The Military Industrial Complex At 50
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206 pages
English

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Description

This book is the most comprehensive collection available explaining what the military industrial complex (MIC) is, where it comes from, what damage it does, what further destruction it threatens, and what can be done and is being done to chart a different course.

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Publié par
Date de parution 21 février 2013
Nombre de lectures 0
EAN13 9781456606626
Langue English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0475€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Military Industrial Complex at 50
 
Edited by David Swanson
 
 
Charlottesville, VA
First Edition — 2011
 


 
 
Also by David Swanson
When the World Outlawed War (2011)
War Is A Lie (2010)
Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency
and Forming a More Perfect Union (2009)
The 35 Articles of Impeachment (Introduction, 2008)
 
 
• • •
 
 
©2011 David Swanson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
 
 
Swanson, David, 1969 Dec. 1-
 
 
The Military Industrial Complex at 50
 
 
Book design by David Swanson
 

Cover Image by Barbara Stanley
 
 
First Edition / December 2011
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0662-6
 
 
MIC50.org
 
Introduction
By David Swanson
T his book is the most comprehensive collection I've seen explaining what the military industrial complex is, where it comes from, what damage it does, what further destruction it threatens, and what can be done and is being done to chart a different course.
 
The book is almost entirely a collection of remarks presented at a truly amazing event, a conference held in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2011 to mark 50 years since President Dwight D. Eisenhower found the nerve in his farewell speech in 1961 to articulate one of the most prescient, potentially valuable, and tragically as yet unheeded warnings of human history:
 
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.
 
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
 
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
 
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
 
The collection that follows will persuade most readers that the "total influence" of the military industrial complex (MIC) has become far more total, that the disastrous rise of misplaced power is no longer merely a potential event, that our liberties and democratic processes are in a state of collapse, and that Ike himself was disastrously misinforming the citizenry when he claimed that the very monster he warned of had been "compelled" by the need for "defense."
 
The MIC at 50 conference, held September 16 th to 18 th , 2011, was the most universally praised and appreciated conference I've been a part of. As is evident in the chapters that follow, the speakers learned from, synthesized, and inspired each other in the course of the three days. We could do worse than to schedule many more such gatherings. But, truth be told, although I helped to organize, spoke at, and fully participated in the conference, I got more out of the speakers' remarks by reading through them while editing this book. You may be better off possessing this book than having attended. Many attendees requested that this book be produced, and my hope is that the book you are now holding in your hands or electronically scrolling through will meet their expectations.
 
This is a book that can be read straight through as the argument builds from analysis to action. I've kept the remarks for the most part in the order in which they were delivered. This is also a book that can be read perfectly well by jumping to the sections that interest you first. This was the agenda for the conference:
 
Friday, September 16, 2011, at the Haven, 112 W Market Street, Charlottesville, Va.
6:00 Authentic Afghan Dinner
Welcome by Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris
6:30 MIC in Cville and VA — David Swanson
7:00 Dramatic Dialogue with Eisenhower, Jefferson, and Martin Luther King Jr.
7:45 Voices of Conscience — Ann Wright
8:30 Free MIC50 Cake for All, provided by Camino Restaurant
 
Saturday and Sunday, September 17 and 18, 2011, at The Dickinson Fine and Performing Arts Center at Piedmont Virginia Community College, 501 County Road 338, Charlottesville, Va. 22902-7589.
 
Saturday
8:30 Federal Budget and Impact of MIC on the Economy — Robert Naiman and Dave Shreve
9:45 Budget Activity — Lisa Savage
10:30 BREAK
10:45-12:30
Are Weapons Corporations People? — George Friday
MIC and Civil Liberties — Jeff Fogel
What War Does to Law — Ben Davis
LUNCH
1:15 War Media — Robert Jensen
2:00 MIC and the Environment — Claire Hanrahan and Coleman Smith
2:45 Extra Casualties: The Human Cost of War — Mia Austin Scoggins
3:30 BREAK
3:45 MIC and Weapons Proliferation, Global Hostility — Bruce Gagnon
4:30 Whistleblowing — Karen Kwiatkowski and Bunny Greenhouse
5:15 Why Peace is Possible and How We Can Achieve It — Paul Chappell
 
Sunday
9:30-11:30
Conversion to a Peace Economy — Mary Beth Sullivan
What Needs Changing — Jonathan Williams
LUNCH
12:15 Activism — Ray McGovern, Helena Cobban, Lisa Savage
1:45 BREAK
2:00 Action Planning
3:00 Panel With All Conference Speakers Together
4:00 Anti-Authoritarian Activism — Bruce Levine
 
Two speakers we had planned to include, Judith Le Blanc and Ellen Brown, were unable to attend but have nonetheless contributed articles to this collection. I've actually included three short articles from Brown, two of which were prepared specifically for this project. A few of the articles below — Ann Wright's, Robert Jensen's, and Paul Chappell's — are not exactly the remarks they presented but are articles they produced on the same topic at about the same time. I've also added to the collection four excellent articles from friends of ours who were not part of the conference but whose insights mesh well with and expand on the rest of this discussion: Gareth Porter, Pat Elder, Chris Rodda, and an article by Steve Horn and Allen Ruff. I've been unable to include anything from two people who did participate and make valuable contributions, George Friday and Dave Norris. Friday did stellar work as a facilitator as well as a presenter.
 

 

 
George Friday worked for the Piedmont Peace Project, was a founding member and Executive Director of the Independent Progressive Political Network, was a founding member and is on the executive committee of Move to Amend (the national coalition to strip corporations of their claim to be "persons"); and is former co-chair of United for Peace and Justice.


The first section of the book below, on "Where We Find Ourselves," is intended to paint a portrait of the MIC at age 50. My opening article is a portrait of the MIC in the state of Virginia. This should fairly closely resemble a similar portrait that might be constructed for any other part of the United States. I provide a guide at the end of the article to assist in such research.
 
The second article is actually a play, written by Wally Myers for the MIC50 conference and performed on opening night. The play puts the military industrial complex into historical context by means of an imagined discussion among Charlottesville local Thomas Jefferson, Dwight Eisenhower, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Myers has made this play available to be performed anywhere. It consists almost entirely of quotations, with some sections crossed through and amended (in parentheses). The play leaves you with the deep understanding that militarism as we know it did not always exist and need not remain with us forever.
 
In Ann Wright's two articles, she provides, first, an overview of MIC expansion underway right now in the Pacific. Then Wright narrows in on one particular location, typical of many around the globe, where local people are resisting U.S. military base construction. Gareth Porter concludes this section with a new but typical example of how the MIC creates its own momentum for war; a massive bureaucracy that lives off the work of death will seek to continue and expand it for its own sake. This is what Eisenhower was afraid of. It is what we all should be treating as a national emergency.
 
Section II on "Jobs Not Wars" places the military industrial complex in the context of the national economy and the federal budget. Dave Shreve's contribution reads like an academic paper from an economics professor, and so it is, or rather an economics historian. What's that, you ask? Well, it's something that held the attention of our whole auditorium. When you've read this, if you're like me, you will have learned a better history of the presidencies of Eisenhower and of Lyndon Johnson, and you'll have come to understand why deficit spending can be good, and why military cuts alone without conversion and reallocation of the funds can be economically bad even if morally desirable. Con

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