America Needs a Stronger Defense Industry?
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
Post-WW II, America’s only enemies were and remain invented ones.
No real ones existed since Nazi Germany and imperial Japan were defeated – none anywhere, clearly none today!
Yet the US consistently pours countless trillions of dollars down a black hole of endless waste, fraud and abuse – global militarism and belligerence supported by the vast majority of Republicans and undemocratic Dems, at the expense of world peace, equity and justice.
Trump regime director of trade and industrial policy Peter Navarro is a militant right-wing extremist.
He’s part of a sinister cabal in Washington, wanting US-controlled puppet rule replacing sovereign independent governments in China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and elsewhere.
He favors whatever it takes for the US to achieve dominance over planet earth, its resources, and populations. The NYT gave him feature op-ed space to promote greater military spending at a time it should be slashed.
He lied claiming “(i)nvesting in the (defense) sector means more jobs at home and improved security abroad. He lied saying “(i)n terms of economic security, the Trump defense budget is helping to create good manufacturing jobs at good wages.”
He lied claiming increased “arms sales (abroad) not only help create good jobs at good wages in America…they also enhance America’s capacity to bolster and stabilize our regional alliances, even as they may reduce the need to deploy more American soldiers overseas.”
He lied saying “our defense industrial base (is) the unshakable foundation of both economic and national security.”
Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about military-industrial complex dangers went unheeded, saying: “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
He called it a “potential enemy of the national interest…a distorted use of the nation’s resources…fail(ing) to comprehend its grave implication…(affecting our) livelihood (and) the very structure of our society,” adding:
“Every gun that is made, every war ship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and not clothed.”
In an article titled “The War Business,” the late Chalmers Johnson said the following:
“(M)unitions and war profiteering have (become) the most efficient means for well-connected capitalists to engorge themselves at the public trough.”
“To call these companies ‘private,’ though, is mere ideology. (Weapons and) munitions making in the United States today (and related industries profiting from them are) not really private enterprise. It is state socialism,” adding:
“When war becomes the most profitable course of action, we can certainly expect more of it,” sacrificing a free society for private interests reaping short-term gains.
George Washington warned about “overgrown military establishments,” calling them “inauspicious to liberty.”
Perpetual wars now rage for illusory peace, what ruling authorities in Washington abhor – along with democratic governance they tolerate nowhere, especially at home.
US elections are farcical when held. With attribution to redoubtable activist Emma Goldman, if they changed anything, they’d be outlawed.
Economist, activist writer opponent of the military, industrial, security complex, Seymour Melman wrote extensively on the topic, dispelling state-sponsored/media promoted myths.
Discussing what he called “the Grip of a Permanent War Economy,” he explained the following:
“(A)t the start of the twenty-first century, every major aspect of American life (has been) shaped by our Permanent War Economy.” Its horrific toll includes:
• a de-industrialized nation, the result of decades of shifting production abroad, leaving unions, US workers and communities “decimated;”
• government financing, promoting and pursuing “every kind of war industry and foreign investing by US firms” – war priorities taking precedence over essential homeland needs;
• America’s “permanent war economy…has endured since the end of World War II…Since then, the US has been at war – somewhere – every year, in Korea, Nicaragua, Vietnam, the Balkans, – all this to the accompaniment of shorter military forays in Africa, Chile, Grenada, Panama,” and endless aggression in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, Yemen, Central Africa, and increasingly against perceived homeland threats;
• “How to make war” takes precedence over everything, leaving no “public space (for) improv(ing) the quality of our lives;”
• “Shortages of housing have caused a swelling of the homeless population in every major city (because) state and city governments across the country have become trained to bend to the needs of the military…;”
The nation’s deplorable state is characterized by growing millions of poor, disadvantaged, low income, uneducated, and “disconnected (people) from society’s mainstream, restless and unhappy, frustrated, angry, and sad;”
“State Capitalism” characterizes America’s agenda – partnering with business, running a permanent war economy for greater power and wealth, ill-served by pure evil leadership, at war on humanity at home and abroad.
US rage for global dominance comes at the expense of a nation in decline, lost industrialization, crumbling infrastructure, millions of lost jobs offshored to low-wage countries, growing millions at home uncared for, unwanted, ignored, and forgotten to assure steady funding for bankers, warmaking, and other corporate predation – at the expense of ordinary people everywhere.
Melman explained that investing in domestic needs, developing the nation and its people, achieves a far greater bang for the buck than resources spent for militarism and warmaking.
They’re parasitic, unjustifiable, illegal, immoral, and eventually self-destructive – why the US has been in decline for decades while China, Russia, and other nations are growing and developing productively.
Unlike America’s permanent war agenda, wanting its will forcefully imposed on other nations, they wage peace and mutual cooperation with other nations.
Along with equity and justice for all everywhere, what’s more important than that!
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My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."
