How we got into the mess
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
Bush
made a sacrifice. He stopped playing golf. It was a symbol of
sympathy with the troops in Iraq. He did not, however, stop playing
give video golf. For Bush to forgo other pleasures might require he
start another war.
How
did we get into this mess, ask millions who have grown sick of
un-winnable — and seemingly endless — wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
a sinking economy and rising deficit and debt? The government of the
richest nation in the world cannot find money in its annual budget to
cover costs of public education, health and physical infrastructure.
In addition, the Bush government, that demands “supports our
troops,” doesn’t provide adequate medical care for returning
veterans with serious physical and mental disabilities — as a result
of Bush’s wars.
The
current war on terrorism with the ubiquitous “Homeland Security”
agencies should not distract citizens from seeing common threads that
have woven a military culture and economy deeply into the core of US
society; a culture in which more than 50 million voted for Bush.
To
grasp the country’s present “mess,” however, requires a
backwards journey. In 1944, U.S. leaders had concluded the Allies
would win World War II. The Soviets had stopped the juggernaut of
Germany’s best forces in the battle of Stalingrad in 1942.
The
other war, in the Pacific, took its decisive turn at the Battle of
Midway. U.S. ships sank Japan’s mightiest war vessels. Policy
elites focused on how to build a peaceful post war world, one that
would never again witness the kind of carnage that began with
Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland.
To
prevent a repeat, U.S. leaders ordered war crimes trials for German
and Japanese officials. Those who would again launch aggressive
(preemptive) war as Hitler and Tojo did would find themselves before
a Tribunal facing the harshest penalties. Simultaneously, U.S. and
likeminded leaders throughout the world initiated a United Nations
organization to help prevent war and encourage international harmony.
The UN Charter made starting war legally very difficult (Article 51)
and enshrined human rights as universal and banned torture.
Soviet
leaders accepted the Nuremberg trials
and the
UN, but sneered at claims by U.S. leaders that they had demobilized.
Stalin
understood well — as did citizens of Japan — that behind noble
declarations stood a U.S. nuclear monopoly and a will to use them.
After
World War II, the foundations of The New Deal, which had helped
cushion tens of millions against the devastating Great depression,
eroded quickly. Social spending in the post war years evolved into
military spending.
The
1947 National Security Act created the CIA, a government apparatus
encased in secrecy. In 1948, the “demobilized” U.S. government
spent almost half its budget on military and international matters.
By 1952, more than 70% went to “defense” and related spending,
thanks to the Korean War and the erection of military bases
throughout Europe and the Pacific. Military spending grew under
Kennedy and throughout the 1960s. Lyndon Johnson tried to direct a
hefty percent of the budget toward his War on Poverty, but couldn’t
figure out how to leave Vietnam and thus reduce military
expenditures. By the late 1960s, the venerable counselors to power
accepted as a given what Eisenhower called the military-industrial
complex in his Farewell Address in 1961.
Forty
seven years later, Eisenhower must tremble in his proverbial grave.
The General — our Cassandra — warned modern Trojans about the
illusion created by the great military horse. Ike feared “This
conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms
industry is new in the American experience. The total influence —
economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every
statehouse, and every office of the federal government. We recognize
the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to
comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood
are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the
councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight
of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable
citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and
military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so
that security and liberty may prosper together.”
He
cut a phrase from the next to last speech draft, which referred to
the “military-industrial-congressional complex,” a more accurate
description of the syndrome. Congress, after all, initiates the
budget from which military-industrial-scientific proliferation
arises. Eisenhower’s conservative speech-writers, Ralph Williams and
Malcolm Moos, shared Ike’s concern about how military spending
would corrode U.S. values. As the General who oversaw Allied forces
in Western Europe, Eisenhower observed the folly and tragedy of
modern war as a means to achieve policy ends.
In
1954, he defied premature neo con Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles, who advocated dropping an atomic weapon on North Vietnam to
free the encircled French forces at Dien Bien Pho. In Europe, Ike had
observed modern war destroying civilians.
When
he learned of the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japanese cities,
Eisenhower commented:
“It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to
use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even
attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.” (Ike
on Ike,
Newsweek, 11/11/63) How absurd, Ike thought, to even consider
choosing to fight a land war in Asia. The public would not easily
tolerate sustained losses in such murky conflicts.
The
Vietnam scenario became a lesson book from which close advisers to
Bush refused to learn. A lesser equipped but far superior in numbers
army had fought a technologically superior U.S. force to a stand
still in Korea and Vietnam.
In
the ensuing decade, a new generation of hawks entered the power stage
in Washington. Johnson’s hawkish advisers kept assuring him more
troops, bombs and blood would force North Vietnam to the table on
U.S. terms. Johnson discovered, like Spanish film director Luis
Buñuel’s “Exterminating Angel,” in which the actors
found themselves unable to leave a house where they had gathered, he
could not leave Vietnam. He could not explain why.
A
similar infirmity grips Bush and the aspiring presidential candidates
as well. The three “possibles” have not shown the courage to
speak honestly on the issue and tell the public that the huge
military does not defend the country since no other nation will, in
the near future, attack it. With bases, factories or other components
of the military-scientific complex in almost every congressional
district, it is unlikely to see a groundswell to drastically reduce
the military budget. Indeed, some corporations that service the
military, with weapons or science, exert serious pressure to not
withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq and dismantle bases that have
become beyond obsolete.
The
“complex” Ike warned would eat away at the foundations of the
republic bears heavy responsibility for the current U.S. “mess.”
Governments of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq somehow
“provoked” U.S. leaders to launch un-winnable wars and in so
doing piss away future national treasure. Ike’s bête noire,
the military-industrial-congressional combination,
made
these bellicose efforts possible and simultaneously truth in politics
ever harder.
The
military, a kind of outcast sector, has become something to
celebrate. Not a professional sporting event passes without gushing
tributes to the military. The military floods the TV with bullshit
ads “being all you can be” and joining “a few good men.” Few
politicians dare to stand up and call the U.S. armed forces the
world’s biggest bunch of losers, not having won a war since 1945
while hyping themselves as invulnerable. The six figure income
members of the officer corps cavort in Alpine ski lodges. Poor
enlisted suckers get dead, wounded, and un-cared for on their return.
The institutionalized military — with hundreds of billions of
dollars paid to the industrial and science side of the complex — is
the root of the mess.
Saul
Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow and author of A
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD
and director of WE
DON’T PLAY GOLF HERE,
available on DVD from roundworldproductions@gmail.com
