“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
“We should take nothing for granted, only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. … We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”
-President Eisenhower’s farewell address, 1961
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been called wars to protect our oil interests there and this is the reason frequently given for the seeming inability of our elected representatives to have the balls to cut the funding and force the Decider to bring the troops home.
But Bob Scheer has suggested a deeper motive: to keep the military-industrial complex going and profitable.
“The big prize here for Bush’s foreign policy is not the acquisition of natural resources or the enhancement of U.S. security, but rather the lining of the pockets of the defense contractors, the merchants of death who mine our treasury. But because the arms industry is coddled by political parties and the mass media, their antics go largely unnoticed. Our politicians and pundits argue endlessly about a couple of billion dollars that may be spent on improving education or ending poverty, but they casually waste that amount in a few days in Iraq.”
The danger Ike warned of in 61 had only been going on a little more than a decade then, started by Truman as detailed in Morris Berman’s book, Dark Ages America: the Final Phase of Empire:
“The Truman administration felt that selling such a policy[, the Cold War,] to Congress and the public at large would make it necessary, in the telling phrase of Senator Arthur Vandenberg, ‘to scare the hell out of the American people.’ Secretary of State Dean Acheson indicated that it would be necessary to use dramatic language, such as ‘the free versus the enslaved world.’ As General Douglas MacArthur later put it, the government kept the American people in a perpetual state of fear, and in ‘a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor.’ (The same sort of Machiavellian politics, of course, was resurrected when ‘terrorism’ replaced communism after 9/11. Indeed, the similarities between the Truman and Bush Jr. administrations in this regard, and in the tactic of governing through fear, are quite obvious.)”
The Truman Doctrine started us on a ruinous 50 year “Cold War” that was bogus in almost all respects. “The Cold War had provided the rationale for the first peacetime creation of a militarized economy.” It was the beginning of a chill on our liberties (the “Red” scare of the late-40s and early-mid 50s). They were wrong about the Soviet threat, then wrong about the “domino” theory in Vietnam, then wrong again about the “window of vulnerability” of the late 70s, then wrong about Iraq, etc., etc.
What’s the common thread here: That a huge amount of our resources have been and are being poured into the coffers of the military-industrial complex. This includes military personnel, mercenaries, contractors, prisons and prison guards. Halliburton is just a drop in the bucket as Scheer reports:
“A devastating report by the Center for Defense Information, founded by former top-ranking admirals and generals, reveals that in the most recent federal budget overall defense spending will rise to more than $550 billion. Compare that to the $20 billion that the United Nations and all of its agencies and funds spend each year on all of its programs to make this a safer and more livable world.”
What gives here? This is what we want to do with our resources? Blow it on military shit? Build prisons all over America?
I learned in school that one of the hallmarks and safeguards of our democracy was the control civilians had over our military. During the aftermath of Ford’s recent death I discovered that Nixon’s Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger believed as did others in government at the time that Nixon would stage a military coup instead of resigning or being impeached. Schlesinger ordered the senior officers to accept no command directly from Nixon unless they checked with him first.
And now? We have a born-again in the White House taking direction from a former CEO of one of the top defense contractors in the Nation. Just how much control do our civilians exert over the military still? Or are the civilian overseers now militarized?
Then add the reports of the militarization and Christianization of the police forces and prison industry inside our borders and state laws that now allow private security companies to have police powers.
The point has always been: it’s not a good thing for democracy and freedom to militarize, it’s never a solution that works. Yet it has been happening for 50 years, now more rapidly.
“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
-James Madison
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