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 not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

-Dwight D. Eisenhower, from a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953. 34th president of US 1953-1961 (1890 - 1969)

Nearly 60 years ago, when Republicans were of a different breed of politician, the president of the United States, the commander of the allied forces in Europe during World War II, knew the problems of an escalating hostility toward peace in a country that was just beginning to bristle with the armaments of a world-wide empire.

America had played the biggest role in winning the war against a formidable enemy and the arms and weapons industries were geared up for continued full-scale production, but with no more war to fight. Eisenhower, however, saw the energy of an entire people and the material wealth that had been expended and must have been somewhat alarmed, even in 1953, about the shortchanging that other aspects of the society were about to experience.

Seven years later, in his now-famous farewell speech, he warned about the “military-industrial complex,” but most who cite it forget that he also warned about what the budding complex was doing to another institution, higher learning. He said, “Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”

Since many of us have lived through the intervening years, we have seen first-hand the accuracy of his warning. The corporations involved in the military-industrial complex have not stopped developing new weapons and appear to have succeeded in convincing Congress and subsequent presidents that weapons systems and a mighty military should replace diplomacy and the State Department, which, in the minds of some, has become an arm of the same military-industrial complex.

Why would a free people living in a democracy allow their government to build up a Defense Department and weapons systems that effectively force social programs to wither and disappear? Mostly, it’s fear. And, since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it has been easy to instill fear in most Americans, even those who know the insidious nature of official propaganda. Even though there are no enemy states to threaten the U.S., it has been widely reported that U.S. defense and military spending is more than the other developed nations on Earth combined.

This ensures that we are not in much danger of attack from any country, but it is impoverishing a large percentage of the people. Now, the danger is from terrorist attack and the authorities have been expert at whipping up the fear of an imminent terrorist attack, which fear results in general support for military and defense buildups, even though it pours billions into the coffers of corporations in the military-industrial complex. Although it is difficult to protect a country as big as the United States from terrorist attacks, invading other countries is not the way to provide that protection.

The transfer of the American manufacturing and industrial sectors over the past four decades to dozens of other countries has deprived American workers of making the kind of living they thought had become standard and would never end. Incomes for the average wageworker that have been cut in half is a common problem and more and more people are coming to depend on government programs to survive. To feed the military and defense budgets, however, those programs are being slashed or eliminated.

It’s a little late, but Americans are beginning to question the amount of money that has been spent in waging war against Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, the claim by official Washington was that they would be short wars, and even that the Iraq invasion and war would be paid for with oil from the vast reserves in the country. The casualties on all sides were staggering, with thousands of Americans killed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, and a large proportion of American troops (more than 2 million served there) suffering from maiming wounds and post-traumatic stress disorder. That war cost will remain to be paid over the next 40 or 50 years.

Even though there was not a draft, that it was a volunteer army fighting in those two countries, the people did finally stir and began to question the cost of the wars in blood and treasure. What might be the solution to the problem of general opposition to U.S. military adventures in the future? How about fighting wars or war-like action by proxy, without troops being involved?

That problem is on the way to being solved. Waging constant war without troops can be done, up to a point, and the ever-innovative research into weaponry has come up with drones. Unmanned aircraft of various sizes and shapes that can stay in the air for a day, or so, can photograph or provide real-time observation of activity on the ground, and can unleash some of the most awesome firepower available to the U.S. arsenal. Drones have been used to kill many “militants” or “insurgents,” but unfortunately, there have been families and wedding parties and many other civilians killed using these weapons. And this has tended to make ordinary people on the ground angry, resentful, and hateful. Even though this method of warfare might get fewer Americans killed, it is far from clean and tidy warfare. The killing on the ground is just as bloody and destructive and, seemingly, there is no defense against the fire from the sky.

The Pentagon has 7,000 drones, up from about 50 that it had 10 years ago, according to The New York Times. This year, it has requested $5 billion for its drone program, indicating continued expansion of the program. Already, the military has about 4,500 smaller drones, many of which can be launched by hand and which may be used mainly for reconnaissance. For launching and landing of the drones, the U.S. needs bases and airstrips, some very simple, but there is no shortage of American bases around the world. Some observers have set the number of bases at more than 730.

Operators or pilots of the killer drones are in several bases in the Middle East, others are, or will be, located in various states across the country. What is an interesting twist in the job of killing people half a world away is that many of the drone “pilots” are showing signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome. In many cases, they have observed the people on the ground go about their daily lives for weeks or months. Then, one day, they have to kill them and it’s all done with instrumentation and a push of the button at the end of a joystick. For someone who makes the kill, then gets up from the computer console and goes home to dinner, it’s enough to make one sick. Drone warfare promises that there will be more of it.

That’s not all to the development of drones. There is a civilian application, as well. In a national security state, in which there is a rapid move to control the citizenry in every way possible, drones can be very helpful in law enforcement, as some citizens recently learned.

Last June, a sheriff investigating missing cattle in eastern North Dakota was forced off a 3,000-acre ranch by three men toting rifles, according to the Chicago Tribune. He left and later, requested help from one of the drones that are maintained by the Border Patrol in that region, according to the paper, “As the unmanned aircraft circled two miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare. But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.”

Even if the U.S. doesn’t want to engage in full-scale war with drones and other technology, there is always a civilian use to be found for military hardware. Most anyone could come up with dozens of ways that they could be used, and if that doesn’t chill the average citizens, we have more problems in the country than just a collapsing economy. In any event, the new ways of maintaining empire are bound to include drones and other means. It only takes money and, as President Eisenhower pointed out, every dollar that is spent on armaments and weapons systems, is a dollar taken away from a child’s nutrition, a child’s education, housing, health care, and myriad other things that make for a life.

Eisenhower, a Republican, could not have envisioned the depths to which his party could fall. In this primary campaign season, virtually all the candidates for his party’s nomination for president, to a person, seem ready to scuttle every government program that it is possible to eliminate or reduce to a shell, except for defense and the military. Democrats are a little better on this issue. The GOP is playing to peoples’ baser instincts, but it does not seem to be playing well. The people are beginning to understand, as the old warhorse knew, that you cannot run a country on brute strength and you cannot sit astride the nations of the world by use of the threat of invasion or some other kind of attack. And now, we have the drones.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.