This estimate is based primarily on the only valid scientific study conducted of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S. aggression. In the July 2006 issue, an article in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, estimated that over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed up to that time. But, of course the killing has continued at a sickening pace, and by using the Iraq Body Count as a guide for the rate of increase since July 2006, the new figure has gone beyond a million. [The study survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings were published online October 11, 2006 by the British medical journal The Lancet].

Since the U.S.-initiated war started on March 19, 2003, the number of Iraqi deaths average 18,868 per month, or about 629 per day!

Let us compare this figure with the U.S. war and occupation of Southeast Asia from March 8, 1965, the date the U.S. Marines landed at DaNang, through January 27, 1973, the date of the ceasefire (though there were some casualties after this date). It is generally believed now that more than 5 million Southeast Asians were killed due to the U.S. aggression. In the 94 months plus 19 days of that inclusive period, March 8, 1965 through January 27, 1973, we find 1,740 Asians killed per day, nearly 3 times the already staggering Iraqi figure!

Now let us compare the death rate for the 37-month Korean War, where it is now estimated that another 5 million Asians were killed. During this conflict, we discover that 4,505 Koreans and Chinese were killed, every day-more than two-and-a-half times the daily figure for Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos.

One more comparison is in order. There is a general consensus that somewhere in the vicinity of 50 to 55 million people were killed during World War II. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945, Germany already having been defeated in May 1945. If we take the figure of 52,500,000 dead during the war, and use the number of war days as 2,173, then we are staggered with 24,160 deaths per day over a nearly six-year period! This figure is well over five times the daily deaths from Korea. And this does not include all post-1945 radiation victims from the dropping of the enriched uranium and plutonium bombs on August 6 and 9.

Historians estimate 14,500 major wars have occurred over the past 5,500 years with the advent of civilization, claiming the lives of at least 3.5 billion people. During the 20th Century about 125 million people were killed by actions of governments. Since the end of World War II, virtually all wars have been conducted in what have been described as "Third World" nations, with Iraq now considered an exception. The conservative English war historian John Keegan has stated that 50 million people have been killed by war since the so-called "First World" peace began in 1945 through the mid-1990s.

War emerged with the advent of civilization. Civilization has been severely traumatic for the human condition for more than 300 generations. It has been sustained by massive obedience to its vertical authority structures, whether described as inherited kingdoms, dictatorial despots, or elected democratic oligarchs. Part of that obedience has required subservience of labor for production and military roles to assure increased profits– primarily for the benefit of those positioned in the narrow portion of the apex of the vertical power structures.

We in so-called democratic societies seem to actually believe that our political structures represent the people, rather than power. It is time to drop that belief such that we might be enabled to become disobedient to power. Instead, we can choose to become personally responsible with all our relationships as they manifest in the communities where we live. As we revolt from obedience we may learn that we are totally capable of remaking ourselves into an earth community rather than a bunch of plundering consumers. Our lives, and the life of an inhabitable planet, depends on it, beginning right where we live. Let us globalize liberation in each of our communities. Why not make a leap into local self-reliant community where democracy is direct, i.e., radical. This is a fantastic opportunity for all of us to become awake and vital. Or, we can choose business as usual, and stumble off the cliff to a terrifying death below-omnicide.

The human invention of urban "civilization" about 3500 BC (250-300 human generations ago) coincides with the advent of patterns of systematic violence previously unknown. The development of massive civil obedience to the vertical authority structures that ushered in civilization, originally in the form of kings, has witnessed a reported 14,500 major wars. This obedience has become a habit, generally void of any memory of the autonomous freedom of pre-urban civilization tribal groups.

The new vertical power structure soon became an abstraction and an end in itself, utilizing the first megamachine (Mumford) of statehood (kings and their elite team of priests and scribes organizing huge projects) composed of human parts. Virtually all civilizations have been traumatized by:

• centralization of control with aid of bureaucracy and hierarchy
• separation of classes — stratification and lifetime division of labor
• creation of slavery (forced labor) for industrial, agricultural, military purposes
• mechanization for massive production (pyramid tombs, irrigation, palaces, etc.)
• magnification of power via a military for expanding control over adjacent territory and coercing more labor
• human sacrifice, direct or disguised
• secrecy

Psychological, Deep Root Causes of War: Millenia of Insecurity

Class and stratification ripped people from their historical roots of living in small tribal groups. This separation of people from their intimate connections with the earth, produced deep insecurity and fear. The field of ecopsychology suggests that such fragmentation created a primordial breach resulting in severe trauma and insecurity in the human psyche (Roszak). Psychologists describe "defense mechanisms" by which authentic freedoms become deferred to belief in authority structures, and their mythologies and controlling ideologies (De La Boetie, Eisler).

This pattern has contributed to a deep shame (invalidation), recognition of which is pre-empted by the newly imposed belief systems. Many successive generations of shame-based child upbringing (Miller) and shame-ethics has led to generations of patterns of violence (Gilligan). Arrogance rather than humility, denial rather than awareness, and violence against "others," became major "defense mechanisms" to relieve anxiety created by the deep insecurities (Millburn and Conrad).

In the alternative, the ancestral memory of the high, or "rush" from experiences rallying around collective defense to a common enemy (Ehrenreich), and search for meaning in a culture of void suggests "war is a force that gives us meaning" (Hedges).

Tyranny is inherent in concentration of political, social, and economic power, whether achieved through elections, force of arms, or inheritance. The method of rule is essentially the same — achieving massive consent either through fear or propaganda/myth (De La Boetie). People have deep yearning for meaning and autonomy, remnants of their evolutionary memory, but the void is at least temporarily fulfilled through name-calling and violence with a "cause."

Structural Causes of War

Political-economic systems, unfolding through 5 millennia of vertical authority structures, are intended to preserve privilege and class through rationalized exploitation. They are generally addicted to expansion (to acquire workers, resources, markets) to maintain their "prosperity" which has in turn been supported by the insecure masses despite detrimental consequences. The United States, with but 4.6% of the world’s population, insists on maintaining the American Way Of Life (AWOL) which consumes anywhere from 25% to nearly half the world’s resources. This "nonnegotiable" Way Of Life (Bush I), grotesquely disproportionate in its unfairness and danger to global stability, is the mother of all structural problems. It requires constant theft by force or its threat, though AWOL resides within the context of 500 years of colonialism exacted by Eurocentric "superiority" forcefully enriching its 20 percent of the world’s population through enforced impoverishment of the remaining 80 percent of "heathens and savages."

Centralized vertical structures are similarly rooted in the origins of "America" during its "bourgeois" American revolution which initially "preserved inherited property (not human rights) as it destroyed inherited government." The U.S. "Founding Fathers" had visions of an "empire of liberty" (Jefferson), "imperial republicanism" (Madison) and a mercantile, expansive nation, but not a vision of democracy. By the 1820s Kentucky Congressperson Henry Clay began calling for creation of "an American system." The U.S. Constitution is based on feudal principles since the citizenry is both beholden to and the responsibility of the highest Lord, in our case the strong central government. This pre-empted the ideas of the original 1773 Revolution by farmers and small communities who rose up opposed to any strong central authority structure (Raphael), whether imposed from England or a homemade version of same. The early age of mercantilism was succeeded by laissez faire, then corporation capitalism.

A class-conscious philosophy permeated from our origins combining defense of private property with belief in the necessity of expansion to assure prosperity. Since the nation’s founding, there have been more than 500 overt military interventions in over 100 countries, and since World War II likely more than 15,000 covert, destabilizing actions around the world enhancing selfish U.S. economic interests, always at the expense of other’s well-being.

"America" has been mythologized in language describing it as "republican," then "democratic." In fact it has been an insidious version of a White Male Supremacy society–a nation ruled by oligarchs and their supportive plutocrats. "Americans" have insisted on believing their rhetoric of being a "democratic" society endowed by a unique gift of "exceptionalism." Its second "bourgeois" revolution (the Civil War) entrenched property power in factories and railroads as it abolished property in man" (Lynd). The granting to corporations the constitutional rights of legal persons usurped the Bill of Rights (especially 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendments). The military-industrial-intelligence-information complex continually makes huge sums of money on war and destruction under the cover of "Constitutional democracy." Utilizing the phoney GNP (Gross National Product), every event is commodified for profit.

U.S. historian William Appleman Williams describes U.S. America as Empire As A Way of Life (1980). Author Derrick Jenson describes the The Culture of Make Believe (2002), a fantasy built on three unrecognized holocausts, a chronic pattern of terrorism that has stolen (1) land from the Natives, (2) labor from Africans and others, and (3) resources from virtually everywhere, at gunpoint, killing millions with virtual total impunity, which has enabled it to "enjoy" a holiday from history to the present day. This is consistent with the pattern of virtually all "civilizations" since their advent some 5,500 years ago

Western cultures are addicted to technology enabling a more comfortable, convenient, and faster Way Of Life, at the expense of others and the Earth. Obsessive belief in the myth of progress through large (rather than small and local), capital (rather than labor) intensive, violent (versus nonviolent), and complex (versus simple) technologies, pre-empts intermediate technology, local ingenuity, and preservation of regional econo
mic and cultural sufficiency independent from far-away external inputs.

Conclusion

The American and Western Way Of Life has, during 500 years of colonialism, produced a spoiled 20 percent while impoverishing 80 percent, rationalized with racist ideology and Eurocentric arrogance. We live in a bubble of make-believe. The "American" society is

habituated

to obedience to vertical authority structures (using the oxymoron, "representative, Constitutional democracy") and is literally

addicted

to a

Way

of Life enabled by the short-term blip of an oil-based economy. We must recover our archetypal characteristics of empathy and humility enabling participation in mutual aid in smaller, sustainable communities with local autonomy. This is the healthy social organization that our human memory has known for more than 99.9 percent of our Hominid evolutionary journey. Horizontal, radical democracy is currently being taught to us by the Mayan, Zapatista revolution in southern Mexico. We would do well to heed the lessons of how to live sustainably without expansion.

References

De La Boetie, Etienne. (1997, 1553). The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. Montreal: Black Rose Books.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. (1997). Blood Rites: The History of Origins and Passions of War. New York: Henry Holt.

Eisler, Riane. (1987). The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Gilligan, James. (1997). Violence: Reflections On A National Epidemic. New York: Vintage.

Hedges, Chris. (2002). War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. New York: Public Affairs.

Jensen, Derrick. (2002). The Culture Of Make Believe. New York: Context Books.

Lynd, Staughton. (1982). Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Milburn, Michael A., and Sheree D. Conrad. (1996). The Politics of Denial. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT.

Miller, Alice. (1983). For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of Violence. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Montagu, Ashley, Ed. (1978). Learning Non-Aggression: The Experience of Non-Literate Societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mumford, Lewis. (1966). The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

Raphael, Ray. (2002). The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord. New York: The New Press.

Roszak, Theodore, Gomes, Mary E., and Kanner, Allen D. (1995). Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club.

Williams, William Appleman. (1980). Empire As A Way Of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Williams, William Appleman. (1961). The Contours of American History. Cleveland: The World Publishing Company.