Category: Eisenhower’s Epiphany

Eisenhower’s Epiphany 3/6

Though Americans haven’t noticed yet, their recent massive arms sales to Taiwan are the equivalent of the Chinese doing the same thing in Puerto Rico. And the four-allies naval maneuvers in the East China Sea is the equivalent of the Chinese navy careening around the Caribbean.

Part 3 of the 6-part series, It’s Getting Late, America

.

Don’t Pretend You Weren’t Warned

Outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower, in his last public address from the White House warned the country at large of the looming threat of America’s increasingly powerful military-industrial complex. In his televised farewell speech to the nation on January 17, 1961, Eisenhower chose to bypass Congress and take his clearly-stated, emphatic message directly to the American people. (See video of the relevant parts of the speech.)

Just as he prophesied, the military industrial complex has become an insoluble problem, controlling both ends of the military supply chain with major influence in American foreign policy, especially after signing on a critical third partner, the United States Congress. They achieved that master stroke the way everything else is accomplished in Washington: cash on the barrel head. They weren’t short of cash and they already had a small army of lobbyists in place. It occurred to one of them that the members of congress might appreciate some help with campaign financing. That was a dam-busting realization.

The lobbyists soon discovered that they could win over politicians as unconditional allies simply by replenishing their re-election war chests, until then a perennial problem for legislators. All the very patriotic creators of America’s weapons of destruction and domination had to do was to toss the odd six-figure bone to the greedy lawmakers. The legality of this clear conflict-of-interest procedure had already been ironed out by the 2010 landmark Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United v FE case that liberalized campaign financing by corporations.

The bottom line is that big business then had the tools, money, and the necessary cynicism to control Congress and the foreign policy cabal at will. The process of selling ever-more-exotic and expensive arms systems became automatic. Big-bucks customers, driven by little-boy fascination for wind-up toys and the desire to humiliate their friends and neighbors, kept coming back for more. The existential danger this conveyor-belt process supposes for the entire world became a secondary issue. The scenario can get surreal. Though Americans haven’t noticed yet, their recent massive arms sales to Taiwan are the equivalent of the Chinese doing the same thing in Puerto Rico. And the four-allies naval maneuvers in the East China Sea is the equivalent of the Chinese navy careening around the Caribbean. Why isn’t President Joe Biden aware of these unsettling realities? Aware? President Biden is a six-times-reelected, 36-year veteran of the United States Senate. He must be aware. The question is: does he realize how dangerous such gratuitous provocation can be?

The Long Tail of Responsibilities

Are we talking about war here? No, though the Americans have killed millions of people, both soldiers and civilians, around the world since the Second World War, the United States has not been in a legal war since 1945. As a consequence they have not respected the rules of war for three quarters of a century, a fact with a long tail of responsibilities under international law. What they have engaged in incessantly are counter-insurgency operations; regime-change interventions, anti-communist crusades; colonial-support ops; insertions of like-minded dictators; resource grabs; military takeovers; false-flag operations; proxy campaigns; POW captures and imprisonment sine die; and countless other lethal follies denominated by euphemisms.

President George W. Bush, his administration, and his allies (Tony Blair, José María Aznar), for example, should have been prosecuted by an international court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in carrying out their October 7, 2001, “Operation Enduring Freedom,” in Iraq. A nice irony that name. It must have prompted a lot of snickers around the table. Or perhaps not. That sort of cynicism is daily bread in Washington.

Every Rule and Regulation Has a Workaround

President Joe Biden’s recently appointed Secretary of Defense received a lot of attention when he was the candidate. Lloyd Austin, was black and a four-star Army general, retired just four years previously. He required a waiver to assume the position; the rules require a six-year separation from the military. That was the news and controversy. You have to read down to paragraph eight of the usnews.com article to find that he was an ex-member of the board of directors of Raytheon, the country’s fifth-most-important defense contractor, billing some $27.5 billion in 2020, 94% of that amount from the US government. (Source: defensenews.com) It seems that this is precisely what Eisenhower was alerting Americans about all those years ago.

Among the 11,524 registered active lobbyists in the United States (2020 figures), 448 of them are former members of Congress. OpenSecrets.org has prepared the following list of names of these revolving-door politicians for us:

Former Senators

Former Representatives

Shhh… Can you hear President Eisenhower weeping?

###


See you next week with Part 4 of It’s Getting Late, America

Thanks for following, commenting and sharing.