Military Industrial Complex

You want to think you live in a rational world, where people play by the rules and good triumphs over evil. But sometimes you have to wonder.

I just listened to the speech on a podcast called Great Speeches in History (available at learnoutloud.com). This was the speech Dwight D. Eisenhower gave 3 days before he left the Presidency. It's the famous one you may recognize where he warns about the power of the Military Industrial Complex. Listening to it made me realize there are scary parallels with Viet Nam & Iraq, and that much of what DDE warned against was accurate and prophetic.

He was talking about communism, how we were threatened by a “hostile ideology - global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.” This is when I started thinking about the parallels with today’s “War on Terror” that the Bush Administration has sprung on us. DDE goes on to say, “unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration.” This is what we are being told about terrorism, it’s going to be a long fight and it’s going to be here for a long time. We paint Muslims in general, not just fanatic fundamentalists, as somehow “godless”. We do not recognize or accept the fact that they think they are on god’s side in this struggle and that they think we are the ones who are godless.

The difference between the cold war and the war on terror is how it’s being waged. Eisenhower goes on to say that his success, while not “winning” the struggle against communism, was in not breaking out into a shooting war. It’s true that in that era they believed that war meant nuclear war and thus the clear, swift, and permanent destruction of both sides in the conflict. While the use of wide scale nuclear weapons is not at issue now, there are other parallels, like the sense of impending doom and threat of loss of life, liberty, and happiness. My point is that not being goaded into rash action is what ultimately won us the cold war. Going to war in Iraq cannot win for us the war on terror.

Eisenhower talked about how each crisis would provoke the “temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” What do you call the Iraq War, if not the costly solution to terror proposed by the Bush administration? Eisenhower said that we would be told these costly solutions would be the only way to solve our problems. Then he urged caution and balance, and a need to look at the broader considerations. That has been sorely lacking in this administration, and conservative rhetoric has asserted that to even try to see the point of the people we are in opposition to is treasonous.

Eisenhower sensed that powerful forces, once entrenched, would continue to try to bring about conflict, or scare society into thinking one was inevitable or imminent. This is how they would perpetuate themselves and continue to grow and prosper. Only through constant vigilance could we avoid this pitfall. If you buy the premise, you have to wonder if these forces, those that stand to profit from war are working toward war, and putting those sympathetic to war in power. Then you look at the current President, and his Vice President with ties to Halliburton - a company that has profited enormously from this war, and you have to wonder about cause and effect. You have to wonder about a President that is clearly going to “stay the course” despite the obvious failure of his policies, the growing opposition of the public, and the feeble efforts of Congress to finally provide some oversight and restraint.

“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. “

What about our liberties? Look at the Patriot Act, Warrantless wiretaps, data mining, the detention without trial of people accused of terrorism, the deportation of people to be tortured by other governments overseas, the shifting around of people in secret CIA prisons, the failure to clearly exclude torture from our national policy, and the quasi-legal justifications for maintaining the prison in Guantanamo. It has already happened. What about democratic processes? Look at the razor thin election margins in 2000 & 2004, the questionable electronic voting machines with no paper trail that are made by Diebold (a company that contributed heavily to the Bush reelection campaign), the recess appointments of judges and a UN Secretary General that cannot be confirmed by the Senate, and the removal of US Attorneys for a failure to pursue partisan political objectives in their selection of caseloads. What Eisenhower cautioned against has already happened.

Eisenhower goes on to say that the ultimate goal is to have all humans live in peace and have their freedoms and security not threatened by other nations, peoples, or hostile ideologies. His vision of the future was a world where we cared about what happened to everyone in the world and we strived to make life better for everyone in the world. Indeed, he called upon God and his religion as demanding this of him. I believe Eisenhower had it right. The way to “drain the swamp” of terrorism is to drain the world of its recruits. The way to do this is to make the world so equitable and just that no one sees any sense or benefit in struggling against anything. That’s the way out of this mess. That’s the way to win the war on terror and make the world a better place in the process. I’m not saying it would be easy or could be done quickly. Like the cold war, it would take time, but in the end, we would have a lasting peace we could be proud of.