The Military-Industrial-Entrepreneurial Complex

Today the House passed a bill that establishes a timetable for a military withdrawal from Iraq. Hopefully if this bill passes through Congress, it will bring us a step closer to ending the War on Iraq. But I worry that, once this war is over, we will cease our concern about future aggressive misadventures. I hope some true statesmen in our Congress can discover the underlying weaknesses in our current diplomatic and military infrastructure that lends itself to such grossly misguided and costly wars.

Eisenhower in the twilight of his career pointed out the nascent tumor that he called the military-industrial complex. He made clear his worry over the dangers it posed to our nation. He said, “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."

Today we have no draft and our volunteer army is not a true cross section of our nation’s citizenry as it was in World War II. In addition, Cheney and Rumsfeld have radically transformed the infrastructure of our war machine through the privatization of many military functions. Now even armed combatants our nation employs through private entrepreneurs. These functions previously had resided within our uniformed armed forces that were sworn to the Constitution and managed by carefully cultivated military professionals themselves so sworn.

We take for granted that it is profitable for our industries to provide the machinery of war. But now it is profitable to provide even the human fodder of war. With all this profit, where is the incentive for diplomacy and peace? When we can mortgage our progeny’s wealth to borrow money for the machinery of war, when we can outsource the blood that is shed, when all diplomacy decisions are influenced by war profiteers, what chance has peace? War must be the most dreaded decision a nation can make. But today it has become the decision that makes the most business sense to an influential cabal at the very centers of government.

I wonder what Eisenhower might say had he lived to see the nascent tumor he diagnosed not so long ago metastasize into the cancerous military-industrial-entrepreneurial complex that now threatens our nation. Eisenhower was a soldier who knew the hell of war and, for that knowledge, cherished peace. He cherished peace so much that he warned us of our time’s dangerous conflict of interest between the business of war and a foreign policy of peace. Had Eisenhower seen Cheney climb back and forth from the bed of war profiteering to the bed of government power, I am certain he would shudder at the insanity that is the norm in our nation today.