March 28, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

PARASITIC MILITARISM

In his farewell address to the country President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the development of a massive military-industrial complex. That was in 1961. The monster that existed then has grown to gargantuan proportions. The United States spends 50% of the total world military expenditures. Why do we need to spend that much on something as wasteful as military spending unless it's to maintain an empire? This article by Walter C. Uhler is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Parasitic militarism is the extreme militarism that afflicts a country, usually after "a prolonged reliance on military power for economic, territorial, or geopolitical gains." Such extended reliance "gradually creates a dynamic out of which evolves a large standing military apparatus that tends to perpetuate itself - and develop into a bureaucratic empire." [p. 3] It's commonly known as the military-industrial complex, but it also includes the U.S. Congress, the mainstream news media and major research universities.

What makes the U. S. militarism unique, asserts Hossein-Zadeh, is its unprecedented reliance on the predatory market forces and profit incentives that drive commercial defense contractors. Earlier empires were forced to rely largely upon arms supplied by comparatively benign state-run arsenals.

Thus, in past military empires, "arms production was dictated by war requirements, not the market or profit imperatives of arms manufacturers." [p. 18] Today, U.S. defense contractors not only market their newly proposed weapons, they also market (if not invent) the threat that their newly proposed weapons will combat. They also make political contributions (bribes) to congressmen who vote for their weapons programs, fund militaristic think tanks and employ workers, most of whom have a vested interest -- and, thus, vote accordingly -- in the job security that even unnecessary arms production provides them.