Waging War Against War

Even as the Military-Industrial Complex Becomes Ever Stronger and More Dangerous, We Must Keep Fighting Against It

In today’s article, I’d like to feature insights from friends and colleagues.

At TomDispatch, Tom Engelhardt takes on man’s seemingly endless addiction to war, an addiction most certainly manifested by the US of A, where bumper stickers tell me peace comes through superior firepower. Check out Tom’s article here. Not only do we wage war on each other, Tom notes, we wage war on the planet. In fact, few things degrade the environment more than war and all the destruction it brings with it.

John Rachel, a peace activist, has a telling theme: War is making us poor. He’s been making short punchy videos to hammer home the point. Check out his latest here:

Why are wars so persistent in the U.S., despite their stupidity, their destruction, their waste? One of my readers put it well in a comment to me:

The endless wars without a traditional definition of success have not been failures to those who have profited. For them, the only war that is lost, is the one that ends. God forbid one should be won under the standard definition and profits then ended.

Cynical? Not when you measure that statement against the U.S. experience of war since 1945.

Finally, also at TomDispatch, David Vine and Theresa Arriola have an article: “The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All,” which is what Ike warned us about in 1961 if we refused to act as alert and knowledgeable citizens to keep that complex in check. Their article features clear and insightful charts on the basic features of the MIC and the dangers it poses. Here’s an example:

Vine and Arriola are part of an effort whose goal it is to dismantle, or very much to downsize, that complex. (I’ve been involved in their efforts.) Here’s the website:

https://www.dismantlethemic.org

Where you’ll find more charts and resources.

Meanwhile, last week the “liberal” New York Times posted an article ostensibly written by Senator Roger Wicker calling for even more military spending by the U.S.

Here’s how The New York Times introduced Wicker’s op-ed on May 29th:

In a guest essay today, Senator Roger Wicker writes that we are approaching a version of that moment [a major war crisis] “faster than most Americans think.” Worse, he argues, the U.S. military is unprepared to meet the moment. After decades of underfunding, the American military lacks the strength or the equipment to deal with the wide range of new threats coming from our nation’s adversaries, including Iran, China, Russia and North Korea, he writes.

The answer to this problem, Wicker says, is a short-term “generational investment” in the U.S. military — and a national conversation on how to create a safer future for America. In a new white paper, he lays out a road map to “rebuild” the military, starting with an additional $55 billion in military spending in the 2025 fiscal year and an increase of annual military G.D.P. spending from its current projected level of around 3 percent to 5 percent over the next five to seven years.

That’s a serious amount of money that will inevitably raise big questions about where it will come from — and at the expense of what — at a moment when voices all along the political spectrum are questioning both U.S. military spending overseas and the role of the American military in the world today.

Wicker makes the case that the cost of a war with an increasingly powerful adversary like China would be far higher. “Regaining American strength will be expensive,” he writes. “But fighting a war — and worse, losing one — is far more costly.”

Readers, isn’t that inspiring? A “generational investment” in more guns, more bombs, and, as likely as not, more war? What a great idea!

Apparently, the only way to prevent a war is to prepare mightily for one, according to Senator Wicker. Wicker has apparently never heard, or read, or understood the words of Ike.

Senator Wicker is a shining example of the military-industrial-congressional complex that perpetuates war to the detriment of us all, indeed to all life on our planet. But it’s his words that are amplified by the “liberal” New York Times, not the wise words of my friends and colleagues here.

And so it goes, unless we act to put an end to it. We must be the alert and knowledgeable citizens that Ike implored us to be.