Ike Was Right
Selecting a subject from Watching America this week was difficult because there were several great candidates.
On a rather ominous note, an opinion piece in Pakistan's The Nation descried US plans to send US Special Forces teams into the Pakistan Tribal Areas to hit "high-value targets" without first getting approval from the Pakistani government. Anti-US fervor is rising in those areas to the point that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are being welcomed as a form of spitting on the US.
On a more hopeful note, Rami Khouri's column in Lebanon's The Star indicates that for the first time there are hints that the US is engaging in traditional diplomacy in dealing with Iran and its nuclear program. What is so surprising is that the State Department is actually proceeding in such a fashion as to give the next administration a decent range of options in the resolution of those issues, since it is clear that Iran is does not plan to close any kind of deal with the current administration.
I finally decided on this piece from Italy's Effidieffe because of its incisive analysis of the US mindset. It begins by noting that the current Defense Department budget includes allocations for a new class of Navy assault vehicles which would use atomic propulsion rather than traditional fossil-fuel systems, thereby adding about $800 million to the cost of a single assault vehicle. Such vehicles hardly seem to be all that useful in the Global War On Terror which does not involve traditional warfare techniques but rather the "asymmetrical" tactics of guerrilla warfare and the like. What's the deal? Is the US contemplating World War III in the foreseeable future?
Not exactly, according to the essay. It's about the money and the industries that will benefit from the contracts for such high-tech goodies. President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about this in his 1961 farewell speech (which is extensively quoted by the author of the essay), and his predictions have been fulfilled.
...the U.S.A. is exactly at the point foreseen by Eisenhower: the large weight of the military-industrial complex has distorted society--economically and spiritually--to such an extent that the society now depends on war like a drug addict depends on his dose.
It's not just that members of Congress invested their money in the huge defense industry; nor is it that the military-industrial complex is a powerful lobby and almost invincible. The fact is that for the people, good jobs (the ones with industrial and professional content) are only in defense departments; following deindustrialization in favor of China and Asia, armed forces are now the greatest employer for qualified and stable jobs. They are also the principal research centers for scientific and technological activities. ...
No future Normandy, no Iwa Jima is going to require atomic landing crafts. There aren't any strategic enemies, and nowhere near, who justify the construction of huge atomic landing crafts or the nuclearization of US fleets; it's just the necessity of making the economy work, of running a society that identifies itself as the industrial-military system, at the extent that it fears peace. ...
Senators encourage excessive armament, with an eye on their constituencies and on military-industrial activities that provide jobs; defense industries are interested in selling atomic landing crafts, F-16s and B-2s, just because they produce a profit; in short, strategic necessities move in the background of the "plc warmongering" paradigm; wars are fought to increase sales although now the huge U.S. power is diminished in Afghanistan and Iraq, where wars are irregular. [Emphasis added]
That is about the clearest analysis of the past four decades of American history that I've ever seen.
But do we really want this kind of economy? And, even more importantly, are we locked into this kind of economy? Hopefully the answer to both questions is "No," but it will take the will and a massive re-ordering of our our priorities to finally pull the plug on the military-industrial complex. A good start would be to force our Congress critters from their habit of approving each new toy that the military-industrial complex dangles in front of them.
On a rather ominous note, an opinion piece in Pakistan's The Nation descried US plans to send US Special Forces teams into the Pakistan Tribal Areas to hit "high-value targets" without first getting approval from the Pakistani government. Anti-US fervor is rising in those areas to the point that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are being welcomed as a form of spitting on the US.
On a more hopeful note, Rami Khouri's column in Lebanon's The Star indicates that for the first time there are hints that the US is engaging in traditional diplomacy in dealing with Iran and its nuclear program. What is so surprising is that the State Department is actually proceeding in such a fashion as to give the next administration a decent range of options in the resolution of those issues, since it is clear that Iran is does not plan to close any kind of deal with the current administration.
I finally decided on this piece from Italy's Effidieffe because of its incisive analysis of the US mindset. It begins by noting that the current Defense Department budget includes allocations for a new class of Navy assault vehicles which would use atomic propulsion rather than traditional fossil-fuel systems, thereby adding about $800 million to the cost of a single assault vehicle. Such vehicles hardly seem to be all that useful in the Global War On Terror which does not involve traditional warfare techniques but rather the "asymmetrical" tactics of guerrilla warfare and the like. What's the deal? Is the US contemplating World War III in the foreseeable future?
Not exactly, according to the essay. It's about the money and the industries that will benefit from the contracts for such high-tech goodies. President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about this in his 1961 farewell speech (which is extensively quoted by the author of the essay), and his predictions have been fulfilled.
...the U.S.A. is exactly at the point foreseen by Eisenhower: the large weight of the military-industrial complex has distorted society--economically and spiritually--to such an extent that the society now depends on war like a drug addict depends on his dose.
It's not just that members of Congress invested their money in the huge defense industry; nor is it that the military-industrial complex is a powerful lobby and almost invincible. The fact is that for the people, good jobs (the ones with industrial and professional content) are only in defense departments; following deindustrialization in favor of China and Asia, armed forces are now the greatest employer for qualified and stable jobs. They are also the principal research centers for scientific and technological activities. ...
No future Normandy, no Iwa Jima is going to require atomic landing crafts. There aren't any strategic enemies, and nowhere near, who justify the construction of huge atomic landing crafts or the nuclearization of US fleets; it's just the necessity of making the economy work, of running a society that identifies itself as the industrial-military system, at the extent that it fears peace. ...
Senators encourage excessive armament, with an eye on their constituencies and on military-industrial activities that provide jobs; defense industries are interested in selling atomic landing crafts, F-16s and B-2s, just because they produce a profit; in short, strategic necessities move in the background of the "plc warmongering" paradigm; wars are fought to increase sales although now the huge U.S. power is diminished in Afghanistan and Iraq, where wars are irregular. [Emphasis added]
That is about the clearest analysis of the past four decades of American history that I've ever seen.
But do we really want this kind of economy? And, even more importantly, are we locked into this kind of economy? Hopefully the answer to both questions is "No," but it will take the will and a massive re-ordering of our our priorities to finally pull the plug on the military-industrial complex. A good start would be to force our Congress critters from their habit of approving each new toy that the military-industrial complex dangles in front of them.
Labels: Economy, Pentagon, The Military
posted by Diane at 3:30 PM
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