Military
"That U.S. military budget exceeds what the rest of the world’s nations combined spend on defense. Nor can it be justified as militarily necessary to counter terrorists, who used primitive $10 box cutters to commandeer civilian aircraft on 9/11. It only makes sense as a field of dreams for defense contractors and their allies in Washington who seized upon the 9/11 tragedy to invent a new Cold War. Imagine their panic at the end of the old one and their glee at this newfound opportunity. Ike was right: Robert Scheer"
Sixty years after World War II, the military industries and the Pentagon secured dominance over Congress, the White House, and the news media. This has never been more apparent than in the invasion of Iraq and the so-called War on Terror. (From the Preface of a Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and one Man's Fight to Stop It. Senator Mike Gravel and Joe Lauria.)
“War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC
More about Gen. Smedley Butler
Despite whatever theories strategists may spin, the defense budget is now, to a large degree, a jobs program. It is also a cash cow that provides billions of dollars for corporations, lobbyists, and special interest groups. Ronald Steel: Temptations of a Superpower, 1995.
Center for Defense Information
Military Religious Freedom Foundation
School of Americas Watch ...See this video.
"The American military has been transformed into a “global oil-protection service” for the benefit of U.S. corporations and consumers, fighting overseas battles and establishing its bases to ensure that we get our daily fuel fix." Michael Klare, professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of scientists, the hopes of its children. -- Dwight Eisenhower, U.S. President and General
The exercise of military power will not enable the United States to evade the predicament to which the crisis of profligacy has given rise. To persist in following that path is to invite inevitable overextension, bankruptcy and ruin. The Limits of Power, the End of American Exceptionalism: Andrew J. Bacevich
The second prevailing dogma of our time is aggressive militarism, of which the new policy of preemptive strike against potential enemies is but an extension. This new doctrine of U.S. foreign policy goes far beyond our former doctrine of preventive war. It green-lights political elites to sacrifice U.S. soldiers—who are disproportionately working class and youth of color—in adventurous crusades. This dogma posits military might as salvific in a world in which he who has the most and biggest weapons is the most moral and masculine, hence worthy of policing others. In practice, this dogma takes the form of unilateral intervention, colonial invasion, and armed occupation abroad. It has fueled a foreign policy that shuns multilateral cooperation of nations and undermines international structures of deliberation. Fashioned out of the cowboy mythology of the American frontier fantasy, the dogma of aggressive militarism is a lone-ranger strategy that employs “spare-no-enemies” tactics. It guarantees a perennial resorting to the immoral and base manner of settling conflict, namely, the perpetration of the very sick and cowardly terrorism it claims to contain and eliminate. On the domestic front, this dogma expands police power, augments the prison-industrial complex, and legitimates unchecked male power (and violence) at home and in the workplace. It views crime as a monstrous enemy to crush (targeting poor people) rather than as an ugly behavior to change (by addressing the conditions that often encourage such behavior). Cornel West: Democracy Matters
The Military-Industrial Complex's Win (7/7/2010)
The War is Making You Poor (6/11/2010)
Just Don't Call It Defense(5/7/2010)
Why We Must Reduce Military Spending (7/6/2010)
The military-industrial complex consumes most of our resources. Mike Gravel put it this way in his fine book, A Political Odyssey:
Wasteful defense spending has helped bring us failing schools, crumbling physical infrastructure, a backward national rail system, 47 million Americans without health insurance, and 37 million living in poverty. Cutting the defense budget in half would do nothing to undermine our security and that giant sound you'd hear would be the sigh of relief from a suffering world. Then we could concentrate those resources on solving our disgraceful problems at home.".
All those billions did nothing to stop a few determined individuals with box cutters.
The economy has been militarized, war profiteering is public and visible, the military-industrial complex rules yet, since the media does not regard it as a story, it is not in the public mind. Resources used for the military are lost forever. Bush’s gratuitous war has drained our remaining economic strength. We did not learn the lessons of Vietnam.
Regulatory agencies are all captives of their industries. This is obvious from the drug industry, meat packing, media, environment and others. It is probably prudent not to eat beef…
Under Bush, US leadership was incompetent, illiterate, self-serving, and criminal. Bush did not listen to people who disagree with him, so we were condemned to bad decisions at the highest levels of our government. Nixon era, Iran-Contra felons were brought back, Enron refugees installed, right wing incompetents like Rumsfeld brought us massively expensive, morally repugnant, bad decisions. Secrecy covered most of it so Congress could do no oversight. Instead, we got an imperial Presidency and a pretext for empire.
Military buildup to an arranged war was devastating to the US economy, our civil liberties, and most likely will end any meaningful benefits that we came to expect from our Constitution. State sponsored violence will not make you safer.
The Constitution has been undermined by giving covert agencies a free hand (denying the Congress the power of the purse.) Judicial rights have been undermined. (The US is now a country that feels free to torture its prisoners.) The US is also number 1 in incarcerations. The Bill of Rights undermined. The Congress made a serious mistake when it gave the President the power to make war.
The US now meets all of the criteria for a fascist state: a strong dictator intent on world domination, a government that grossly violates human rights, corporate control of all branches of government, degraded civil liberties as a result of the "Patriot Act", and a military that takes resources from all other public purposes, media that has all of the qualities of journalism that we deplored in Pravda.
Congress was ineffective in oversight, and it is questionable whether the system is still self-correcting. Lobbyists are in the revolving door and many are themselves felons. By packing the judiciary with political hacks, Bush assured that his abuses will go without the checks and balances that were built into the Constitution.
The US thumbed its nose at international law including the Geneva Convention, the Kyoto treaty, the treaty on land mines, the ABM treaty, the treaty on weapons in space,
It is not yet the end of the US Constitutional Republic, Republicans will probably get their apocalypse.
The
Military-Industrial Complex
Top five questions to ask the Pentagon
'The US Military is Exhausted' (12/26/2009)
Death Spiral at the Pentagon (2/2/2009) Chalmers Johnson
How the military-industrial complex is destroying America (video)
10 Conservative Myths About National Security
The US Has 761 Military Bases Across the Planet, and We Simply Never Talk About It (9/8/2008)
The US Military's Middle East Crusade for Christ
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America's Medicated Army --U.S. troops are going into battle with a
different kind of weapon, one so stealthy that few Americans even know of its
deployment. 05 Jun 2008 For the first time in history, a sizable and
growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants
to calm nerves strained by repeated and lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The medicines drugs are intended not only to help troops keep their
cool but also to enable the already strapped Army to preserve its most
precious resource: soldiers on the front lines. Data contained in the Army's
fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an
anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, about 12% of combat troops in
Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants
or sleeping pills to help them cope. Escalating violence in Afghanistan and
the more isolated mission have driven troops to rely more on medication there
than in Iraq, military officials say.
GAO Blasts Weapons Budget
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040108A.shtml (April 1, 2008)
Writing for the Washington Post, Dana Hedgpeth reports: "Government auditors
issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon's biggest weapons
systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over
budget and years behind schedule. The Government Accountability Office found
that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295
billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion..."
Military waste is at horrendous levels. See the Washington Post's take here. (02/01/2008)
Yet healthcare for the troops is not a high priority. It isn't for the rest of us either.
Ongoing problems at Walter Reed
Veterans Without Health Care: The New York Times | (November 9, 2007)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111007C.shtml
In an editorial, The New York Times says that "many Americans believe that the
nation's veterans have ready access to health care, that is far from the case.
A new study by researchers at the Harvard Medical School has found that
millions of veterans and their dependents have no access to care in veterans'
hospitals and clinics, and no health insurance to pay for care elsewhere."
Are Bush and Cheney out of control ?
The US spends more on the military than the rest of the world combined. US troops are deployed worldwide. (Some listed here)
How much do Americans know about this ?
Budget: Highest Military Spending Since World War II
President Bush's 2009 budget would increase spending on the military to $515 billion -- and this number doesn't even count the billions the U.S. is spending every day in Iraq. The White House says the military budget - again not counting spending on Iraq - has grown by 70 percent since President Bush took office. Keep checking our website for updated analysis of the federal budget.
Blackwater
Iraq
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was
founded by Iraq war veterans in July
2004 at the annual convention of Veterans for Peace (VFP) in Boston to give a
voice to the large number of active duty service people and veterans who are
against this war, but are under various pressures to remain silent.
From its inception, IVAW has called for:
- Immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq;
- Reparations for the pillaging and destruction of Iraq so that ordinary Iraqi people can control their own lives and future; and
- Full benefits, adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicemen and women.
Today, IVAW members are in 32 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, and on numerous bases overseas, including Iraq. IVAW members educate the public about the realities of the Iraq war by speaking in communities and to the media about their experiences. Members also dialogue with youth in classrooms about the realities of military service. IVAW supports all those resisting the war, including Conscientious Objectors and others facing military prosecution for their refusal to fight.IVAW advocates for full funding for the Veterans Administration, and full quality health treatment (including mental health) and benefits for veterans when they return from duty.
Military Families Speak Out is an Organization of people opposed to the war in Iraq who have relatives or loved ones in the military. Formed by two families in November of 2002, we have contacts with military families throughout the United States and in other countries around the world. Our membership currently includes over 3,000 military families, with new families joining daily.
Veterans For Peace is a national organization founded in 1985 that includes men and women veterans from World War II , Korea , Vietnam , the Gulf War, other conflicts and peacetime veterans. Our collective experience tells us wars are easy to start and hard to stop and that those hurt are often the innocent. Thus, other means of problem solving are necessary. Veterans for Peace has a national office in Saint Louis , MO and members across the country organized in chapters or as at-large members.
See Iraq
Video
Why We Fight (video 1:38. Watch it on-line. It's important.)
Bibliography
The Three Trillion Dollar War: Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes
A Political Odyssey, the Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It Mike Gravel With Joe Lauria Foreword by Daniel Ellsberg
U.S. vs Them: J. Peter Scoblic "conservative foreign policy... has increasingly undermined American security, most strikingly in the area of nuclear proliferation, where the Bush administration’s bellicosity has spurred a new arms race among nonnuclear powers."
The Complex, How the Military invades our everyday lives: Nick Turse
Blackwater, the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army: Jeremy Scahill