Op 1 december jl, plaatste JP Sotille een artikel over het militair-industrieel complex (MIC) op Consortiumnews (CN), een artikel dat Anti-Media op 3 december publiceerde. In dit artikel legt Sotille uit hoe het kan, dat de VS de ene (illegale) oorlog na de andere begint, terwijl een groot deel van het volk oorlogsmoe is....... Niet alleen het angstzaaien voor figuren als de Noord-Koreaanse dictator Kim Yung-un, maar ook ronduit oorlogshitsen door lobbyisten van het militair-industrieel complex, zijn de oorzaak voor het belachelijke budget dat de VS jaarlijks uittrekt voor 'defensie' (lees: oorlogsvoering).....
Niet alleen het MIC lobbyt voor het opschroeven van het oorlogsbudget, maar ook politici als gouverneurs doen dat, daar het MIC voor werkgelegenheid zorgt...... Nog naast de vele politici die persoonlijk, of van wie familieleden/vrienden voordeel hebben bij een op volle toeren draaiend MIC........
Verder wijst Sotille op het feit, dat er naast het officiële budget voor 'defensie,' enorme kapitalen gaan naar zaken die alles met het militair-industrieel complex te maken hebben, maar buiten dit budget worden gehouden...... (dit gebeurd overigens ook in Nederland.....)
Lees het gedegen en ontluisterende artikel van Sotille, over een vereniging van terreurstaten, die de weg totaal kwijt is en grote terreur uitoefent over een deel van de wereld, waar ze niets, maar dan ook helemaal niets te zoeken hebben:
The Truth About America’s Military-Industrial Complex Addiction
December
3, 2017 at 10:11 am
Written
by JP
Sottile
Polls show that Americans are tired of endless wars in faraway lands, but many cheer President Trump’s showering money on the Pentagon and its contractors, a paradox that President Eisenhower foresaw.
(CN) — The
Military-Industrial Complex has loomed over America ever since
President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of its growing influence during
his prescient farewell
address on
Jan. 17, 1961. The Vietnam War followed shortly thereafter, and its
bloody consequences cemented the image of the Military-Industrial
Complex (MIC) as a faceless cadre of profit-seeking warmongers who’ve
wrested control of the foreign policy. That was certainly borne out
by the war’s utter senselessness … and by tales
of profiteering by
well-connected contractors like Brown
& Root.
President
Dwight Eisenhower delivering his farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961.
Over
five decades, four major wars and a dozen-odd interventions later, we
often talk about the Military-Industrial Complex as if we’re
referring to a nefarious, flag-draped Death Star floating just beyond
the reach of helpless Americans who’d generally prefer that war was
not, as the great Gen.
Smedley Darlington Butler aptly
put it, little more than a money-making
“racket.”
The
feeling of powerlessness that the MIC engenders in “average
Americans” makes a lot of sense if you just follow the money coming
out of Capitol Hill. The Project on Government Oversight
(POGO) tabulated all
“defense-related spending” for both 2017 and 2018, and it hit
nearly $1.1 trillion for each of the two years. The “defense-related”
part is important because the annual National
Defense Authorization Act,
a.k.a. the defense budget, doesn’t fully account for all the
various forms of national security spending that gets peppered around
a half-dozen agencies.
It’s
a phenomenon that noted Pentagon watchdog William
Hartung has
tracked for years. He recently
dissected it
into “no less than 10 categories of national security spending.”
Amazingly only one of those is the actual Pentagon budget. The others
include spending on wars, on homeland security, on military aid, on
intelligence, on nukes, on recruitment, on veterans, on interest
payments and on “other defense” — which includes “a number of
flows of defense-related funding that go to agencies other than the
Pentagon.”
Perhaps
most amazingly, Hartung noted
in TomDisptach that
the inflation-adjusted “base” defense budgets of the last couple
years is “higher than
at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s massive buildup of the
1980s and is now nearing the post-World War II funding peak.” And
that’s just the “base” budget, meaning the roughly $600 billion
“defense-only” portion of the overall package. Like POGO, Hartung
puts an annual price tag of nearly $1.1 trillion on the whole
enchilada of military-related spending.
The MIC’s ‘Swamp Creatures’
To
secure their share of this grandiloquent banquet,
the defense industry’s lobbyists stampede Capitol Hill like
well-heeled wildebeest, each jockeying for a plum position at the
trough. This year, a robust collection of 208 defense companies spent
$93,937,493 to deploy 728 “reported” lobbyists (apparently some
go unreported) to feed this year’s trumped-up, $700
billion defense-only
budget, according
to OpenSecrets.org.
Last year they spent $128,845,198 to
secure their profitable pieces of the government pie.
And
this reliable yearly harvest, along with the revolving doors
connecting defense contractors with Capitol Hill, K Street and the
Pentagon, is why so many critics blame the masters of war behind the
MIC for turning war into a cash machine.
But
the cash machine is not confined to the Beltway. There are ATM
branches around the country. Much in the way it lavishes Congress
with lobbying largesse, the defense industry works hand-in-glove with
the Pentagon to spread the appropriations around the nation. This
“spread the wealth” strategy may be equally as important as the
“inside the Beltway” lobbying that garners so much of our
attention and disdain.
Just
go to U.S. Department of Defense’s contract announcement webpage on
any weekday to get a good sense of the “contracts valued at $7
million or more” that are “announced each business day at 5 p.m.”
A recent survey of these “awards” found the usual suspects like
Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. The MIC was
well-represented. But many millions of dollars were also “won” by
companies most Americans have never heard of … like this sampling
from one
day at
the end of October:
- Longbow LLC, Orlando Florida, got $183,474,414 for radar electronic units with the stipulation that work will be performed in Orlando, Florida.
- Gradkell Systems Inc., Huntsville, Alabama, got $75,000,000 for systems operations and maintenance at Fort Belvoir, Virginia
- Dawson Federal Inc., San Antonio, Texas; and A&H-Ambica JV LLC, Livonia, Michigan; and Frontier Services Inc., Kansas City, Missouri, will share a $45,000,000 for repair and alternations for land ports of entry in North Dakota and Minnesota.
- TRAX International Corp., Las Vegas, Nevada, got a $9,203,652 contract modification for non-personal test support services that will be performed in Yuma, Arizona, and Fort Greely, Alaska,
- Railroad Construction Co. Inc., Paterson, New Jersey, got a $9,344,963 contract modification for base operations support services to be performed in Colts Neck, New Jersey.
- Belleville Shoe Co., Belleville, Illinois, got $63,973,889 for hot-weather combat boots that will be made in Illinois.
- American Apparel Inc., Selma, Alabama, got $48,411,186 for combat utility uniforms that will be made in Alabama.
- National Industries for the Blind, Alexandria, Virginia, got a $12,884,595 contract modification to make and advanced combat helmet pad suspension system. The “locations of performance” are Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
The
Pentagon, headquarters of the U.S. Defense Department, as viewed with
the Potomac River and Washington, D.C., in the background. (Defense
Department photo)
Sharing the Largesse
Clearly,
the DoD* is large enough, and smart enough, to award contracts to
companies throughout the 50 states. Yes, it is a function of the
sheer size or, more forebodingly, the utter “pervasiveness” of
the military in American life. But it is also a strategy. And it’s
a tactic readily apparent in a contract recently
awarded to
Raytheon.
On
Oct. 31, 2017, they got a $29,455,672 contract modification for
missions systems equipment; computing environment hardware; and
software research, test and development. The modification stipulates
that the work will spread around the country to “Portsmouth, Rhode
Island (46 percent); Tewksbury, Massachusetts (36 percent); Marlboro,
Massachusetts (6 percent); Port Hueneme, California (5 percent); San
Diego, California (4 percent); and Bath, Maine (3 percent).”
Frankly,
it’s a brilliant move that began in the Cold War. The more
Congressional districts that got defense dollars, the more votes the
defense budget was likely to receive on Capitol Hill. Over time, it
evolved into its own underlying rationale for the budget.
As
veteran journalist William Greider wrote in
the Aug. 16, 1984 issue of Rolling Stone, “The entire political
system, including liberals as well as conservatives, is held hostage
by the politics of defense spending. Even the most well intentioned
are captive to it. And this is a fundamental reason why the Pentagon
budget is irrationally bloated and why America is mobilizing for war
in a time of peace.”
The
peace-time mobilization Greider referred to was the Reagan build-up
that, as William Hartung noted, is currently being surpassed by
America’s “War on Terror” binge. Then, as now … the US was at
peace at home, meddling around the world and running up a huge bill
in the process. And then, as now … the spending seems unstoppable.
And
as an unnamed “arms-control lobbyist” told Grieder, “It’s a
fact of life. I don’t see how you can ask members of Congress to
vote against their own districts. If I were a member of Congress, I
might vote that way, too.”
Essentially,
members of Congress act as secondary lobbyists for the defense
industry by making sure their constituents have a vested interest in
seeing the defense budget is both robust and untouchable.
But
they are not alone. Because the states also reap what the Pentagon
sows … and, in the wake of the massive post-9/11 splurge, they’ve
begun quantifying the impact of defense spending on their economies.
It helps them make their specific case for keeping the spigot open.
Enter
the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), which notes,
or touts, that the Department of Defense (DoD) “operates more than
420 military installations in the 50 states, the District of
Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico.” Additionally, the NCSL
is understandably
impressed by
a DoD
analysis that
found the department’s “$408 billion on payroll and contracts in
Fiscal Year 2015” translated into “approximately 2.3 percent of
U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).”
And
they’ve become a clearinghouse for state governments’ economic
impact studies of defense spending. Here’s a sampling of recent
data compiled on the NSCL
website:
- In 2015, for example, military installations in North Carolina supported 578,000 jobs, $34 billion in personal income and $66 billion in gross state product. This amounts to roughly 10 percent of the state’s overall economy.
- In 2014, Colorado lawmakers appropriated $300,000 in state funds to examine the comprehensive value of military activities across the state’s seven major installations. The state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs released its study in May 2015, reporting a total economic impact of $27 billion.
- Kentucky has also taken steps to measure military activity, releasing its fifth study in June 2016. The military spent approximately $12 billion in Kentucky during 2014-15. With 38,700 active duty and civilian employees, military employment exceeds the next largest state employer by more than 21,000 jobs.
- In Michigan, for example, defense spending in Fiscal Year 2014 supported 105,000 jobs, added more than $9 billion in gross state product and created nearly $10 billion in personal income. A 2016 study sponsored by the Michigan Defense Center presents a statewide strategy to preserve Army and Air National Guard facilities following a future Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round as well as to attract new missions.
President
Trump speaking at a Cabinet meeting on Nov. 1, 2017, with Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson to Trump’s right and son-in-law Jared
Kushner seated in the background.
Electoral Impact
But
that’s not all. According to the DoD study cited above, the biggest
recipients of DoD dollars are (in order): Virginia, California,
Texas, Maryland and Florida. And among the top 18 host states for
military bases, electorally important states like California, Florida
and Texas lead
the nation.
And
that’s the real rub … this has an electoral impact. Because the
constituency for defense spending isn’t just the 1 percent percent
of Americans who actively serve in the military or 7 percent of
Americans who’ve served sometime in their lives, but it is also the
millions of Americans who directly or indirectly make a living off of
the “defense-related” largesse that passes through the Pentagon
like grass through a goose.
It’s
a dirty little secret that Donald Trump exploited throughout the 2016
presidential campaign.
Somehow,
he was able to criticize wasting money on foreign wars and the
neoconservative interventionism of the Bushes, the neoliberal
interventionism of Hillary Clinton, and, at the same time, moan
endlessly about the “depleted” military despite “years
of record-high spending.”
He went on to promise a massive increase in the defense budget, a
massive increase in naval construction and a huge nuclear arsenal.
And,
much to the approval of many Americans, he’s delivered. A Morning
Consult/Politico poll showed
increased defense spending was the most popular among a variety of
spending priorities presented to voters … even as voters express
trepidation about the coming of another war. A pair of NBC
News/Survey Monkey polls found that 76
percent of Americans are
“worried” the United States “will become engaged in a major war
in the next four years” and only
25 percent want
America to become “more active” in world affairs.
More
to the point, only 20
percent of Americans wanted
to increase the troop level in Afghanistan after Trump’s
stay-the-course speech in August, but Gallup’s
three decade-long tracking poll found
that the belief the U.S. spends “too little” on defense is at its
highest point (37 percent) since it spiked after 9/11 (41 percent).
The previous highpoint was 51
percent in 1981 when
Ronald Reagan was elected in no small part on the promise of a major
build-up.
So,
if Americans generally don’t support wars or engagement in the
world, why do they seem to reflexively support massive military
budgets?
Frankly,
look no further than Trump’s mantra of “jobs,
jobs, jobs.”
He says it when he lords over the sale
of weapon systems to
foreign powers or he visits
a naval shipyard or
goes to one of his post-election rallies to proclaim to
“We’re building up our military like never before.” Frankly,
he’s giving the people what they want. Although they may be
war-weary, they’ve not tired of the dispersal system that Greider
wrote about during Reagan’s big spree.
Ultimately,
it means that the dreaded Military-Industrial Complex isn’t just a
shadowy cabal manipulating policies against the will of the American
people. Nor is the “racket” exclusive to an elite group of Deep
State swamp things. Instead, the military and the vast economic
network it feeds presents a far more “complex” issue that
involves millions of self-interested Americans in much the way
Eisenhower predicted, but few are willing to truly forsake.
* DoD: United States Department of Defense (ministerie van 'Defensie')
JP
Sottile is a freelance journalist, radio co-host, documentary
filmmaker and former broadcast news producer in Washington, D.C. He
blogs at Newsvandal.com or
you can follow him on Twitter.
Op-ed
by JP Sottile / Republished with permission / Consortium
News
==================================================
PS: het is ronduit een schandaal dat de reguliere westerse (massa-) media en het grootste deel van de westerse politiek buiten de VS, zo onbeschaamd durven te stellen dat de andere NAVO landen, zoals de VS meer moeten uitgeven aan defensie, terwijl zij dondersgoed weten, dat de VS zoveel uitgeeft aan defensie om haar belangen wereldwijd veilig te stellen. Het is als het pleiten voor enorme defensie uitgaven t.b.v. het koloniseren van landen die niet tot het westen behoren.......... Waarbij je niet moet vergeten, dat de grootste EU landen, Frankrijk, Groot--Brittannië, Frankrijk, Duitsland en Italië al 3 keer meer uitgeven aan 'defensie' dan Rusland, dat volkomen onterecht als de grote agressor wordt voorgesteld....... Terwijl niet Rusland maar de VS alleen deze eeuw al 4 illegale oorlogen is begonnen en verantwoordelijk is voor de moord op meer dan 2 miljoen mensen......
PS: het is ronduit een schandaal dat de reguliere westerse (massa-) media en het grootste deel van de westerse politiek buiten de VS, zo onbeschaamd durven te stellen dat de andere NAVO landen, zoals de VS meer moeten uitgeven aan defensie, terwijl zij dondersgoed weten, dat de VS zoveel uitgeeft aan defensie om haar belangen wereldwijd veilig te stellen. Het is als het pleiten voor enorme defensie uitgaven t.b.v. het koloniseren van landen die niet tot het westen behoren.......... Waarbij je niet moet vergeten, dat de grootste EU landen, Frankrijk, Groot--Brittannië, Frankrijk, Duitsland en Italië al 3 keer meer uitgeven aan 'defensie' dan Rusland, dat volkomen onterecht als de grote agressor wordt voorgesteld....... Terwijl niet Rusland maar de VS alleen deze eeuw al 4 illegale oorlogen is begonnen en verantwoordelijk is voor de moord op meer dan 2 miljoen mensen......
