By Dave Wheelock
“The statesman who yields to war fever is no longer the master of policy but the slave to unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”
– Winston Churchill
“In the world we have entered the only path to safety is the path to action.”
– George W. Bush
As U.S. citizens labor to get their 2009 tax returns finished and posted by the April 15 deadline, solutions to the most pressing dilemmas of our economically crippled society are largely drowned out in corporate media by the Republic mantra of small government and (since their fall) limited spending.
Meanwhile the proposed spending freeze advertised by the Administration of Change is carefully phrased as "non-security discretionary spending," allowing a call for roughly the same amount of military expenditures as the rest of the world’s nations combined. In the United States, military expenditures equal about 50% of all federal discretionary spending. At around $741.2 billion, the defense appropriations bill poised for passage next fall provides for more military spending than in any single year since World War II.
For those of you keeping score at home that’s about $2,400 for each man, woman, or child.
Setting aside wearisome ideological battles over the proper role of government in society, a lunar visitor would surely be amazed at how rarely the connection is made between stretched budgets and our bloated military spending.
The American devotion to war (the term “defense spending” fails to adequately describe where our tax dollars go) is deeply ingrained, far beyond the level of need. The recent nuclear reduction treaty agreed to by the U.S. and Russian governments calls for a cut in the number of missiles stockpiled by each nation during the Cold War. If ratified the treaty would leave each country with a paltry supply of 1,500 warheads to defend itself against the other. What ever became of the so-called Peace Dividend promised by Ronald Reagan’s claimed victory over the Soviet Union?
According to non-profit economics publisher Dollars and Sense, each $1 billion spent by the Pentagon produces about 11,600 military jobs, while the same amount invested in an urgently-needed new clean energy sector would net 17,000. $1 billion applied to health care would equal 20,000 jobs, and the same amount put to use in public education, 29,000.
Many readers are aware of the prescient warning contained in the 1960 farewell speech of President and former 5-star general Dwight Eisenhower. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”
Sadly, Ike was right, and we didn’t listen. Rather than directing the nation’s wealth toward yawning crises at home, we are on course to continue squandering our collective future on the fortunes of war.
The National Security Council report handed President Truman in 1950, dubbed NSC-68, defined the threat of Soviet communism in terms starkly apocalyptic for a government document. “With the development of increasingly terrifying weapons of mass destruction, every individual faces the ever-present possibility of annihilation should the conflict enter the phase of total war.” Among NSC-68’s more clairvoyant prescriptions: “A large measure of sacrifice and discipline will be demanded of the American people. They will be asked to give up some of the benefits which they have come to associate with their freedoms.” With Truman’s signature on the document, the well-known power of fear to captivate a population was renewed as official (though classified) policy.
Presidents ever since have found it that much easier to govern. When insistence on social or economic justice gets uncomfortable at home, there are always plenty of trouble spots in the world where national attention can be shifted (sans Africa). This course has the added benefit of serving the insatiable demands of the military-industrial complex - a subject seemingly immune to the prying eyes and ears of American journalism.
The latest version of this tragic strategy is the Quadrennial Defense Review of 2006, which declared future wars will be against those “who seek to destroy our free way of life.” The so-called “Long War” of the Pentagon “may well be fought in dozens of countries simultaneously and for many years to come.” We’d best pack a lunch.
PhilosopherReinhold Niebuhr, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, wrote “To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in the effort to prove that they are indestructible.” A country’s embrace of false exceptionalism cannot end well.
Dave Wheelock, a member of the Oneida Nation, holds a history degree from the University of New Mexico. Reach him at davewheelock@yahoo.com. Mr. Wheelock's views do not necessarily represent those of the Mountain Mail.
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