The Military-Industrial Complex

by President Dwight D. Eisenhower
With an Introduction by Jesse Smith

 

Quote One

From Jesse Smith's introduction:

President Eisenhower's words are as true today as they were when he first spoke them over 45 years ago. Many of his predictions have proven uncannily correct and many of his observations seem timeless. He speaks of a seemingly endless conflict with a hostile ideology, a concept which must seem familiar to us today, as our military forces continue to build permanent bases in Iraq.

In his farewell address to the nation and the world, he warned against complacently accepting this new militaristic system as a necessary component of our society. Sadly our society seems not to have heeded his warning; but there is always hope for the future.

From its late-nineteenth century status as a last-ditch contingency, the military has grown to become a major industry in America. Any major industry will attempt to grow and expand. An arms industry will grow and expand by selling more weapons of war. War is in the best interests of the armaments industries; but war is not in the best interest of peace.

Now it's no longer merely the arms manufacturers who profit from war; the oil industry and several private "security" firms and military contractors have all done very well since the invasion of Afghanistan.

No example of the connection between the government and the private sector could be clearer than that of the Bush Administration (2000 to present). The President was at one time the owner of an oil company, and the Vice President went from being Secretary of Defense under the first President Bush, to CEO of Halliburton/KBR, a military services contractor; then "retired" from his position as CEO (but continued to draw annual compensation in an amount equivalent to approximately five times the average American's salary) to take his seat in the White House. During Cheney's term there, the government awarded billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to his former company.

Quote Two

From Jesse Smith's introduction:

Actual military spending is considerably higher than the sums allocated in the federal budget. Much of the actual spending, including what should have been foreseeable spending to fund the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not budgeted, but is instead included in emergency supplemental appropriations packages. For fiscal year 2006 the emergency supplemental spending on the two-front war in the Middle East topped $67.6 billion dollars.

Furthermore, in order to continue this unprecedented rate of military spending, Congress has had to repeatedly raise its own cap on how high the Federal budget deficit may go. At the time of this writing the Federal budget deficit is currently $8,417,494,747,437.57, or nearly eight and a half trillion dollars. By contrast the 2006 Federal budget includes a grand total of $7.6 billion for the entire Environmental Protection Agency, a 6% decrease from the 2005 budget. The EPA as a result has essentially ceased its programs to clean up toxic sites.

Meanwhile, the Parks service is so woefully underfunded that it increasingly relies on user fees to maintain public parks and national monuments. The Social Security program, we are told, is in impending peril. In the great state of Oregon, where I reside, our public school teachers were recently forced to work several days without pay, because there was no money to pay them with.

Yet military spending has gone up, and up, and up, and shows no sign of slowing: it has become our nation's absolute top priority. This is not the way things have to be, and the first step to making a change is to make it known that the situation is objectionable. When describing an objectionable situation it is helpful to have an appropriate frame of reference, and this speech by President Eisenhower effectively provides that frame.

Quote Three

This quote is from President Eisenhower's speech and exists in the public domain:

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology - global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle - with liberty at stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research - these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel. But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs - balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage - balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise.

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