no one will end this until there’s no oil there and no more fat contracts—which means never, effectively.

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 actions 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. I mention two only.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

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 State house, 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 militaryindustrial 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.

It’s the last speech he gave as President and he used it to warn against the military-industrial complex. The man had his priorities right, IMO.

The entire speech can be found -http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

there was way way too much money to be made—and sweet no-bid and crony contracts to dish out.

just bec the cold war ended is no reason the gravy train has to is their thought.

it’s right up there with smedley butler (a Marine, i know) and some FDR and Jefferson stuff. sigh. ike would be ashamed to be a republican today.

I remember my grandfather talking about Ike’s warnings in the 1980s under Reagan. He figured that a former General ought to know what he was talking about when he talked about a military-industrial complex and if Old Ike was worried in the 1950s, he would’ve been terrified and furious by the time the 1980s rolled around. By which time, of course, it was a Republican - Ronald Reagan - working to shovel as much money into the military-industrial complex as he possibly could.

People talk about the Iraq recession, totally ignoring how much of our economic boom in the past few years has been due to Iraq and the GWOT. If you make your economy dependent on war, you’re going to have wars. It’s that simple.

we’ve cut up and sold off almost all of the industry that made this country great. and what we haven’t, we’ve molded into a profit-centric corporate model that is all about the short term. so if you’re rich and powerful, what’s left to invest in? that’s how i’m looking at things these days. the global economy means our rich masters don’t bother with the ideology of nations. today they rape and kill and exploit chinese peasants from the western provinces, south asian people who have no real choices except to make plastic junk so a dictator can be richer. tomorrow it wil be a migrant laborer in the US, yesterday it was a call center worker in bangalore. i hate globalization.

bah. i’m so grumpy today. i’ll stop now. i’ll just add that peak oil ends a lot of this silliness. when we can’t afford the cost of shipping that shit here, they’ll sell it someplace else. and then, i hope, we can get on to the business of sustainable economic exchange here. it’s not like we have a choice, “realistically.”

I don’t understand much, so please explain a couple of things slowly and with small words.

“totally ignoring how much of our economic boom in the past few years has been due to Iraq and the GWOT”

Perhaps I’m ignorant. Has there been an “economic boom” over the last few years? How much, and for whom?

Such “boom” as there may be, how has any aspect of the national economy benefited from the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan?

My view, limited as it may be, is that since 1900 war has never been economically beneficial to the US economy, as a whole. Some segments, very small ones, made money but not for the country as a whole. If there is evidence that modern war does enrich us, please educate me.

I don’t think the point is that modern war has enriched “us”, per se, “us” being the American people as whole, a lot of whom have been struggling since 2001.*

But the wealthy have benefited from the war, and the military industrial complex. And so many industries, that aren’t obviously connected to the “military”, have been given a temporary boost by the war, and this has had a trickle down effect, to other parts of the economy, like the shadow banking system.

It is only now, that the economy is starting to hit those who have plenty to lose, and those who can afford to save and invest money, but not really lose. These people are being hit by the collapse of the shadow banking industry, which I will surmise, got a lot of capital to screw around with from the boost from the war in those “M-I” industries. So the boom from the war did benefit the overall economy, in a sense. But now, the truth about how war screws over the American economy, is coming to light, because of the shadow banking collapse.

*When I made the decision to keep my unplanned pregnancy, our prospects were good(we weren’t going to affluent any time soon, but we would get by). In the eight months it took me to deliver my daughter, the economy tanked, and we have been struggling in and out of poverty ever since.

Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!

In attempting to be short, I probably overstated my case. Instead, I meant more along the lines of what Aeryl said. I didn’t mean to suggest these have been boom times by any means. And there are certainly economic downsides to war, but wars - both conventional and against terror - pump a lot of money into the economy. Not just government money, but in the case of the GWOT, private companies paying for security upgrades, etc. And it seems to me that we’ve been on the verge of a recession forever and, while not the only factor, in some areas I do think defense and government and private sector spending on security have played a factor in preventing recession. See, for example, http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resourc… and http://www.black-collegian.com/news/spec… .

Of course, in many ways, it’s a long-term disaster, but nobody seems to think long-term anymore.

In May of 2007 the think-tank Center for Economic and Policy Research released a report estimating the economic impact of increased U.S. military spending comparable to the spending on the Iraq war.

The report, presenting the results of a simulation from the economic forecasting company Global Insight, shows the increased level of military spending leads to fewer jobs and slower economic growth.

-snip-

“It is often believed that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy. In fact, most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment” [author Dean Baker]

Chalmers Johnson wrote an article in Le Monde this last February titled “Why the US has really gone broke: The economic disaster that is military Keynesianism.” Well worth a read; here is an excerpt:

There are three broad aspects to the US debt crisis. First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money on “defence” projects that bear no relation to the national security of the US. We are also keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segment of the population at strikingly low levels.

Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures — “military Keynesianism” (which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic). By that, I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.

Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of the US. These are what economists call opportunity costs, things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world’s number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing.

Without physical conquest, without obtaining land into which a population can expand or resources stripped from the conquered and carried off, militarism is always a net cost and a drag on the economy. Any short-term gain is illusory; it always comes at a price greater than the apparent benefit.

The claim that militarism and war are reliably economically beneficial is a rightwing lie, and should never be propagated in any way.