based on the commercialization of death, by extension of war. Corruption, such as that of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, among others, profits from lobbying to maintain the status quo of lucrative wars overseas. Despite the United Nations describing the actions of Israel as genocidal and the International Court of Justice issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli government, there is bipartisan support for shipping bombs and munitions to Israel.
Worldwide, the U.S. has used and, in many ways, is still using governmental institutions, such as the CIA, to sabotage democratically elected governments and progressive movements. We use tools such as the military to strong-arm foreign governments out of their resources, labor, and wealth for no more than corporate profits for the bourgeois. We constantly destabilize and overthrow foreign governments with no thought towards the long-term repercussions of our actions, leading to our weapons ending up scattered throughout the world across both sides of conflicts.
Corporatization, through the means of surplus and private lobbying interests, has kept the U.S. in a perpetual state of conflict and occupation? and, in essence, a form of modern colonialism. Our recent actions towards Iran, even while pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, is the beginning of further excuse to occupy and control.
