By Larry Jones
President Barack Obama, speaking to graduates of the New Economic School in Moscow on July 7, said what speechmakers at schools always say: “the future belongs to you.”
Obama told them: “You get to decide what comes next. You get to choose where change will take us. Because the future does not belong to those who gather armies on a field of battle or bury missiles in the ground – the future belongs to young people with the education and imagination to create.”
Yet, in the United States, as well as most other countries, it is middle aged people through the geriatric squad who actually decide what the nation’s future will be. That’s true even if they started out as idealistic young adults who wanted to help build a peaceful world. If they go into national politics, by the time they are Obama’s age of 47, they will not be building a new world. With some notable exceptions, they will be trying to put band aids on the cancers of the old moribund and effete imperialist system of which they have become a part.
They will then be the old folks whom Obama said “gather armies on a field of battle or bury missiles in the ground.” So, in my opinion, working within the system is not the way to go. It makes far more sense for us to continue building a strong national movement of resistance to the U.S. horrors carried out in our name.
The U.S. Talks of Peace While Putting Its Money Where its Guns (and Bombs) Are
Thanks to research done by the War Resisters League, here is a chart showing how the government is actually placing its priorities.