Is The Military-Industrial Complex Invincible?
It was more than half a century ago that the then U.S.
President Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address to the nation,
warned of the growing influence of a phenomenon that still continues to
undermine and weaken the bases of American democracy: the
military-industrial complex.
The military-industrial complex is a concept denoting a
money-spinning and economically beneficial interaction between the
war-planners and the arms industry. The government officials set the
plans for a new military adventure with the apparent goal of “exporting
democracy” to other countries and “liberating” them while the genuine,
behind-the-scenes goal is to further some political interests and
plunder the natural resources of the target country. On their part, the
multinational companies get profitable and lucrative deals for
manufacturing weaponry, and the whole process, which ultimately leads to
unwarranted killings and irretrievable destructions, undercuts the
government’s accountability before the Constitution and the
international law.
To get an idea of what the military-industrial complex
is, it would be helpful to take a look at the relationship between the
legislative bodies of the U.S. federal government, i.e. the bicameral
Congress comprised of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the
arms manufacturing industry, the interest groups, political lobbies, the
multinational organizations and the corporate media.
For a long time, this dreadful complex, which the only
army general elected as the U.S. President has worriedly warned about,
has imposed additional and unjustifiable costs on the American
taxpayers. The U.S. citizens have been bearing the brunt of the
government’s warmongering and bloodletting across the globe. It’s noted
that the United States, since its independence, has either directly or
indirectly taken part in more than 50 wars and military confrontations
that have cost the lives of millions of innocent, unarmed civilians. The
most recent example is the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which until the
complete withdrawal of the U.S. forces in 2011, claimed around 1.5
million lives.
The American citizens, even those who usually approve of
the government policies regardless of which party is in power, have
always complained about the disproportionate and irrational spending of
the successive administrations on militarism and wars. This concern was
echoed in President Eisenhower’s farewell address delivered on January
17, 1961 where he stated, “three and a half million men and women are
directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on
military security more than the net income of all United States
corporations.”
The people’s dissatisfaction with the U.S. government’s
excessive spending on military projects and arms production has been
manifested in different ways; from the millions-strong rallies and
demonstrations in several U.S. cities preceding the Iraq War, to the
recent Occupy Wall Street movement, which was seminally oriented on
economic demands, but subsequently expanded to encompass the people’s
political grievances regarding the U.S. foreign policy and its military
expeditions in the Middle East. Needless to say the Occupy Wall Street
movement, which was a purely democratic and popular uprising, was
brutally crushed and suppressed by the U.S. police state, as the
prominent lawyer Marjorie Cohn puts it.
However, as the military-industrial complex grows and
becomes stronger, the American democracy turns more fragile and
unstable. The military-industrial complex has been a serious challenge
to the democratic values upon which the Founding Fathers have
constructed the U.S. Constitution. As time goes by, the government finds
it more difficult to rationalize its imperial, expansionistic and
militaristic agenda and justify its war adventures to its people, and
once a government ceases to be responsible, accountable and transparent,
it would be the starting point of the enfeeblement and evaporation of
democracy.
The military-industrial complex wins profits for the arm
dealers and traders whose existence and survival is hinged on wars and
military confrontations. These contractors control and manipulate the
public opinion through their dominance over the mainstream media. The
mainstream media rarely run stories that are critical of the war
policies of the government, and instead function as the propaganda wing
of the state. A notorious example is the joint collaboration by Judith
Miller and her colleagues at the New York Times to lay the groundwork
for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by presenting false evidence of the
non-existent Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. The massive media
propaganda campaign by the New York Times and other state-controlled
newspapers and TV channels in the United States instituted this belief
that a war was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from going mad and
dropping its chemical bombs on the heads of the American citizens. It
goes without saying that Saddam Hussein was the very puppet whom the
United States and its European allies prodded into attacking Iran in
1980.
Although imperialism and militarism have been two
inherent and characteristic features of the U.S. political establishment
for a long time, the world has been witness to an extreme growth of the
American greed for more wealth and political power in the recent years,
especially following the 9/11 attacks that marked the beginning of a
new era in the U.S. relations with the international community. The 9/11
attacks, which completely accidentally took place when the hawkish
Republican George W. Bush was in power, underpinned the mindset of
“either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” and provided a
good justification for invading and attacking the countries which are
seen as potential threats to the U.S. national security.
Of course the role of lobbies and interest groups in the
unrestrained growth of the military-industrial complex should not be
ignored. The Israeli lobby is seen as the most powerful and influential
external force in the U.S. political atmosphere and the foremost
role-player that alters the major foreign policy decisions took by the
White House.
The prominent investigative journalist Wayne Madsen
believes that the Israeli lobby owns the White House, Congress, the
Democratic and Republican parties and Hollywood. “The Israeli Lobby owns
the Congress, media, Hollywood, Wall Street, both political parties,
and the White House. This kind of talk will get people fired by this
lobby, as we have seen recently with White House correspondent Helen
Thomas and CNN anchor Rick Sanchez. However, many Americans are growing
tired of the arrogance of the Israel Lobby and their bigoted attitudes
toward anyone who challenges their influence-peddling and their
ridiculous insistence that Israel must be supported because of some
ancient fairy tales involving some tribes who wandered the deserts of
the Middle East and saw and heard non-existent things because of sun
stroke, drinking bad water, and smoking local hallucinogenic plants,”
said Madsen in a December 2010 interview with the Veterans Today news
and analysis website.
The military-industrial complex never cares for the
morality or decency of the wars in which innocent people are massacred.
It simply cares for the dollars that are earned through waging wars. The
White House and Pentagon have also shown that they stride on the same
path and take action whenever there are chances for winning some
financial gains, even if the gain is insignificant and dispensable.
Nevertheless, even though the military-industrial
complex seems enormously powerful and prevailing, it’s not invincible.
The grassroots movements, the alternative media, progressive, anti-war
intellectuals, scholars, authors, journalists and conscious citizens can
resist the forces that are driving our world to more wars and
unrestricted bloodshed. As Laura Eisenhower, the great granddaughter of
the U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, noted in an interview with
“Exopolitics”, unity and consciousness can lead to the collapse of the
military industrial complex. So, even a member of the presidential
family tells us that what his great grandfather had warned against 53
years ago is not an unbreakable, undefeatable ghoul. It can be brought
down.
Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian Journalist, writer and media correspondent
www.KouroshZiabari.com
www.KouroshZiabari.com
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