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Government Corruption
Zuesse: How Did America Become Ruled By Its Military-Industrial Complex?
2022-06-22

BLUF:
[ZERO] Within less than two years of FDR’s death on 12 April 1945, such a permanent-war U.S. Government became officially created. FDR’s plan for a U.N. that would internationally outlaw all empires became replaced by Truman’s plan for an America that would itself become what Hitler, himself, had only aspired to create: the world’s very first all-encompassing global empire. Truman’s dream is today’s American dream, in today’s Washington DC; and here was how the Nobel Peace-Prize-winning U.S. President, Barack Obama (the other of history’s slickest liars), stated it to graduating West Point cadets, on 28 May 2014:

The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come. ... Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. ... It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.

It’s endlessly onward and upward, for the U.S. All other nations are "dispensable." And that objective is backed-up now, by half of the world’s military expenditures.

This is how it happened. It happened by deceit, at every step of the way.

Posted by:Besoeker

#15  Despite Eisenhower's famous amiability, I would cough up a lung to see him review our defense posture with the current Top Brass.
Posted by: Matt   2022-06-22 22:44  

#14  Anyway, welfare state liberals, tax cut-happy conservatives and foreign adversaries, as usual, scrubbed the most important part of Eisenhower's speech, the need to remain ready for war through significant expenditures and the fact that 10% of the economy was devoted to defense during Eisenhower's reign. Instead, they contended that defense expenditures even well short of that 10% number were excessive. They scrubbed the main thrust and highlighted the footnote.
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2022-06-22 21:47  

#13  The military-industrial complex, while a bogeyman to conservatives looking for tax cuts, liberals looking for new welfare programs and foreign adversaries looking to expand their territory, is probably the only interest group that has seen its share of the economy shrink 60% since Eisenhower's time. No other part of government has gotten a smaller share - not education, not the welfare state, et al.

Blade Runner posited off-planet colonies and flying cars by 2019. Surely the huge increase in the % of the economy devoted to education should have provided the impetus on the discoveries necessary for intergalactic travel, terraforming and other gleaming glimpses of the future providing by science fiction novels. And yet, here we remain, earth-bound.
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2022-06-22 21:22  

#12  He spent 10% of the economy on defense every year he was in office. We are at around 4%. He emphasized the need to never be caught off guard ever again as happened at Pearl Harbor, to have a military industrial complex ready to meet any challenge immediately.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
Oddly enough, the cuts in defense spending from 10% of the economy in Eisenhower’s time to about 4% in ours are reflected in Pentagon dollars vs corporate profits. Just the Fortune 500 makes more money than the Pentagon spends today - $1.8T in profits vs $800b for the Pentagon. If the US spent as much on defense today as a % of the economy as it did in Eisenhower’s time, that dollar number would be $2.2T.
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2022-06-22 21:13  

#11  Then the US became the Pronoun Superpower

Leaked US Navy Training Video on Proper Ghey Pronoun Usage
Posted by: Waldemar Phurt8378   2022-06-22 21:04  

#10  Does seem like the Military-Industrial Complex was running things during Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then Obama woked the military leadership and the nation got sick of endless war. After 2016ish Big Pharma took over.
Posted by: ruprecht   2022-06-22 11:08  

#9  It's absolutely not run by a military industrial complex. It's run by a military-pharmaceutical-media complex.

Right. Most of the industry went to China.
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2022-06-22 10:41  

#8  In the soundbite era, pre-soundbite era remarks can always be reworked to fit the current template.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2022-06-22 09:38  

#7  What P2k says: "They always ignore the rest of the speech!"
Posted by: magpie   2022-06-22 09:35  

#6  When Eisenhower spoke, priorities were different. The biggest 'complex' is the government itself. Too big, too expensive, too incompetent.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2022-06-22 08:45  

#5  Its not anymore. The shift has gone to the medical pharmaceutical industry.
Posted by: 49 Pan   2022-06-22 08:30  

#4  The rise of the American shi
Posted by: lotp   2022-06-22 07:42  

#3  People - go back and read Eisenhower speech. Everyone forgets what follows the MIC comment.

"Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite".
Posted by: Procopius2k   2022-06-22 07:27  

#2  It's absolutely not run by a military industrial complex. It's run by a military-pharmaceutical-media complex.
Posted by: Cesare   2022-06-22 07:08  

#1  Zerohedge garbage.
Posted by: Rob Crawford   2022-06-22 06:43  

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