In this video from 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower explained the grave implications of the existence of the military industrial complex. In my opinion, he was spot on in this speech (which was his exit speech from the presidency), and this phenomenon of the MEC explains the horrifically warped U.S. national budget and our equally warped sense of national priorities for decades:
According to The Onion, an American bald eagle has spoken out, frustrated that so many people assume that he is pro-war.
Frustrated by the widely held assumption that he unequivocally endorses the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a bald eagle said Monday that his thoughts on the conflicts were far more nuanced than many Americans might expect. Speaking to reporters from his nest in the upper branches of a 175-foot ponderosa pine tree, the eagle explained that each member of his species was different and none should be taken for granted as a lockstep supporter of American military policy.
President Obama has recently announced that he will allocate $8 billion ($4 billion each year, over two years) to develop a new system of high-speed passenger rail service. This is an excellent idea. The new rail lines will be created within 10 geographical corridors ranging from 100 to 600 miles long.
Note, however, that the high-speed rail line system will be an extremely expensive project, and that the $8 billion bill will need to be paid by 138 million tax-paying Americans. Dividing the $8 billion cost by the number of taxpayers, we can see that, on average, each taxpayer will pay almost $60 ($30 per year, for two years) to support this massive new high-speed rail service.
Again, this high-speed rail project will cost an immense amount of money. Consider, though, how small this pile of rail money looks when compared to the amount of money we are wasting in the "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan. For 2009, the United States spent approximately $87 billion for Iraq and $47 billion for Afghanistan. The fiscal 2010 budget requests $65 billion for Afghanistan operations and $61 billion for Iraq. the cost of these two "wars" together is $126 billion for 2010.
Compare these expenditures on a bar chart:
I sometimes can't shake the feeling that everything is wrong. Down is up, wrong is right, war is peace, and lies are truth. Take, for example, the issue of torture. We as a society have regressed to the point where we find it acceptable to use torture. We use it explicitly, openly, without any concern for the consequences. Of course, some of the consequences (like increasing terrorism) are inevitable, whether we choose to be concerned with them or not. But that's really beside the point-- the simple point that I am amazed by right now is that we torture people. That, and the fact that it's not a major controversy. The Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave, with tyranny and torture for all. Since the usual arguments against our torture policy have proven ineffective, I want to elaborate a bit. The usual arguments involve questions of efficacy-- that is, whether torture is effective or not. (It's not). In fact, the CIA officer who argued that waterboarding was so effective that it cracked hardcore terrorists the first time (and within 30 seconds!) has now recanted his story. When he came out with the story of how waterboarding worked so well, he was called the "Man of the Hour", but now hardly anyone is mentioning that it was all lies. Go figure that a CIA guy would lie to his own countrymen, right? In any case, the issue of waterboarding, or any of the various "enhanced interrogation techniques", is a red herring. The truth is that we are engaged in far worse abuses.
The United States has fiercely resisted allowing photographs of dead U.S. soldiers, allegedly because of "privacy concerns" regarding the families of the deceased. In February, 2009, the military finally lifted an 18-year old ban on taking photos of only the coffins of deceased U.S. soldiers. In October, 2009, The U.S. military banned photos of troops killed in action in Afghanistan. Amy Goodman has argued (correctly, in my opinion), that the Middle Eastern wars currently being fought by the U.S. would quickly be ended if only the public were allowed to see the devastating effects of these wars on U.S. troops and on the civilian populations. How believable is the excuse given by the U.S. and by many members of the U.S. media for severely limiting photos of our dead soldiers? Is it really out of respect for the grieving families? Are "privacy" concerns the real the reason the media acquiesces in this policy of showing only a highly sterilized version of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? I don't believe so. Why are the U.S. media so willing to freely discuss the horror of the Haitian deaths and to show graphic photos of Haitian people who have been severely injured or killed in the Haitian Earthquakes? And see here and here and here. There doesn't seem to be much concern about the "privacy" of the Haitian victims and their families. It seems that the decision to show (or not show) photos of injured and dead people has much more to do with politics than with privacy.