-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 13, 2007 3:34:11 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Eisenhower and Osama: Same Enemy, Same Warning
Bin Laden is RIGHT:
The Unwarranted Influence of
America’s Global “Defense” Corporation
“There are times when you gotta stand up in church and shout
‘BULLSHIT!’”
--Ken Kesey
By Brian Bogart
9/12/07
http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=278
You know your country’s “democratic” leadership and rationale for
war are in trouble when the anointed most-evil enemy makes more
sense than they do.
Although for all we know Bin Laden’s “annual message to Americans”
originated below Dick Cheney’s office where Bin Laden is living in
luxury chained to a pool table, its contents ring with refreshing
logic relative to what usually passes for truth in and around the
White House.
Analyzing his message alongside bipartisan excuses for war —and
juxtaposed with President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower’s keep-an-eye-on-
the-defense-industry speech of January 1961— only Bin Laden’s words
and Eisenhower’s warnings stand up to current United States
Department of Defense statistics.
Outsourcing trends, hugely accelerated in the 1990s, have made the
Department of Defense the largest corporate entity in history. Few
big corporations in the world don’t have a handy cash-cow D
contract, and small businesses and schools are especially welcome
to apply. ($900 per toilet seat? Let’s sell those!)
DoD contracts get dished out everyday for everything from
children’s books, cosmetics, organic dinners, and movie theater
tickets to good old-fashioned nano weaponry.
Defense is the world’s top user of fossil fuels, contributor to
climate change, and most financially alluring industry. All
considered, the industry has the strongest lobby power in
Washington and everywhere else. Defense is also the world’s
foremost motivator of advanced science and technology, a global
network capable of an entirely new direction in economics—
dependent, of course, on whether it’s a good D policy or a bad D
policy.
That’s where We the People come in, at least according to President
Eisenhower, who particularly worried about our universities.
Said Ike: “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the
proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of
defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and
liberty may prosper together. 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. 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.”
Judging by DoD’s own stats, we’re way past that point. More than
1,100 colleges and universities have had prime contracts with the
Department of Defense in the last six years. Around 950 of those
are in the United States, with the rest spread across 33 countries.
Although the number of DoD general assistance contracts to schools
remained relatively constant between 2000 and 2006, the 900%
increase in defense-applied research contracts and total dollar
amounts awarded to schools during that period would’ve made Ike
toss his lunch on TV. The total number of defense-applied research
contracts to schools rose from 5,887 in 2000 to 52,667 in 2006.
Total dollars to schools rose from $4.4 billion in 2000 to $46.7
billion in 2006.
Hundreds of thousands of companies in at least 198 nations and
territories have held prime contracts with DoD in this century,
including companies in China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and
Syria.
There were none in Iraq until 2003.
DoD contract trends with companies are at all-time highs, with more
than 300,000 prime contractors in the United States alone (“prime”
doesn’t count subcontractors and contracted individuals), a 6,000
companies-per-state average. Between 2001 and 2006, the total
amount of defense dollars to companies in most states doubled. For
fiscal year 2001, companies in Texas received $9.5 billion. For
fiscal year 2006, the total was $27 billion.
Between the end of World War II and December 2006, US armed forces
served abroad in 159 instances. These operations increased in
frequency each decade, with 6 in the 1950s, 8 in the 1960s, 11 in
the 70s, 22 in the 80s, 66 in the 90s, and 44 so far this decade.
It doesn’t take a bright citizen to make the case that peace is a
healthy idea. But then there are politicians. With a bad policy,
presidential candidates who don’t promise to increase defense
spending have no legitimate chance in any party, thanks to big
media’s industrial role. Money runs campaigns on strong defense for
a reason: reelection. Defense is by far the largest job creator and
money spender in all fifty states.
The problem is the bad policy excessively gives businesses our
taxes to invest in their own financial growth. We pay for defense,
defense showers that money on schools and companies, and top
executives buy yachts and build stadiums. State and local leaders
then raise taxes to cover what taxes should cover: the people’s
health and prosperity.
Good folks put their faith, families, careers, and lives on the
line for what they’re told by government. They don’t have time to
investigate. Every September 11 our leadership bows its collective
head before reminding us to keep shopping in “the wealthiest
nation” while its infrastructure crumbles.
This year the enemy told us to think about that. With a graduate
program untangling defense statistics, Bin Laden has a point that
makes me wonder. Which “side” in this supposedly black and white
world has the most evil to hide? Why does this man sound more like
Ike than anyone in government?
It would better serve the people to hear Eisenhower’s speech every
year instead of hollow tales about a bad guy our leaders tell us to
fear yet, conveniently for their personal-wealth club, don’t see
fit to chase down. Exploiting September 11 for profit has (among
other things) legitimized the largest-ever expansion of the
military industry using a nation that had nothing to do with it.
That perpetuation does indeed smell like bipartisan imperialism.
Whether you’re a student or selling ice cream, teddy bears, tennis
balls or shovels and oil rigs, chances are you’re part of the
defense industry. And in this age of confrontation with Earth’s
definition of diversity, truly hard-working diverse Americans —
workers, students, parents, soldiers— are harnessed with a national
brand of business-friendly diversity that makes them equal low-
income slaves for an old-fashioned, wealthy white man’s profit
scheme. Ike called it unwarranted influence. Our founders called it
tyranny.
Diversity is an awareness of the human family returning to unity
after a long and tortuous journey, celebrating its products of
division while embracing its single origin and destiny. The next
logical step for humanity is a leap beyond human-centric diversity
to perceiving and promoting the human family as a fully responsible
component of biodiversity.
As Ike feared, economic dependence on defense growth by the
perpetuation of tensions since World War II explains the existence
and growth of nearly every problem we face today. Undoubtedly, he
would agree that economic dependence on defending Earth’s essential
diversity is a far more lucrative and lasting prospect.
Our taxes pay for a defense that doesn’t defend our future. Our
taxes go to companies that make profits we will never see. The real
threat President Eisenhower spoke of is a drug that poisons
society, spreads like a virus, and numbs the roots of
consciousness. The American dream has become a nightmare wherein
justice is irrelevant, and dishonest leaders both shun and cite
hard, courageous work.
The defense industry juggernaut is not a widespread corporate
conspiracy; it’s a bad-policy business trend running on inertia.
Instead of calling for contractors to give up profits, change the
policy, keep the network, and invest in a healthy planet.
But peace will not make money until it becomes the policy for
defense, and that won’t happen without a tax rebellion, general
strike, or similar surge in popular demand. (1,100 schools sounds
like a student movement network.) Until the day we have a good D,
the bad D pays our leaders. The people’s business is making that
day arrive, because lazy government won’t surrender without a
confrontation with the governed.
Meanwhile, “we must stop the terrorists in Iraq!” Terrorists,
communists, whatever. Business-wise, Vietnam never ends.
That’s where we are.
At a 1992 University of Oregon event discussing the American people
and their government, author Ken Kesey declared, “There are times
when you gotta stand up in church and shout ‘bullshit!’”
That’s what time it is.
————————–
Brian Bogart is a peace studies graduate student, diversity
scholar, and defense statistics analyst at the University of
Oregon. His thesis project follows the 60-year trend of acquiring
what President Dwight Eisenhower termed the “unwarranted influence”
of the defense industry by government. All sources at http://
www.strikeforpeace.org/
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