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.
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