Below is my article this weekend in Al Jazaerra on the powerful lobby and industry supporting our various conflicts abroad as well as counterterrorism efforts. I previously testified before Congress on this industry and the government’s inflation of counterterrorism numbers to justify huge domestic budgets at the Justice Department FBI, and other agencies. I wrote the article for the anniversary this month of Eisenhower’s famous Military-Industrial Complex speech.
In January 1961, US President Dwight D Eisenhower used his farewell address to warn the nation of what he viewed as one of its greatest threats: the military-industrial complex composed of military contractors and lobbyists perpetuating war.
Eisenhower warned that “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” had emerged as a hidden force in US politics and that Americans “must not fail to comprehend its grave implications”. The speech may have been Eisenhower’s most courageous and prophetic moment. Fifty years and some later, Americans find themselves in what seems like perpetual war. No sooner do we draw down on operations in Iraq than leaders demand an intervention in Libya or Syria or Iran. While perpetual war constitutes perpetual losses for families, and ever expanding budgets, it also represents perpetual profits for a new and larger complex of business and government interests.
The new military-industrial complex is fuelled by a conveniently ambiguous and unseen enemy: the terrorist. Former President George W Bush and his aides insisted on calling counter-terrorism efforts a “war”. This concerted effort by leaders like former Vice President Dick Cheney (himself the former CEO of defence-contractor Halliburton) was not some empty rhetorical exercise. Not only would a war maximise the inherent powers of the president, but it would maximise the budgets for military and homeland agencies.
This new coalition of companies, agencies, and lobbyists dwarfs the system known by Eisenhower when he warned Americans to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial complex”. Ironically, it has had some of its best days under President Barack Obama who has radically expanded drone attacks and claimed that he alone determines what a war is for the purposes of consulting Congress.
Investment in homeland security companies is expected to yield a 12 percent annual growth through 2013 – an astronomical return when compared to other parts of the tanking economy.
Good for economy?
While few politicians are willing to admit it, we don’t just endure wars we seem to need war – at least for some people. A study showed that roughly 75 percent of the fallen in these wars come from working class families. They do not need war. They pay the cost of the war. Eisenhower would likely be appalled by the size of the industrial and governmental workforce committed to war or counter-terrorism activities. Military and homeland budgets now support millions of people in an otherwise declining economy. Hundreds of billions of dollars flow each year from the public coffers to agencies and contractors who have an incentive to keep the country on a war-footing – and footing the bill for war.
Across the country, the war-based economy can be seen in an industry which includes everything from Homeland Security educational degrees to counter-terrorism consultants to private-run preferred traveller programmes for airport security gates. Recently, the “black budget” of secret intelligence programmes alone was estimated at $52.6bn for 2013. That is only the secret programmes, not the much larger intelligence and counterintelligence budgets. We now have 16 spy agencies that employ 107,035 employees. This is separate from the over one million people employed by the military and national security law enforcement agencies.
The core of this expanding complex is an axis of influence of corporations, lobbyists, and agencies that have created a massive, self-sustaining terror-based industry.
The contractors
In the last eight years, trillions of dollars have flowed to military and homeland security companies. When the administration starts a war like Libya, it is a windfall for companies who are given generous contracts to produce everything from replacement missiles to ready-to-eat meals.
In the first 10 days of the Libyan war alone, the administration spent roughly $550m. That figure includes about $340m for munitions – mostly cruise missiles that must be replaced. Not only did Democratic members of Congress offer post-hoc support for the Libyan attack, but they also proposed a permanent authorisation for presidents to attack targets deemed connected to terrorism – a perpetual war on terror. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offers an even steadier profit margin. According to Morgan Keegan, a wealth management and capital firm, investment in homeland security companies is expected to yield a 12 percent annual growth through 2013 – an astronomical return when compared to other parts of the tanking economy.
The lobbyists
There are thousands of lobbyists in Washington to guarantee the ever-expanding budgets for war and homeland security. One such example is former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff who pushed the purchase of the heavily criticised (and little tested) full-body scanners used in airports. When Chertoff was giving dozens of interviews to convince the public that the machines were needed to hold back the terror threat, many people were unaware that the manufacturer of the machine is a client of the Chertoff Group, his highly profitable security consulting agency. (Those hugely expensive machines were later scrapped after Rapiscan, the manufacturer, received the windfall.)
Lobbyists maintain pressure on politicians by framing every budget in “tough on terror” versus “soft on terror” terms. They have the perfect products to pitch – products that are designed to destroy themselves and be replaced in an ever-lasting war on terror.
The agencies
It is not just revolving doors that tie federal agencies to these lobbyists and companies. The war-based economy allows for military and homeland departments to be virtually untouchable. Environmental and social programmes are eliminated or curtailed by billions as war-related budgets continue to expand to meet “new threats”.
A massive counterterrorism system has been created employing tens of thousands of personnel with billions of dollars to search for domestic terrorists.
With the support of an army of lobbyists and companies, cabinet members like former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, are invincible in Washington. When citizens complained of watching their children groped by the TSA, Napolitano defiantly retorted that if people did not want their children groped, they should yield and use the unpopular full-body machines – the machines being sold by her predecessor, Chertoff.
It is not just the Defense and DHS departments that enjoy the war windfall. Take the Department of Justice (DOJ). A massive counterterrorism system has been created employing tens of thousands of personnel with billions of dollars to search for domestic terrorists. The problem has been a comparative shortage of actual terrorists to justify the size of this internal security system.
Accordingly, the DOJ has counted everything from simple immigration cases to credit card fraud as terror cases in a body count approach not seen since the Vietnam War. For example, the DOJ claimed to have busted a major terror-network as part of “Operation Cedar Sweep”, where Lebanese citizens were accused of sending money to terrorists. They were later forced to drop all charges against all 27 defendants as unsupportable. It turned out to be a bunch of simple head shops. Nevertheless, the new internal security system continues to grind on with expanding powers and budgets. A few years ago, the DOJ even changed the definition of terrorism to allow for an ever-widening number of cases to be considered “terror-related”.
Symbiotic relationship
Our economic war-dependence is matched by political war-dependence. Many members represent districts with contractors that supply homeland security needs and our on-going wars.
Even with polls showing that the majority of Americans are opposed to continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new military-industrial complex continues to easily muster the necessary support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It is a testament to the influence of this alliance that hundreds of billions are being spent in Afghanistan and Iraq while Congress is planning to cut billions from core social programmes, including a possible rollback on Medicare due to lack of money. None of that matters. It doesn’t even matter that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called the US the enemy and said he wishes that he had joined the Taliban. Even the documented billions stolen by government officials in Iraq and Afghanistan are treated as a mere cost of doing business.
It is what Eisenhower described as the “misplaced power” of the military-industrial complex – power that makes public opposition and even thousands of dead soldiers immaterial. War may be hell for some but it is heaven for others in a war-dependent economy.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and has testified in Congress on the massive counter-terrorism budgets and bureaucracy in the United States.
In honor of the great triumph by our forces fighting on the Malabar Front, the monthly ration of Victory Gin has been increased by 50 ml.
LONG LIVE BIG BROTHER
It is amazing that for over 50 years, one industry has continually done whatever it takes to maintain its stranglehold on Washington, DC. I submit that until we get rid of money in politics, we will have little or no hope in ending the control moneyed interests have on our legislators and presidents. Have we not learned anything since Eisenhower’s day?
rafflaw, There is only one way to take the money out of politics because that is what politics is really about; the money. The only way to take the money out of politics is to stop giving them our money to redistribute. Literally, a tax revolt is the only thing that can ever change this, just as our founders did. They can’t put everyone in jail. However, few American’s are principled enough to do this therefore, we are forever stuck with a corrupt system fascist system, unless it breaks down on it’s own accord, like the USSR did. A strong possibility.
The idea that you can have your cake and eat it to, is a fallacy, just like democracy or a democratic republic.
Like RW Nye, I am continually amazed that people believe our citizens must starve, go without healtcare, go homeless and have poor educations. Why do we accept the government’s refusal to invest in infrastructure repair or environmental cleanup? Why accept the refusal to invest in alternative energy, actions which would create high paying jobs for all? I truly do not understand.
At the moment the president and Congress insist we should cut food stamps, they simultaneously spent the $68,000 and the near $100,000 per missile to repay their political donors. (They were some of Obama’s leading donors. He is a Democrat. He is also the person ordering the missiles purchase and deployed.) Why are we accepting this use of our money? If there really is no money to pay for food stamps, how did those munitions get purchased? Did money fairies appear, but were only able to shower their bounty on political cronies?
How did that war in Libya get prosecuted? Where did the money come from? It’s not chump change. Why do we accept such incredible lies and horrible malfeasance in office?
I am 71 years old (I was born during the Second World War) and I don’t remember a time we were not at war (or some other Newspeak term) with somebody.
The basic deficit in the Eisenhower years was the fact that people would put buttons on their shirts that said: I Like Ike. Went in dumb, come out dumb too.
The only time period when America was smarter was in the anti war years of late sixties to mid seventies. Then America got senile again. A bunch of guys hijack some planes with box cutters. Now its trillions for defense and not one cent tribute. Not one cent tribute, billions in tribute to the likes of that caped schmuck in Afghanistan.
Chump chump bo bump, bannan fanna fo fump
fee fi mo mump. CHUMP!
You are dead on. However, it might be effective to keep chipping away at the effects of this mindless inclusion of might in what most Americans consider as right. Three million Vietnamese died in what has to be the greatest example of control over the American public by the military industrial complex. We are probably approaching a million in the present twelve year war against terrorism.
It might make a difference if these incursions, wars, or whatever one wishes to call them, were done in a competent manner. They would still be wars, but the US could have easily replaced Saddam Hussain with another general, just like Hussain replaced the previous leader. The US could have easily closed the airspace, surgically bombed the homes of the leaders, military installations, and palaces until one or a group of generals got the message. Hussain ruled through terror, not popularity. The end result would have been an intact Iraq, a viable counter balance to Iran, and perhaps admiration for a job intelligently done.
As it is America comes off as the dumbest but strongest kid in the playground. I have lived abroad for many years and it is always interesting to note that the average European gives more thought to what the US does than the average American. The average American will typically sneer that ‘That’s because we’re number one.’
Americans are xenophobic and the most powerful nation in the world. Leading up to the independence of India from Great Britain, the last big kid in the playground, the citizens of Great Britain were instrumental in forcing the government to change their attitude towards India after British workers met with Ghandi and understood that Indian cotton was being stolen from India, manufactured into clothing and forcibly sold back to the population in India, just so the British textile mills could make money. The British textile workers themselves, when they understood this, took the side of Ghandi and India.
When will Americans evolve to have the intelligence and morality like that. ‘We’re number one.’ and it lack of newspaper coverage of the effects of America’s ‘big stick’ is the root of the problem.
I can see the picture on the canvas, but I have to ask how many in society can get it, or make the connections to their life such that they would step up. (Not to mention how many may be benefit from the application as is.)
I would guess, as I am not an expert, that history would show that the size of this rock rolling down the path will not be diverted, much less stopped, in the absence of an influence from outside the norm in order to allow for an understanding that resistance is a valid, if not favored, choice, or the influence makes the complex obsolete. I can only imagine fanciful levels for such an event, but….
My hope is that the internet continues to provide an exchange of information at a level to which society has never been privy, thought I see the activities of the NSA, powered by the complex, seeks to maintain a dominance that would allow for a suppression of access, except by device beyond most. (Reversion to the status existing throughout history, which keeps awareness suppressed.)
My hope is that a Snowden like group develops on a surreptitious level to keep the communication free and advanced such that it creates an internal influence that precludes the need for an outside influence, since the trauma of an outside influence would necessarily be significant.
wow, try that on for size.
Amazing, that when our politicians call for cuts in spending, they’re targeting pensions and Social Security, food stamps and Head Start. It’s as if cutting back on military expenditures can’t even be discussed.
Correction: “ScanEagle drones are manufactured by Boeing – each unit costing close to $100,000…The Hellfire missile is manufactured by Lockheed Martin. Each missile costs $68,000.”
Also, financial and war contractors and media which has been coopted–please keep leaking! We need the truth!!!
Reblogged this on Dead Citizen's Rights Society.
The seeds of this mess were sown long before the Eisenhower Administration. What we see now is just the logical outcome of bad philosophy.
The large budget of the federal government allows this to happen, if we had a free economy the cost of war would come directly from the pockets of the citizens and not from some large communal pot of tax dollars ostensibly used for running the government. This hides from the citizenry the actual cost of war.
War destroys wealth, it does not create wealth. It may create it for a handful of individuals but really what it becomes is a transfer of wealth from the tax payer to the merchants of death. This is made possible by our government, just as the wealth of the middle class was transferred to Wall St., government is also facilitating the transfer of wealth from the citizens to defense contractors.
The average citizen has nothing to gain and much to lose by going to war, look at Europe post WWII and the destruction caused by that war. What did the average German gain? What is the average American gaining by these misadventures we have found ourselves in for the past 13 years?
“Statism—in fact and in principle—is nothing more than gang rule. A dictatorship is a gang devoted to looting the effort of the productive citizens of its own country. When a statist ruler exhausts his own country’s economy, he attacks his neighbors. It is his only means of postponing internal collapse and prolonging his rule. A country that violates the rights of its own citizens, will not respect the rights of its neighbors. Those who do not recognize individual rights, will not recognize the rights of nations: a nation is only a number of individuals.
Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.”
Ayn Rand
Well written. The government hides its expenditures and actions by palming them off to war/financial contractors. The elected govt., both Democrats and Republicans alike, then claim they are for “small” government. This claim is made, even as they spend literally trillions of dollars in contracts to private corporations for what used to be government services..
In the meantime, because the work is in the hands of private contractors there is little ability for the public to hold powerful, private entities accountable. Scahill pointed out that having military contractors replace the US army was a disaster because the contractors depended on war to make more money. Therefore, more war would always be inevitable.
While people starve and go without health care, Boeing received $68,000 and Lockheed Martin received $130,000 per munition just sent to Iraq. Is this in any way a sane allocation of our monetary resources? No. So what can be done?
The only people substantially within reach of redress by the people are elected representatives. If your guy or gal is involved in this crap, then no exceptions, vote them out of office. Then, it is necessary to replace elected officials with other people who are committed to the common social good. This means voting third party or being very careful about whom one votes for if they are a member of a major party. Do not buy into hype or propaganda, do research before you vote/support/cheer/donate.
Further, the job of a citizen does not either begin or end with voting. As a group, we have been willing to jettison our Constitution for supposed “safety” from terrorism and/or true belief in a political party leader. It is time to reclaim courage and refuse to yield our rights. Our rights are precious. We need free speech, we need the right of assembly, we need privacy. If we don’t value these things we are stupid and short sighted. We will not regain them from a govt. who is taking them away as we speak.
War of the prophets for profits….. He saw what the Dulles were doing….. Creating unrest in various countries and we just happen to have the appropriate response….. One of the reasons Cuba went communist…. So one would have sole control over the media….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Report_93-549
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act
Almost all wars have been a racket and central banking leads the way for building the military industrial complex that supply the wars. I believe that only our Revolutionary War was a just war and that all others were unjust, designed specifically to make those that control the military industrial complex wealthier. When you can lend money to companies that are guaranteed contracts to provide military hardware and supplies, and the taxpayers get the bill, a guaranteed payment, it is the ultimate no risk loan. Do you wonder why so many Wars are so popular with the ruling oligarchy and why they make up reasons or create reasons for engaging in them?
Severing the ties between banking and government policies, i.e. the military industrial complex for national defense, is very difficult to do. To many Politicians, Wall Street and banksters have their hand in the till. Every time someone pays an income tax, we are contributing to the delinquency of government and making the ruling oligarchy even wealthier.
From research I did, I found one consulting company that had 2,800 ongoing government contracts in place. The primary reason we give Foreign Aid to various counties is for them to in return, buy our hardware and supplies from the various military contractors.
If we could get rid of the military industrial complex, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world, it would forever change our world. How do you think guys like Putin, remain in power, even though he is the ultimate thug. One acquaintance from Russia I spoke to the other day, called him the leader of the Russian mafia.
There was a specific reason and this is it, why the founding fathers gave us the principles of a well regulated militias being necessary for the security of a free state. We have allowed our Constitution to be unlawfully abrogated, and we are today paying the price for it.
Great post JT.
If you go back to 1933 this all began with the Reichstag Fire when Goerring burned down the German Parliament building, the President, named von Hindenburg, blamed the Communists, issued the Reichstag Fire Decree and itShay ran downhill from there. Now, all I can say is that Goering was dead when the Twin Towers went down so we can not blame it on him or the Communists. Why wont my boomerang come back?
In the early 70’s. 3% of Congress members leaving office became lobbyist. Currently, 48% become lobbyist and the number has probably passed 50% as I write this. An incestuous, insular pig trough.
When I read some of Orwell’s 1984 book a few decades ago it was more fiction than fact to me with the underlying thought that: ‘things can’t get that nutty’. They have of course done just that.