A carpenter does not craft chairs only to hide them under a bed. A tailor does not sew garments just to store them away. So, then—does America manufacture military weapons and war machines only to keep them in the White House’s military depo ? No. They must be sold. And how? Through war. The more human blood spills like the Hudson River, the more the so‑called American Dream is realized. War fuels profit, and profit fuels power.
This is not metaphor. It is the economic theology of the United States.
For decades, America has perfected a system in which the suffering of distant peoples becomes the raw material of domestic prosperity. The defense industry is not an accessory to the economy—it is its beating heart. Every missile launched, every drone deployed, every bomb dropped is a deposit slip in the vaults of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman. War is not an unfortunate byproduct of American policy. It is the business model.
And like all business models, it requires demand.
So the nation manufactures it—through fear, through propaganda, through the steady drumbeat of “threats” that must be neutralized. The enemy changes, but the logic remains: someone, somewhere, must bleed so that the American economy can breathe.
But beneath this machinery lies a deeper tragedy: the quiet erosion of the human spirit. A nation cannot worship war without wounding its own soul. The bombs America drops abroad eventually detonate at home—in its schools, its streets, its hospitals, its psyche. A society that normalizes violence abroad inevitably normalizes despair within.
The inner spirit of mankind was not built for this. We were not fashioned to cheer for destruction or to measure national greatness by the tonnage of weapons exported. Something ancient in us recoils at the sight of children running from rubble, mothers burying sons, fathers carrying the remains of their families in plastic bags. Something sacred in us knows that no flag, no anthem, no doctrine of “national interest” can justify the industrialization of death.
And yet, America continues to sanctify war as if it were a sacrament.
Politicians speak of “surgical strikes” and “precision operations,” as though killing could be made clean. News anchors describe invasions as “campaigns,” as though war were a marketing strategy. Corporations call weapons “products,” as though they were selling kitchen appliances. The language is sanitized so the conscience can be numbed.
But the world is not numb. The world is watching.
From Gaza to Sudan, from Yemen to the Congo, from Iraq to Afghanistan, the victims of American militarism are not abstractions. They are human beings whose lives were deemed expendable in the pursuit of profit. Their suffering is not collateral—it is currency.
And here is the truth America refuses to confront: A nation that builds its wealth on war cannot claim to lead the world in peace. A nation that exports weapons cannot preach democracy. A nation that profits from death cannot pretend to defend life.
The inner spirit of mankind is rising against this hypocrisy. People across the globe are awakening to the reality that the war economy is not inevitable—it is engineered. And what is engineered can be dismantled.
America stands at a crossroads where its soul must choose between empire and humanity. The war economy has devoured generations, hollowed out the nation’s moral core, and turned distant suffering into domestic profit. But the inner spirit of mankind is older than empires and stronger than fear. It remembers the sanctity of life before it was priced, the dignity of nations before they were bombed, the sacredness of children before they became statistics. That spirit is rising now—in the streets, in the global South, in the conscience of ordinary people who refuse to be complicit in the machinery of death. And until America confronts the truth that no nation can kill its way to security or bomb its way to peace, the world will continue to demand a reckoning. The age of manufactured enemies is ending. The age of human solidarity is calling. The only question left is whether America will hear it.
The post How America Turns War into a National Sacrament appeared first on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Sammy Attoh.
Sammy Attoh | Radio Free (2026-02-10T22:34:03+00:00) How America Turns War into a National Sacrament. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2026/02/10/how-america-turns-war-into-a-national-sacrament/
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