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The general who led the Allies at D-Day used his farewell speech as a two-term president to decry "the military-industrial complex" (And deficit spending)
Yet on September 1st, in a statement that’s anything but out of the ordinary, the Daily Progress reported Charlottesville School Board Member Ned Michie’s objection to a resolution in support of events celebrating the International Day of Peace:
“I’m all in favor of peace and non-violence,” Michie said, “but, for instance… to the extent that any of the events are really sort of anti-war events, I’m not necessarily comfortable with supporting that.”
It’s a funny thing about peace and war: you really do have to choose between them. They don’t mix any better than freedom and slavery. You can’t favor peace without opposing war. In fact, you can’t support peace without opposing the machinery that makes wars likely. And that machinery is all over Charlottesville, where it provides many local residents with jobs.
Nonetheless, job creation is something else you can’t support without opposing what President Dwight Eisenhower 50 years ago warned of as the “military-industrial complex.”
How can that be? Let me explain.
Charlottesville is home to the National Ground Intelligence Center, now north of town but previously downtown in what became the SNL Financial building. The new location for NGIC also accommodates the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency and the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency. The University of Virginia has built a research park next door. There’s a Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center attached to UVA Law School as well. Then there’s the Virginia National Guard, which does tend to guard nations, just not this one.
Local want ads offer jobs “researching biological and chemical weapons” at Battelle Memorial Institute (located in the UVA Research Park) and producing all kinds of weaponry for all kinds of governments at Northrop Grumman. Then there’s Teksystems, Pragmatics, Wiser, and many others with fat Pentagon contracts.
Employers also recruit here for jobs in Northern Virginia with Concurrent Technologies Corporation, Ogsystems, the Defense Logistics Agency, BAE Systems, and many more. BAE, which often runs a green full-page ad in the Progress, paid a $400 million fine last year to the U.S. government to settle charges of having bribed Saudi Arabia to buy its weapons.
From 2000 to 2010, 161 military contractors in Charlottesville pulled in $919,914,918 through 2,737 contracts from the federal government. Over $8 million of that went to Mr. Jefferson’s university, and three-quarters of that to the Darden Business School. And the trend is ever upward.
The 161 contractors are found in various industries other than higher education, including: nautical system and instrument manufacturing; blind and shade manufacturing; printed circuit assembly; real estate appraisers; engineering services; recreational sports centers; research and development in biotechnology; new car dealers; internet publishing; petroleum merchant wholesalers; and a 2006 contract with Pig Daddy’s BBQ.
Back in March, the New Yorker magazine noted that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, “invited interested literary theorists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, and related “ists” to the Boar’s Head Inn … to answer a question frequently posed to junior-high-school students: ‘What is a story?’”
DARPA is the same agency that has moved on from mechanical killer elephants and telepathic warfare to exploding frisbees, cyborg wasps, and Captain America no-meals and no-sleep soldiers. The DIA, also in on this side of “intelligence” work, used to train “psychic spies” (men who’d stare at goats if they could find one) at a place in Nelson County called the Monroe Institute.
Jobs, jobs, military jobs everywhere you look. And yet, every billion dollars our government spends on the military produces (directly and indirectly) fewer jobs, and lower paying jobs than would the same billion dollars invested in a number of other industries or even in tax cuts for working people. Redirecting a fraction of our military spending to education, green energy, healthcare, and tax cuts would create a job for every unemployed or underemployed person in this country (29 million of them) as well as for those losing war industry jobs during this conversion. Such a shift would leave the military with more funding than it had 10 years ago.
Do we have a debt problem? An unemployment problem? Or just a war problem?
U.S. military spending across numerous departments has increased dramatically during the past decade and now makes up about half of federal discretionary spending. Yet the Defense Department has not been fully audited in 20 years, and as of 2001 it could not account for $2.3 trillion out of the $10 trillion or so it had been given during that time. The United States could reduce its military spending by at least 80 percent and still be the world’s top military spender.
A move away from the military industrial complex would also reduce warfare. Our country is right now fighting drone wars that create enemies by killing innocents, in large part because the Central Intelligence Agency created a bureaucracy for drone wars and wants to use it. Experts from around the country and within the military will gather in Charlottesville from September 16 to 18 to chart a different course, one that supports peace even if it means opposing war. Any member of the public can sign up to attend at MIC50.org.
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David Swanson is helping to organize the MIC50 conference in Charlottesville. His previous essay in the Hook was a 2008 look at the hazards of voting machines, and his latest book is “War Is A Lie.”
10 Comments
But David in our Orwellian nightmare War is Peace and Slavery is Freedom. Anyone who opposes War is the cause of War and distruction.
Progressives hate war. But not as much as they hate Ron Paul. Americans in general are not happy about their reduced circumstances and prospects but they have not yet learned to question Imperialism.
American military aggression will continue until the Empire is exhausted. Even if the public were consulted the wars would continue because the false left/right thinking will not allow either side to make peace.
Anybody remember Dennis Kucinich and his Department of Peace? What a silly idea.
Pig Daddy’s BBQ is really going to like this as they can be on contract serving pork to the SEALS appearing in films:
“The Pentagon’s strengthening grip on Hollywood” (by David Sirota, posted Sept. 5, 2011)
I wonder how many films already in the can have already been done this way? Did Judy Judy Judy (Jane Hamsher, Mar. 11, 2006) supply some of the film footage? The question also arises as to whether DHS participated in this scheme over the last ten years. With the way an dhow fast Senator Lieberman’s hearing (Kevin Gosztola, Sept. 7, 2011) came and went, there’s no way any such question would have been brought up. You know it’s a full time job blurring fact with fantasy.
wayoutwest is right War is peace and slavery is freedom are part of our Orwellian vocabulary.
Working class is right that many progressives have not yet learned to question imperialism, but I see evidence of many beginning to question imperialism and capitalism today. As for Ron Paul, yes he is right in regard to his stance on war BUT he is so wrong on so many other issues that he cancels himself out for me.
I learned my lesson about the fake two party system in 2006 when we elected a Democratic majority in BOTH houses on a clear mandate to end the war in Iraq and bring ALL troops home no later than the end of DEC 2008. And what did they do instead? They continued to rubber stamp everyone of Bush’s requests for unfunded military appropriations AND instead of bringing the troops home, they voted to send 100,000 more over there.
That was when I fully realized what a farce and lie the two-party system is.
We have the rule of the millionaire, by the millionaire and for the millionaire and party as Democrat or Republican is irrelevant because there is close to zero degree of separation between the two parties on any issue–domestic or foreign.
Can we love both war & peace….sounds like something Obama will embrace with wholeheartedly.
Remember he,Obama, is both Democrat & Republican in the same minute.
While I’m pretty skeptical that redirecting a fraction of America’s obscene military budget to more economically productive uses- like hiring people to dig holes and fill them back in- would create 28 million jobs, it’s certainly worth trying.
Here’s how:
http://davidswanson.org/node/3389
OK, read it. Seems plausible but I’m in no position to critique the maths. That we can do far better than wasting money on wars and military spending is just common sense though.
People on the left commit a big mistake by making war and peace all or nothing questions. Take the average American and ask them if we should abolish the Armed Forces, they’ll look at you like you’re crazy. (And rightfully so.)
We must distinguish between having a military that is adequate for our defense and a military that is a budget-busting, economy-destroying tool of imperialism. We must be able to distinguish between wars that are just and necessary versus wars of aggression, imperialism, or just outright stupidity.
Reminders to all:
- This country was created by a WAR.
- Slavery was abolished by a WAR. (Anybody who wants to argue that the South would have eventually given up slavery without a war, first ask yourself why a number of southern states are STILL under the jurisdiction of the Voting Rights Act. Racism endures to this day. You think illegal immigrants have it bad, but you think the South would ever have willingly given up slavery? Hell, we didn’t get the military integrated until 1948.)
- Without our efforts in WWII, we’d all be speaking German or Japanese by now. (And there wouldn’t be any Jews left, anywhere on the face of the earth.)
Check out “Congresswoman Lee Introduces Bill to Repeal AUMF” (by David Swanson, Sept. 6, 2011) plus all comments then this. How do you propose to address this situation?