Creating a Death World

An Endless Cycle of Murderous Violence

Note to Readers: Back in 2013, I wrote a short piece (below) recalling a book I read as a teenager. That book, Deathworld, and its lesson flashed through my mind again this morning as I read about more attacks by the U.S. and Israel on Iran.

The governments led by Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump see extreme violence as preferable and indeed the only possible solution to disputes in the Middle East. Naturally, they accuse their opponents of being murderous killers as they continue to inflict violence on a far more massive scale than said opponents.

The dynamic of the U.S./Israeli war against Iran is dangerously escalatory—especially since “leaders” like Bibi and “War Secretary” Pete Hegseth appear to revel in extreme violence (from the comfort of their respective offices, naturally).

*****(Written in 2013, slightly revised below)

Ever since 9/11/2001, if not before, the U.S. government’s actions and attitudes have conspired to create a forever war, a score-settling exercise against “terrorists” that serves to perpetuate terror. U.S. leaders are trapped in a cycle of violence that’s very much of their own making. They believe (or say they believe) they inhabit an implacably hostile realm that supposedly hates them and the American way of life as well. By believing it, they make it so.

This neurotic state recalls a science fiction novel, Deathworld (1960), which I read as a teenager. Its author, Harry Harrison, imagined a world where the flora and fauna are relentlessly hostile to a certain band of can-do colonists, who reply in kind with Spartan-like warrior intensity and murderous brutality.

As impressive as these warriors and their death-dealing technology are, their actions merely beget more violence. Until an outsider visits and sees the situation for what it truly is, the colonists cannot perceive that it’s their own unbridled fear and violent natures which are driving their enemies to attack. Unless they change their implacably hostile mindset, their ultimate defeat is inevitable because their actions spawn new enemies and endless violence everywhere.

As the United States exercises its global power in the name of winning a war on terror, its leaders are creating a death world of their own making.

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Joining with Israel, a Sparta-like entity devoted to expansion through military violence, has only aggravated this warrior-driven vision of violent struggle. The U.S. has become a warrior-state. Worse than that, it’s a warrior-state that loses its wars.

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In the year 2000, America had a yearly budgetary surplus of $236 billion. The total national debt was roughly $5.6 trillion. Come forward to 2026, where the total national debt is now roughly $39 trillion, a large portion of that attributable to disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as vast military expenditures characterized by waste and corruption.

Yet the U.S. “strategy” today is to double down on war and to increase military spending. Defending democracy? No. Creating a death world? Increasingly, yes.