No Slowdown for Weapons Industry

The Pentagon as an Engine of Economic Recovery?

How can a country headed into A State of Depression justify spending a trillion dollars a year on an already grotesque defense establishment? I wonder if a standing army doesn't constitute a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the 2d and 3d amendments to the US Constitution.

WINSLOW T. WHEELER, "Why the Pentagon is Not a Jobs Engine: Save the Economy by Cutting the "Defense" [Offense] Budget":

Harvard economist Professor Martin Feldstein has advocated in the Wall Street Journal (‘Defense Spending Would Be Great Stimulus’, 24 December 2008) the addition of USD30 billion or so to the Pentagon’s budget for the purpose of generating 300,000 new jobs. It is my assertion, however, that pushing the DoD as a jobs engine is a mistake....

Even other economists are sceptical about Feldstein’s numbers. An October 2007 paper from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst found that each USD1 billion spent on defence would generate 8,555 jobs, not the 10,000 calculated by Feldstein. Given the problems with the F-22 just discussed and the lack of jobs I believe it will generate, even this lower estimate sounds extremely optimistic.

Chalmers Johnson on the Pentagon:

Each year, we Americans account for nearly half of all global military spending, an amount larger than the next 45 nations together spend on their militaries annually.
...
Our problems are those of a very rich country which has become accustomed over the years to defense budgets that are actually jobs programs and also a major source of pork for the use of politicians in their reelection campaigns.

Given the present major recession, whose depths remain unknown, the United States has better things to spend its money on than Nimitz-class aircraft carriers at a price of $6.2 billion each (the cost of the USS George H. W. Bush, launched in January 2009, our tenth such ship) or aircraft that can cruise at a speed of Mach 2 (1,352 miles per hour).

...

By the time the prototype F-22 had its roll-out on May 11, 1997, the Cold War was nearly a decade in its grave, and it was perfectly apparent that the Soviet aircraft it was intended to match would never be built. Lockheed Martin, the F-22's prime contractor, naturally argued that we needed it anyway and made plans to sell some 438 airplanes for a total tab of $70 billion.

The Continuity of Empire: Obama's Pentagon

Ray McGoverns pleads with the president to not send more American soldiers to Afghanistan.
But as he does, The Guardian reports:

Islamabad - The US military is investigating claims that more than two dozen Afghan civilians were killed during an attack on militants [on Monday]. The issue has badly undermined support for the international coalition and President Hamid Karzai.

And The Washington Post reports:

Two remote U.S. missile strikes that killed at least 20 people at suspected terrorist hideouts in northwestern Pakistan yesterday offered the first tangible sign of President Obama's commitment to sustained military pressure on the terrorist groups there, even though Pakistanis broadly oppose such unilateral U.S. actions.

Ron Jacobs, wonders why Gate's is still there:

The American people did not elect the Pentagon. They elected Barack Obama based a good deal on his promise to get US troops out of Iraq sooner rather than later. Since he was elected, Mr. Obama has hedged on this promise. Since he was inaugurated, the Pentagon and its civilian boss Robert Gates have hedged even more. Now, they insist, US troops should remain until the Iraqis hold a national election that is as of today not even scheduled. Then, even after that election is held, the departure of some US troops should depend on the outcome of the election. In other words, the Pentagon and Defense Department are telling Mr. Obama that no US troops should leave Iraq unless the election results meet the expectations of Washington.

This is exactly why Robert Gates should be removed from his position.

But rather than getting rid of Gates, it looks as though Gates is actually calling the shots. As the LA Times reports:

William Lynn III, the top lobbyist for Raytheon Co., was chosen by Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the position of deputy secretary of Defense.

The new ethics rules banned lobbyists from serving in the administration. But the executive order allowed waivers to let some former lobbyists take government jobs if doing so was in the public interest.
...
Gates pushed hard for Lynn's appointment and favored him over other officials suggested by the Obama transition team. At a news conference Thursday, Gates said he was impressed with Lynn and argued he should get the job despite the lobbying ban.

"I asked that an exception be made because I felt that he could play the role of the deputy in a better manner than anybody else that I saw," Gates said.

And this from Obama's Admiral:

"He [Blair] said that the Obama administration would carry out a review of interrogation policy, and that both military and intelligence interrogators would follow a uniform standard. Under questioning, however, he said he believed that some interrogation procedures and methods ought to remain secret so potential adversaries cannot train to resist them."

Silencing the Now: Shhh, the Israelis are Shooting

Obama on 12/30/08: "Shhh, the Israelis are shooting"

As Gaza burns, Obama plays golf. Boy, the New Boss, feels quite bit like the Old Boss.

The Gaurdian cautions that as al-Jazeera broadcast images of Obama taking in the "back 9" juxtaposed with images of murder and mayhem in the streets of Gaza, Obama is "losing a battle of perceptions among Muslims that he may not realize has even begun... The danger is that when he finally peers over the parapet on January 21, the battle of perceptions may already be half-lost."

How should we interpret silence? Historians of Palestine are well-trained in this art given that the history of Palestine has been largely silenced by Zioinist claims to "A Land without a People for a People without a Land." And as historians such as Gabi Pitterburg point out, the discursive erasure of Palestinians is an essential prerequisite to their their psychical removal (or "Transfer" as its known) and dispossession.

Is there any doubt that Obama will reach out and grasp that Faustian hand with full enthusiasm? Will Obama avoid rocking the proverbial boat on Palestine, the Middle East, and "National Security" issues writ large in the interest of getting his "domestic agenda" passed? Perhaps he should step back from all the FDR/ Great Depression analogies for a moment and remind himself of the fate of LBJ's Great Society. The point being that all the best laid plans for "domestic reform" can come to naught if one lacks the courage to stand up to monsters at home. LBJ thought that if he would give the Southern Dems in Congress, and the JFK foreign policy Establishment (Rostow, the Bundy Brothers, and Rusk) the War they wanted, he would get his Great Society at home- Guns and Butter for all. The problem with Faustian bargains is that they rarely turn out as expected. Trading on the backs of Palestinians may by be a time-honored Beltway tactic - but it produces consistently disastrous results for all concerned- but mostly for Palestinians. It is the Palestinians who pay the price for our cowardice at home. We lack the capacity to confront our own monsters- our own violent pathologies that lead us offer up endless human sacrifice to our Gods of the Military Industrial Complex (Boeing, Raytheon, etc), and so we project that violence outward. And then if that were not enough our Pundits have the audacity to suggest that it is Arab and Muslim political culture that is prone to spates of irrational violence. There is no single more prolific purveyor of violence than the United States. Until we muster the the courage to mount a real social revolution capable overturning the corrupt and defunct system of cruelty we will remain captives of that system. We may avert our eyes form the destruction caused by our own cowardice and we may indulge in yet more narcissistic orgies of self-congratulation for electing Barack Obama (if I see one more advertisement for a human interest special on Obamas or the "historic nature" of elec-sham '08, I think I am going to throw up), but while we dither, and avoid a confrontation with our own ruling class, the world burns. What will be left for our children to inherent? The rubble in Gaza offers one suggestion.

The Mysterious General Jones

Who is General Jones? Why is there so little reporting on this figure? Why did Chevron and Boeing want him on their Boards of Directors? Why did the Chamber of Commerce want him as CEO and President of its Institute for 21st Century Energy? Why does Obama want him as his "National Security Advisor"?

In a similar vein, who called upon W. to let him know that Rummy had become a major liability to the Empire's image and that it was time to bring in a "grown-up" to head the Pentagon. Obviously, on a metaphoric level it was Daddy Bush. But how exactly was that decision made and by whom? I suspect that it was the same network that "reached out" to Obama to let him know that it might be a good idea to keep Gates on for the long-haul. I think this is where we'll find the Shadow State -- the Deep State. This is where we find the structural continuities animating US policy. We have a ruling class that dominates the state apparatus, and controls its bureaucratic inner-workings. The 30%-40% of Americans who participate in America's periodic elec-shams choose from among candidates selected by the ruling class.

There is a pernicious myth that surrounds the "power of the presidency." The presidency has increasingly become an object of veneration in our postmoderrn celebrity culture. Obama feeds, and feeds on, this myth when he declares: "Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost, it comes from me. That's my job, to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing."

President's, particularly attractive ones, help sell copies of People Magazine, but they also operate within severely constrained institutional confines. We don't have an "imperial presidency" in practice. Only in symbol. The All Powerful Presidency is a useful myth for the shadow network of forces that actually controls the bureaucracy. We have Government by (anonymous, unelected) Committee hiding behind a figurehead.

















Amy Goodman on why having a Chevron Exec serving as "National Security Adviser" is not a good idea; and Steve Weissman on the dangers of Jones' brand of "Kool-Aid."