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 are 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 clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
The United States Military Industrial Complex has might. General and former President Eisenhower understood this. He warned Americans. Abundant might does not make right; it only advances the notion of righteousness. Patriotism is promoted through militarism. His words fell on deaf ears. The sound was hollow in contrast to the drone of drumbeats. At the time, Americans were as they are today; dedicated to the customs we think characterize democracy.
We see this in many a war and peace policy. Questions are asked of the government and the people. Testimony is taken. Think tanks assess Foreign Policy. Conclusions are drawn and decisions made. Still, in 2010, a few within the electorate wonder as General Eisenhower had.. With Al-Qaida Fading, Why Expand the Afghan War?
It is said, as individuals, we can achieve all we conceive, if only we truly believe. President Barack Obama once knew this. He lived this veracity. Indeed, candidate Obama's audacity and accomplishments gave Americans hope. When Barack Obama reached for the sky he realized what no one thought he could. The electorate was energized. People came to expect the country was in for a change. Now, it seems Mister Obama is bogged down by what Eisenhower understood, concerns of the Military Industrial Complex.
The intricacy of the Armed Forces mission does not confine itself to forceful martial escalation. Nothing escapes the wide reach of combative nation building. Lives are lost. Limbs crushed. With bullets ablaze, brains are battered or blown to smithereens. Hope suffers. Hearts are hurt.
Cross-posted at Daily Kos, Docudharma, MyDD, and FDL.
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In today's WaPo, Ike Skelton, Chair of the House Armed Forces Committee, teamed up with everyone's favorite former Democrat, Joe Lieberman, on an op-ed for more war in Afghanistan called Don't Settle for Stalemate in Afghanistan.
The president was right to call the war in Afghanistan "a war of necessity." Now it is time to treat it as such and commit the decisive force that will allow Gen. McChrystal to break the Taliban's momentum as quickly as possible.
And
Here at home, we must stabilize public support by convincing an increasingly skeptical American people that the Afghan war is in fact winnable.
. .
It comes as no surprise that Ike and Joe are in favor of treating our Armed Forces to more $#!t sandwiches and crap burgers in Afghanistan. Ike and Joe have been talking it up for quite a while.
Dennis Kucinich and Alan Greenspan haven't got a lot in common, but they agree that when it comes to the war in Iraq, "It's the oil, stupid," as Beltway bellower John McLaughlin put it on his show yesterday. McLaughlin aired a clip from the recent Democratic presidential debate in which Kucinich said:
Everyone knows that the war against Iraq was about oil. This administration is trying to gain control of Iraq's oil with the help of Congress...
Then, McLaughlin read a quote from Greenspan:
I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.
Yes, and I am saddened that we're sending Americans off to die so the rest of us can continue to live large.
McLaughlin noted that Iraq has some of the largest oil reserves in the world, an estimated 300 billion barrels, and that if Iraq's parliament passes the oil law drafted by the Bush administration, American companies will control 63 of Iraq's 80 known oil fields for the next thirty years.
On that day let us solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly, on the seas, in the air, and on foreign shores, to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.
Our current administration prefers to promote enduring access to cheap gas and billions of dollars in government contracts to well-connected cronies. And our heritage of freedom's been slaughtered on the altar of 9/11, turning us into a tortured--and torturing-- nation.
In the parting speech of his presidency, Eisenhower warned of "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power" from the military-industrial complex that's gotten us into our current fossil-fueled fiasco:
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