by Jeff Huber
Parts I, II and III of “Johnny and the Warmongers” described John McCain’s intimate relationships with the neoconservatives and the military/industrial complex. The fourth and final essay in the series discusses how, even with a Barack Obama presidency, militarism will continue to be the single greatest threat to America’s security.
John McCain’s policy positions reflect the same formula for disaster that America has followed throughout the past eight years.
According to his campaign web site, “John McCain believes we must enlarge the size of our armed forces to meet new challenges to our security.” What are these new challenges? “The global war on terrorism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, threats from rogue states like Iran and North Korea, and the rise of potential strategic competitors like China and Russia.” That sounds like the same old set of boogeymen the neoconservative Bush administration has been making scare noise about, and the “threat” they pose doesn’t sound any more credible coming from the mouth of John McCain.
Opinion from respected authorities and reports by leading defense analysis organizations like the Rand Corporation overwhelmingly agree that application of military force is the wrong means for fighting terrorism, that indeed, use of the military toward that purpose is counterproductive.
Iraq has invited us leave and Pakistan has invited us to stay out, and there’s consensus among sentient observers that pursuit of victory in Afghanistan is a losing proposition.
The Bush administration has grown fond of telling us–over and over and over and over–that no nation on earth presents a greater challenge to us than Iran, but has yet to explain why that is. Our own Intelligence agencies avow that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. For years the administration and its yes men generals like David Petraeus have accused Iran of fomenting violence in Iraq, but has failed to credibly support any of those allegations. If anything, Iran’s mediation between warring Iraqi Shiite factions is responsible for most of the reduced violence that the main stream media has so compliantly credited to Petraeus and the “surge” stratagem.
Iran’s defense budget is less than one percent the size of ours. North Korea’s entire gross domestic product is less than ten percent of our defense budget. It has a brace of nuclear weapons, but it can’t afford to feed its people in the winter. If the North Koreans ever use their nukes on us or on one of our allies, we could bomb them back to the Stone Age in the blink of an eye. They’re barely out of the Stone Age as it is.
Russia and China each spend ten percent or less on defense than we do. The Russians already lost the part they sit with trying to run with us in an arms race. The Chinese had sufficient ancient wisdom to learn from Russia’s mistake rather than make it themselves. They’re both so far behind now they’d never catch up, and they know it. They won’t bleed themselves white economically trying to do the impossible.
We spend more money on defense than the rest of the world combined. We don’t need a larger military. We don’t need the one we have now. We don’t need half of it.
Yet John McCain and the war oligarchs he fronts for would have us continue to buy $330 million fighter jets to dogfight rogue airliners, and $2 billion bombers to do the job of $600,000 cruise missiles, and $8 billion dollar aircraft carriers to chase pirates around the Indian Ocean, and a $63 billion missile defense system that couldn’t shoot down a butterfly.
John McCain has some interesting ideas about how we can afford to continue our military adventurism. “The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit,” according to Jobs for America: The McCain Economic Plan. “Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.”
Thus McCain reveals three major facets of the insanity behind his neoconservative core policies: He believes a) that there is something one can describe as “victory” to be had in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the “war” on terror, b) that he can save money through further deficit spending and c) that he can then make the debt go away merely by cutting up the credit cards.
It would be nice to think we’re about to leave the lunacy of the last eight years in the rear view mirror, but it’s not prudent to expect fairy tale narratives from real life. Call them what you like–mongers, hawks, neocons, Pavlov’s dogs of war–they’ve been among us since apes first used sticks and bones to take food from other apes by force. This latest batch, Bill Kristol’s gorillas, won’t let a McCain loss on election day defeat their grand purpose. They’ll skulk off and hunker down in the right wing media, think tank and academia sanctuaries and execute a Fabian strategy. They’ve already covered their retreat route with booby traps: Iraq, Iran, the Bananastans, Somalia, Palestine, Lebanon, North Korea, Russia, and now this monkey business in Syria, all of it is designed to distract attention and resources from our real security challenges involving the economy, education, health, the environment, infrastructure and so on.
They’ll pressure the Obama administration to adopt their military-centric policies, employing media hypnosis to tell America, “You were winning when we left power,” and setting the stage for a counteroffensive, for a great GOP hope like retired general David Petraeus to sweep in from the wings in 2012 and get things back to business as usual, the nourishment and maintenance of armed conflict and war profits everlasting.
We already won World War II and the Cold War, and we already lost Vietnam. We don’t need to do those things again.
It’s time to move on to new business.
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword . Jeff’s novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America’s rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Also catch Scott Horton’s interview with Jeff at Antiwar Radio.
The threat from Iran is that Iran is Saudi Arabia’s rival. That is, Iran is no threat to us but a big threat to the Saudis. This is the House of Bush/House of Saud alliance. I’m surprised that they don’t intermarry (just a joke).
So, we should spend a fortune to support the people that have been gouging us on oil for 35 years and sent most of the 9/11 terrorists because Bush and Cheney will make a lot of money over it.
check your numbers again, Jeff; no ingo bay for you:
Ray Takeyh recently spoke about Iran to University of Pittsburgh’s School of International Affairs. Takeyh argued that the Iran-Saudi relationship has strengthened dramatically in the years since the US invasion of Iraq. Abdullah welcomed Ahmadinejad’s visit in March 2007; http://www.saudi-us-relations.org/articles/2007/special-reports/070305-iran-saudi.html
; thousands of Iranian rials are finding their way to investments in booming UAE states and Dubai. Most telling of all of the fear that the west & Israel have of the growing power of an Arab-Iran rapprochement are recent comments by Tom Friedman in NYT about how much Arabs hate Iran http://www.iranian.com/main/2008/sleepless-tehran
and, the slam-dunk shot, this paragraph from the website of the Clarion Fund, the gang of thugs that produced the rabidly anti-Muslim DVD “Obsession” and sent it out in thousands of newspapers in a number of US cities. Here’s what, in my opinion, underlies Friedman’s misunderinformed hysteria and Clarion Fund’s hateful ire:
“10. How is sharia applied to banking and finance laws?
Islamic banking and finance is a rapidly expanding industry that seeks to harmonize modern business practices and traditional religious norms. Classical sharia prohibits riba, the charging of interest. It also condemns excessive profits and requires Muslims to invest only in ventures that are consistent with Islamic principles; for example, investing in a brewery or casino is forbidden. The Islamic finance industry, with estimated assets of $200 billion to $300 billion, represents a small chunk of the global marketplace, but is “already playing a significant role in the financial systems in the Middle East,” said John B. Taylor, U.S. under secretary of the Treasury, in a 2004 address. Some Muslim countries, including Malaysia, are making an effort to issue national bonds that comply with sharia principles. And in 2002, eight Muslim countries–Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan, Bahrain, and Kuwait–launched a new organization, the Services Board Islamic Financial, to set common standards for Islamic banking. ”
found on this website: http://radicalislam.org/content/islam-governing-under-sharia
Not to belabor the point, but anybody notice that the US & west economy is in meltdown due to shenanigans with interest rates and “unislamic” lending practices–“Classical sharia prohibits riba, the charging of interest. It also condemns excessive profits and requires Muslims to invest only in ventures that are consistent with Islamic principles; “; that Sheldon Adelman, owner of Venitian Casinos in US and major financier of Netanyahu & Freedom Watch, is struggling to keep his gambling ventures afloat, but in Islam, “investing in a brewery or casino is forbidden. ” Thus, Adelman’s competitor’s casino, the Palms, in Dubai, creates the augue in Adelman’s eyes, and Iran’s Kish Island is similarly territory the rapacious capitalists dearly covet.
But the “money” quote has to be the financial power of a financially allying Iran-Arab Islam that is generating the over-the-top hysteria we are witnessing from Friedman, from Dennis Ross, and the other neoconservatives. Read it again:
“The Islamic finance industry, with estimated assets of $200 billion to $300 billion, represents a small chunk of the global marketplace, but is “already playing a significant role in the financial systems in the Middle East,” said John B. Taylor, U.S. under secretary of the Treasury, in a 2004 address. Some Muslim countries, including Malaysia, are making an effort to issue national bonds that comply with sharia principles. And in 2002, eight Muslim countries–Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan, Bahrain, and Kuwait–launched a new organization, the Services Board Islamic Financial, to set common standards for Islamic banking. “
What numbers, JB?
There’s one problem with winding down the war machine that I’d like to see addressed, Jobs. I think defense industry is the last bastion of American manufacturing.
Last night I played with a spread sheet. I took Gross Value of Industrial Production 1972-2008 from the Federal Reserve and plotted it. It made a nice generally upward graph. Then I adjusted by the CPI from Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now the graph showed a steep decline from 1972 to 1980 and a generally flat line from 1980 to 2008.
This is subject to interpretation but I think it shows that we lost the industrial battle in the 1970’s and Defense (aka the war machine) has been the base of our economy since 1980.
So, if we wind it down and abandon the Empire, what do we do to make a living? I’m not talking about the morality of all this. I’m talking about survival.
We can’t live by taking in each other’s washing or suing each other or selling insurance policies and banking all those transactions.
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One of the most dramatic changes that has occurred in the workplace of many developed countries during the last half of the twentieth century is the decline in the rate of job growth in the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing jobs that typically produce durable goods such as autos, home appliances and many others have been considered the foundation of a country’s economic base. Yet today, manufacturing firms only employ 1/6 of all workers in the United States, 1/5 in Britain, and 1/3 in Germany and Japan. In all four of these countries, manufacturing jobs as a percentage of total workforce employment has been declining steadily.
…
Wages in the manufacturing sector have historically been relatively high in the United States and other developed countries. Part of the reason was the higher level of unionization of manufacturing employees. As employment in the manufacturing sector has given way to the service industry, there is concern that overall wage rates will fall.
GNP per capita USA and as comparison the Netherlands.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Thanks for the link, Oui.
J
Services are consumption, not production. GDP is a deeply flawed measure of wealth creation. If we all buy $100,000 life insurance policies it adds trillions to GDP but are we wealthier? Especially, if we borrow the money from the Mid-east or China to buy the policies?
How about some new voyages of exploration. Capture the imagination of the nations youth. A non-military space race to have a healthy outlet for nationalism. I was never so proud of my nation then when we landed on the moon. All the techs in mission control were waving little American flags. Its a high that has stayed with me throughout my life. There were chills running up and down my 9 year old spine.
Lockheed Martin the biggest arms dealer in the world is also designing the shuttles successor. We could side track some of the M.I.C. with contracts on the race back to the moon.
I’m just not sure there will be money left for anything. I read Zandar1 and idredit and I wonder how we will weather the coming storm. Taking care of the people is first priority but taking care of the human spirit is vital to the sustained health of a population.
I like that idea a lot.
So do I, but a word of caution. Lockheed-Martin and Northrop-Grumman also make some very crappy postal sorting equipment. The problem with the postal contracts is that equipment is always accepted despite objections from both Operations and Maintenance at the test sites. I suspect the same thing is happening to the Defense contracts. If contractors view government contracts as make-work gravy trains, we’ll have more shuttles blowing up. Hopefully, a new administration will view contractors as suppliers and not buddies. Maybe then, the contractors will view the government as a customer and not as a source of welfare checks.
Thanks Jeff thats a real compliment coming from someone of your wit and wisdom. No lie.