Taking the Profit Out of War
MILITARISM, 11 Sep 2013
Peter G Cohen – TRANSCEND Media Service
We now have a huge war machine that dwarfs President Eisenhower’s warning about the undue influence of the military-industrial complex.
Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network says, “We’ve become a killer nation. We have to have endless war, like a drunk needs a drink at the bar, in order for American workers to put food on the tables for their families. What does this say about the soul of our nation?”
Yes the “complex,” as we call the whole security business, has become so huge that it is now central engine of our economy, absorbing more than half of all discretionary spending. At the same time, our nation is decaying from lack of maintenance and investment. Whether we look at the national infrastructure, the health of the people, the education of our children, the employment of our workers or other measures of well being, the United States is behind other developed nations.
Our people are discouraged. Parents no longer have confidence that their children will lead better lives. They see that we have done very little to slow violent climate change or to prepare for the increasing devastation of our homes and businesses, which have cost billions in property damage and thousands of lives in the last decade. We are no longer the forward-looking nation, investing in the future, that we were for most of our history.
This imbalance of national priorities is strongly influenced by the flood of money that the Congress is lavishing on wars and military spending. With the mantra of supporting our troops, the Congress often has given the Pentagon more than they asked for. Some of this money gets spent in the Congress person’s district. The large defense corporations have taken care to spread their work across most of the states. Corporate lobbyists make sure that funding committee chairmen receive the largest campaign contributions and military facilities in their districts.
The lobbyists for schools, roads and bridges are insignificant compared to the banking and defense lobbyists. Their contracts are not “cost plus.” The research and development of a bridge, for example, does not go on for decades like the costly F-35, which is designed to have the maneuverability of a hummingbird, if and when they finally get it right.
Being the world’s policeman and maintaining worldwide influence is an expensive business. We are now building new bases in Asia and Africa. They make it easier for international corporations to buy up resources — including cheap labor. We pay the price with out taxes, while the corporations often hold their profits overseas to avoid paying their share of those taxes. We are told that these bases, their troops and supplies protect our “interests.” Watch out for that one! “Interests” is so vague a term that it can be defined any way the speaker wants to define it. The true purposes and the costs of this worldwide effort are “secret” from the American people! “Secret” is another great bureauocratic invention, unworthy of much respect.
Under the Constitution and from common sense, we need a “defense” industry to protect the United States. But it is a severe distortion of our national priorities to create over a thousand foreign bases to extend our commercial “interests,” or to honor the outdated security agreements made at the end of World War II. We could be using our remaining influence to strengthen the United Nations collective peacekeeping arrangements at far less cost.
We could be using that influence and our huge nuclear weapons stockpile to leverage a nuclear weapons convention for the abolition of these dreadful, illegal and sinful weapons. (Yes, it is “sinful” to have, maintain and improve weapons capable of destroying the beautiful Creation!) Instead, we are planning to spend hundreds of billions of our tax dollars “modernizing” this stockpile, while we are cutting back on programs that invest in the nation’s future through its children!
The Money System
A system is a dynamic, self regulating network of interrelated elements. Our defense system started with the need to defend our nation, but has now grown to be the self-regulating system of aggressive expansion and maintenance of worldwide domination. Of course, this is not publicly admitted, each element (such as anti-missile systems on the Russian borders or the huge naval base now building on Jeju Island, S. Korea, 100 miles from ShangHai) is advanced as absolutely essential to our national security. They are not.
The truth is that they are only necessary to the ever-more-costly effort to maintain the influence we had at the end of W.W.II, when the rest of the industrialized world was in ruins. This project cannot succeed in the long run. Nations such as Brazil, China, India and Russia are growing rapidly. They will not long endure the arrogant effort at their containment and our world dominance.
While this effort is doomed to failure and is exhausting our national resources, it is making some corporations exceedingly rich. They supply Congressional supporters of these efforts with abundant campaign contributions. They use their influential retired generals and admirals to influence Pentagon policy and to support the idea that all of these adventures are absolutely essential to our national well-being. Some of our military programs are actually defended on the basis that by continuing to buy unneeded products, such as nuclear weapons, we are preserving the ability to manufacture them, should they become necessary in the future!
This feedback of money, which influences all branches of our government and continues to inflate our military priorities, has resulted in an overblown military, missed diplomatic opportunities, and a depressed, future-less society. To preserve the vigor and health of our nation, we must use every possible tool to get money out of the decision-making process.
We are facing elections in the next few years. Can we make breaking the influence of money on national decisions our essential demand of every candidate? Can we insist that the Oath of Office, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, must be more important in our decision-making than corporate campaign contributions? The domination of money is ruining our nation. Will we, the people, fight for a decent, democratic future for the United States?
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Peter G Cohen, veteran, grandfather, views the surrent scene from a post W.W.II background of optimism and the rule of law. He is the author of the website www.nukefreeworld.com and other internet writings.
©2013 Peter G Cohen
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 11 Sep 2013.
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