Fear, loathing and money for the military

The United States disarmed after World War II. The people were war weary. Returning vets were eager to get back to their lives, their families, normalcy. But weapons manufacturers weren’t happy and their allies inside government decided that artful fearmongering could be used to scare the people into support for a peacetime arms build-up.

President Harry S. Truman abrogated treaties with the Soviet Union while William Randolph Hearst revved up fear of communism via his vast newspaper chain as did Henry Luce via Time and Life magazines. Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Director of Intelligence Allen W. Dulles played the fear card over and over, touting purported Soviet advances in atomic weapons as justification for the U.S. hydrogen bomb program. Evangelist Billy Graham preached fear as well, saying “We must prepare for war even while we are at peace. We are concerned about the cutback in defense budgets. We must get ready for anything that may happen.”

So, we built bombs and missiles and tanks and warships and defense contractors made money hand over fist. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, at least, had the honesty to warn the country about the prospects of control by what he called the “military-industrial complex.”

But President John F. Kennedy won election partly be decrying a so-called “missile gap.” Then President Lyndon B. Johnson rewarded his long-time supporters Brown and Root construction with juicy military contracts. That began the rise of Kellogg, Brown & Root, later part of Halliburton which is still profiteering off war today.

The Soviet Union finally came unglued due to a combination of poor central planning and ethnic tensions, though President Ronald Reagan tried to claim credit. Reagan asserted that a U.S. military build-up had forced the Soviets into competition that they couldn’t afford over time. As we learned later, they had quit competing in the arms race before Reagan took office.

Since 9/11, of course, it is the so-called war on terrorism that demands massive support for arms merchants. In Congress, even as Democrats make much of their desire to withdraw from Iraq they vote for more and more and more money for the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. We are supposedly dismantling some nuclear weapons even as we develop a new generation of nukes. Most of the Republican candidates for that party’s 2008 nomination are willing to threaten Iran with nuclear attack, and, of course, Iran is quickly replacing the Soviet Union as the enemy du jour. The U.S. is spending more money on arms than the next dozen or more countries in the world combined, and we sell more arms than anyone. And we subsidize those arms sales.

We have been here before. Where are the politicians brave enough to say enough is enough? Dennis Kucinich and … and? A couple of others, and all ignored by the mainstream media.

The fear card has worked, at least for me. I am very, very afraid—of my own government.

~ by bothwellsblog on June 8, 2007.