The Military-Industrial Complex is Ruining the Economy

Everyone knows that the too big to fails and their dishonest and
footsy-playing regulators and politicians are largely responsible for
trashing the economy.

But the military-industrial complex shares much of the blame.

Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that the Iraq war will cost $3-5 trillion dollars.

Sure, experts say that the Iraq war has increased the threat of terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this and this. And we launched the Iraq war based on the false linkage of Saddam and 9/11, and knowingly false claims that Saddam had WMDs. And top British officials, former CIA director George Tenet, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and many others say that the Iraq war was planned before 9/11.  But this essay is about dollars and cents.

America
is also spending a pretty penny in Afghanistan. The U.S. admits there
are only a small handful of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. As ABC notes:

U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country.

With
100,000 troops in Afghanistan at an estimated yearly cost of $30
billion, it means that for every one al Qaeda fighter, the U.S. will
commit 1,000 troops and $300 million a year.

Sure, the government apparently planned the Afghanistan war before 9/11 (see this and this). And the Taliban offered to turn over Bin Laden (see this and this). And we could have easily killed Bin Laden in 2001 and again in 2007,
but chose not to, even though that would have saved the U.S. hundreds
of billions of dollars in costs in prosecuting the Afghanistan war.But this essay is about dollars and cents.

Increasing the Debt Burden of a Nation Sinking In Debt

All of the spending on unnecessary wars adds up.

The U.S. is adding trillions to its debt burden to finance its multiple wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc.

Two
top American economists - Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff - show
that the more indebted a country is, with a government debt/GDP ratio
of 0.9, and external debt/GDP of 0.6 being critical thresholds, the
more GDP growth drops materially.

Specifically, Reinhart and Rogoff write:

The
relationship between government debt and real GDP growth is weak for
debt/GDP ratios below a threshold of 90 percent of GDP. Above 90
percent, median growth rates fall by one percent, and average growth
falls considerably more. We find that the threshold for public debt is
similar in advanced and emerging economies...

Indeed, it should be obvious to anyone who looks at the issue that deficits do matter.

A PhD economist told me:

War always
causes recession. Well, if it is a very short war, then it may
stimulate the economy in the short-run. But if there is not a quick
victory and it drags on, then wars always put the nation waging war
into a recession and hurt its economy.

You know about America's unemployment problem. You may have even heard that the U.S. may very well have suffered a permanent destruction of jobs.

But did you know that the defense employment sector is booming?

As I pointed out
in August, public sector spending - and mainly defense spending - has
accounted for virtually all of the new job creation in the past 10
years:

The U.S. has largely been financing job creation
for ten years. Specifically, as the chief economist for BusinessWeek,
Michael Mandel, points out, public spending has accounted for virtually
all new job creation in the past 1o years:

Private sector job growth was almost non-existent over the past ten years. Take a look at this horrifying chart:

Between
May 1999 and May 2009, employment in the private sector sector only
rose by 1.1%, by far the lowest 10-year increase in the post-depression
period.

It’s impossible to overstate how bad this is. Basically
speaking, the private sector job machine has almost completely stalled
over the past ten years. Take a look at this chart:

Over
the past 10 years, the private sector has generated roughly 1.1 million
additional jobs, or about 100K per year. The public sector created
about 2.4 million jobs.

But even that gives the private sector
too much credit. Remember that the private sector includes health care,
social assistance, and education, all areas which receive a lot of
government support.

***

Most
of the industries which had positive job growth over the past ten years
were in the HealthEdGov sector. In fact, financial job growth was
nearly nonexistent once we take out the health insurers.

Let me finish with a final chart.

Without
a decade of growing government support from rising health and education
spending and soaring budget deficits, the labor market would have been
flat on its back. [120]

Raw Story argues that the U.S. is building a largely military economy:

The
use of the military-industrial complex as a quick, if dubious, way of
jump-starting the economy is nothing new, but what is amazing is the
divergence between the military economy and the civilian economy, as
shown by this New York Times chart.

In
the past nine years, non-industrial production in the US has declined
by some 19 percent. It took about four years for manufacturing to
return to levels seen before the 2001 recession -- and all those gains
were wiped out in the current recession.

By contrast, military
manufacturing is now 123 percent greater than it was in 2000 -- it has
more than doubled while the rest of the manufacturing sector has been
shrinking...

It's important to note the trajectory -- the military
economy is nearly three times as large, proportionally to the rest of
the economy, as it was at the beginning of the Bush administration. And
it is the only manufacturing sector showing any growth. Extrapolate
that trend, and what do you get?

The change in leadership in Washington does not appear to be abating that trend...[121]

So
most of the job creation has been by the public sector. But because the
job creation has been financed with loans from China and private banks,
trillions in unnecessary interest charges have been incurred by the U.S.

So
we're running up our debt (which will eventually decrease economic growth), but
the only jobs we're creating are military and other public sector jobs.

PhD economist Dean Baker points out that America's massive military spending on unnecessary and unpopular wars lowers economic growth and increases unemployment:

Defense
spending means that the government is pulling away resources from the
uses determined by the market and instead using them to buy weapons and
supplies and to pay for soldiers and other military personnel. In
standard economic models, defense spending is a direct drain on the
economy, reducing efficiency, slowing growth and costing jobs.

A
few years ago, the Center for Economic and Policy Research commissioned
Global Insight, one of the leading economic modeling firms, to project
the impact of a sustained increase in defense spending equal to 1.0
percentage point of GDP. This was roughly equal to the cost of the Iraq
War.

Global Insight’s model projected that after 20 years the
economy would be about 0.6 percentage points smaller as a result of the
additional defense spending. Slower growth would imply a loss of almost
700,000 jobs compared to a situation in which defense spending had not
been increased. Construction and manufacturing were especially big job
losers in the projections, losing 210,000 and 90,000 jobs, respectively.

The scenario we asked Global Insight [recognized as the most consistently accurate
forecasting company in the world] to model turned out to have vastly
underestimated the increase in defense spending associated with current
policy. In the most recent quarter, defense spending was equal to 5.6
percent of GDP. By comparison, before the September 11th attacks, the
Congressional Budget Office projected that defense spending in 2009
would be equal to just 2.4 percent of GDP. Our post-September 11th
build-up was equal to 3.2 percentage points of GDP compared to the
pre-attack baseline. This means that the Global Insight projections of
job loss are far too low...

The projected job loss from this increase in defense spending would be close to 2 million.
In other words, the standard economic models that project job loss from
efforts to stem global warming also project that the increase in
defense spending since 2000 will cost the economy close to 2 million
jobs in the long run.

The Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst has also shown that non-military spending creates more jobs than military spending.

So we're running up our debt - which will eventually decrease economic growth - and
creating many fewer jobs than if we spent the money on non-military
purposes.

But the War on Terror is Urgent for Our National Security, Isn't It?

For
those who still think that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are necessary
to fight terrorism, remember that a leading advisor to the U.S.
military - the very hawkish and pro-war Rand Corporation - released a
study in 2008 called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida".

The report confirms that the war on terror is actually weakening national security. As a press release about the study states:

"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."

Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate that the war on terror is "a mythical historical narrative". And Newsweek has now admitted that the war on terror is wholly unnecessary.

In
fact, starting right after 9/11 -- at the latest -- the goal has always
been to create "regime change" and instability in Iraq, Iran, Syria,
Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Lebanon; the goal was never really to destroy
Al Qaeda. As American reporter Gareth Porter writes in Asia Times:

Three
weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense
secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of
not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning
the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the
Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then-under
secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith's recently published
account of the Iraq war decisions. Feith's account further indicates
that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by
military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the
country's top military leaders.

Feith's book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling
for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden's
al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing "new regimes" in a
series of states...

***

General
Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars
being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list
of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz
wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and
Somalia [and Lebanon].

***

When
this writer asked Feith . . . which of the six regimes on the Clark
list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, "All of them."

***

The
Defense Department guidance document made it clear that US military
aims in regard to those states would go well beyond any ties to
terrorism. The document said the Defense Department would also seek to
isolate and weaken those states and to "disrupt, damage or destroy"
their military capacities - not necessarily limited to weapons of mass
destruction (WMD)...

Rumsfeld's paper was
given to the White House only two weeks after Bush had approved a US
military operation in Afghanistan directed against bin Laden and the
Taliban regime. Despite that decision, Rumsfeld's proposal called
explicitly for postponing indefinitely US airstrikes and the use of
ground forces in support of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in order
to try to catch bin Laden.

Instead, the
Rumsfeld paper argued that the US should target states that had
supported anti-Israel forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

***

After
the bombing of two US embassies in East Africa [in 1988] by al-Qaeda
operatives, State Department counter-terrorism official Michael Sheehan
proposed supporting the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan
against bin Laden's sponsor, the Taliban regime. However, senior US
military leaders "refused to consider it", according to a 2004 account
by Richard H Shultz, Junior, a military specialist at Tufts University.

A senior officer on the Joint Staff told State Department counter-terrorism director Sheehan he had heard terrorist strikes characterized more than once by colleagues as a "small price to pay for being a superpower".

If you still believe that the war on terror is necessary, please read this.

Torture is Bad for the Economy

For those who still think torture is a necessary evil, you might be
interested to learn that top experts in interrogation say that,
actually:

• Torture doesn't work in providing information which will keep us safe

• Torture actually reduces our national security and creates new terrorists 

• Most of those tortured were innocent

Indeed, historians tell us that torture has been used throughout history - not to gain information - but as a form of intimidation, to terrorize people into obedience.  In other words, at its core, torture is a form of terrorism.

Moreover, the type of torture used by the U.S. in the last 10 years is of a special type. Senator Levin revealed that the U.S. used torture techniques aimed at extracting false confessions.

McClatchy subsequently filled in some of the details:

Former
senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue
said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq
collaboration...

For most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and
Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al
Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and
others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA
interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees
repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid
Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released
Justice Department document...

When people kept coming up empty,
they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he
continued."Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA
. . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that
pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam . . .

A
former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army
investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties
between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of
the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida
and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al
Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The
more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . .
. there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might
produce more immediate results."

"I think it's obvious that the
administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link
(between al Qaida and Iraq)," [Senator] Levin said in a conference call
with reporters. "They made out links where they didn't exist."

Levin
recalled Cheney's assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer
had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech
Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.

In
other words, top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied
about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they
pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods
aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false
linkage. See also this and this.

Paul Krugman eloquently summarized the truth about the type of torture used:

Let’s
say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a
pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.

There’s a word for this: it’s evil.

But since this essay in on dollars and cents, the important point is that terrorism is bad for the economy.

Specifically, a study by Harvard and NBER points out:

From an economic standpoint, terrorism has been described
to have four main effects (see, e.g., US Congress, Joint Economic
Committee, 2002). First,
the capital stock (human and physical) of a country is reduced as a
result of terrorist attacks. Second, the terrorist threat induces
higher levels of uncertainty. Third, terrorism promotes increases in
counter-terrorism expenditures, drawing resources from productive
sectors for use in security. Fourth, terrorism is known to affect
negatively specific industries such as tourism.

The Harvard/NBER concludes:

In accordance with the predictions of the model, higher levels of
terrorist risks are associated with lower levels of net foreign direct
investment positions, even after controlling for other types of country
risks. On average, a standard deviation increase in the terrorist risk
is associated with a fall in the net foreign direct investment position of about 5 percent of GDP.

So
the more unnecessary wars American launches, the more innocent
civilians we kill, and the more people we torture, the less foreign
investment in America, the more destruction to our capital stock, the
higher the level of uncertainty, the more counter-terrorism
expenditures and the less expenditures in more productive sectors, and
the greater the hit to tourism and some other industries.

Moreover:

Terrorism has contributed to a decline in the global economy (for example, European Commission, 2001).

So military adventurism and torture, which increase terrorism, hurt the world economy.   And see this.

For the foregoing reasons, the military-industrial complex is ruining the economy.

Comments

[loup garou]

Dolt Parrot’s Blog

I Hate Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, by Dolt Parrot
(Copy-and-pasted from a gazillion previous blogs by Dolt Parrot)

“I hate Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. I hate Bush/Cheney Rumsfeld. I hate Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld…
I hate the CIA and the Military Industrial Complex. I hate the CIA and the Military Industrial Complex…”

See this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this previous blog.

Comments:

Lefty O‘Tool: “Well said, Dolt! I’ve hated Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld ever since they personally blew up the Sears Tower in 1929 using nano-thermometers from a Cracker Jack box.”

Anonymous: “I agree. Excellent article, Dolt. Very original. And such wonderful sources, like Moonbats-R-Us.”

Rod Munch: “Yeah, und verry welll ritten. Now I nede to get back to ECW wrassling.”

Dolt Parrot‘s Brother: “It can’t be repeated often enough. It can’t be repeated often enough. It can’t be repeated often enough.”

The Anti-American Way: “Kudos, Dolt. What kind of idiots don’t realize that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld are the root of all evil?”

Anonymous: “Right on, Dolt. Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld need to stop spending money on wars, so I can get another free golf cart.”

Andre Pissantski: “Anyone who disagrees is a Nazi and a troll and stuff.”

Twisted Sistercian: “I agree, Pissant. It’s too bad the huddled neo-con masses can’t be intellectually and morally superior like we are.”

Freakazoid #9: “Dittoes. Anything bad that has ever happened, or ever will happen, is the fault of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld.”

Way Out Willie: “I heard that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld are in still in power, and that Obama is just a holographic image being manufactured by the CIA and the Military Industrial Complex.”

Anonymous: “I heard that Tiger Woods would’ve never been caught cheating on his wife, except that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld tortured a confession out of him.”

Derelict: “I got a flat tire on the way to the liquor store today. I know it was Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld.”

Cumbaya Boy: “Kids should be taught in school to ‘just say no’ to Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld.”

Cognac Dissident: “My life is one of hellish oppression. I may never recover. I‘m considering suicide. All because of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Goldman Sachs…. OK, sorry. I had to add that last part.”

Delatwat: “The CIA and the Military Industrial Complex ate my homework.”

And so it goes…

//yawn//

[Anonymous]

Its very 1984 all this. I need to read the book again but the government were fighting wars in strange far off places for vague reasons too.

Atlas Shrugged and 1984 seems are the manuals for what's happening and coming.

Kind of ashamed to be human right now, we are a pretty sad bunch......

[Anonymous]

Military-Industrial-CONGRESSIONAL Complex, if you please. Been there, done that. Congress regularly funds stuff the military doesn't even want, just to please the folks in the district. Having been a "contract adminstrator" in private sector, I've seen this first hand. More than once.

For the rest of it, I'm sorry Mr. Legrande had to get so snotty, because his point was well taken. This post was 99% lefty talking points, some of them so old they've turned to stone, and 90% of them have been refuted by mosre responsible journalists and/or bloggers.

What also interested me was the number, (and lengths) of supporting comments. Were they lined up in advance of the post?

[Uncle Remus]

Meh. BFD GW.

American exceptionalism and entitlement mentality are ruining America - "Military-Industrial Complex" and the destroyed economy is a symptom and garners the most attention only because it isn't a socialist program for the lumpen. Even without foreign wars, we would still be up a financial shit creek without a paddle.

Nothing anyone types here or anyplace else will change anything or any minds. Everybody, and I mean everybody knows what needs to be done - it's as obvious as a hard-on in a Speedo. Until there's action, nobody is right and everybody is wrong.

[Anonymous]

@Mr. Legrand
Once more you are given the chance to write a thout ful reply to Mr. Washington who cites muttiple links but end up resorting to name calling. This is the tactic of second class minds who believe by shouting the loudest they will win the arguement. It has been the tactic of the amreican right for years. He who shouts the loudist wins. I can vouch for most of the links Washington mentions.

to cite the pentagon is just plain silly. You've got to find other sources.

george tennet was given the highest medal of honor an american citizen can be given who is not in the armed forces by president Bush. It is hard to believe that he would falsely state the events that happened.

At this point in time the amount of evidence that Bush drove us into a false war is overhwelming and agreed to by many sources even in his administration. It appears that you are overly emotional and just don't want to see the truth, are unable to see the truth, or have an adgenda that doesn't want the truth revealed. Nobody likes to discover they have been fooled by their leaders who they voted for. (It makes them feel stupid). hence because they feel it makes them look bad they aren't able to adjust to reality.

I voted for Mr. Obama, I was suckered into his message of change. I was wrong in my choice as the overwhelming amount of evidence shows him to be just another corporate stooge. I recognize many still haven't made this leap (that I made many months ago), but I belive it is for the same emotional reasons I have mentioned.

I do not believe those who supported Hitler understood until too late the mistake they made. Emotional issues prevented them for seeing themselves as "suckers". it is a shame you aren't willing to see reality as well.

May I suggest you read 1984 again. You will quickly see many events in that book that are in fact happening now. If you don't believe the government and big industry strive to maniplate the public for their own benefit just look at bernanke. He has never admitted to the role he played in the financial crisis. He says the problems was regulations, not the Fed, but the Fed is the ultimate banking regulator. he ignored the FBI when they mentioned there was maiive mortgage fraud going on, etc.

bernanke was the mugger who shoots you while stealing your wallet. Instead of letting you bleed to death he put a tourniquet on the wound so an ambulence could save you. Now the media and government proclaim him a savior for preventing you from bleeding to death from the very would he caused. This is pure governemt and press manipulation.

can we add the fact the The NY fed tried to hide and cover up AIG releasing data to the SEC. I do not see how with recent current events you continue to buy into what is clearly manipulation. It defies all logic. does the fact that the board who now controls AIG are all members of the fed strike you as odd, that we haven't gotten the data, and that the fed continues to do everything in it's power to keep data hidden strike you as stange. These events should not inspire trust in government.

I am sure if you wrote something well written with good supporting data ZH would publish it. You have never made the effort as far as I can tell, and your replies lack any convincing support that goes against Mr. Washington. It's a shame, but the way to make Mr. Washington look bad is to put more effort into supporint your beliefs. The antiestablishemnt view aways takes the most effort to write as the public does not hear these events. You shoud have ample material to choose from. Please do a bette job, or avoid posting. it just makes you look foolish. Regardless of yorur viewpoint you can not do anything but applaud Mr. Washington's efforts to get his point across and he does so in a very professional manner

[Anonymous]

"We launched the Iraq war based on the false linkage of Saddam and 9/11?" Please check the declaration of war or the the UN resolution authorizing the use of force. You won't see that in there.

[the american way]

Mr. George Washington,

thank you for a comprehensive and well written article.  The facts speak for themselves, even though one, as an american, does not want to look at some of them.  It is painful to realize that  our leadership has let us down so thoroughly and completely.  I for one believe that the root cause for some of these seemingly (on the surface) foolish decisions is the religious fundamentalism that has permeated our leaders, especially those in the previous administration (google "the family").  when one wants an armageddon, so that we can all live as "saved" in a new life, then more war is not a bad thing, and, making progress on living peacefully in the world only prevents the coming of the rapture.

[Anonymous]

Who is a genuine Consevative? One cannot be a C and
love The State. It's simply not possible.

[Anonymous]

The total costs incurred to war is overshadowed and overrun by a Nation bent on Stimulus, Health Care and Bailouts.

We have been at war since the United States Marines were blown up in Beirut way back in the early 80's

We have had to fight off the Viet Cong and come home to a Nation who turned back.

We went to Korea and a place called Chosin, kept a road open so that hundreds of thousands can get out from the Chinese. We are still in a state of war, abiet a armed truce.

We fought in a World War Twice. For us that was something.

We were to fight the Spanish and also our own Wild West.

There is a little matter of the American Civil War, States Rights and a way of life versus industry and freedom. I think in some ways, we aint truly settled it.

I believe it was Jackson who organized a defense of our Gulf Coast, calling in Peoples with thier long guns from all parts of the Nation.

The English came to our lands in 1812. For some reason they were unable to stay.

We also captured slavers and fought piracy and foreign lands that tried to impose thier will against a young United States attempting to trade freely. We are still involved in that today. Merask Alabama comes to mind; or perhaps Commodore Perry and his small Squadron in Tripoli.

We fought the English in a great Revolution time and time again we take it on the chin. But eventually we were able to hang in there and earn our freedom.

Need I go on?

Everything we do, have done and will do is bought and paid for with American Blood for Liberty and Freedom.

I think of the Roman Empire or perhaps of the Huns or maybe the Northumberlands against the Vikings.

Time and time again fighting is necessary. Anything that supports that is good for the Country. Things to industry for the Military and the Health Care to take care of those blown up, shot up, mentally fatigued or hurt.

We at least owe our Marines, Sailors, Airmen, Soldiers and Coasties that much.

[Anonymous]

I think if you change the title of your post from Military-Industrial Complex to Military-Financial Complex. Where Military-Financial Complex equals Vampire Squid then you end up with:

Military-Industrial Complex ==

Military-Financial Complex ==

Vampire Squid

rules the economy (World).

[Anonymous]

Oh please, everyone should know by now that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are really energy wars.

With that part of the world surrounded by Russia and China, the Americans had only one entrance point and that was through the belligerent sphincter in order to gain access to the vast oil and gas fields from Azerbaijan all the way to Tajikistan.

In fact the Tripartite powers, (China, Russia, US), are probably working in cahoots with each other to either cajole, our outright steal (Iraq) the vast oil and gas reserves of those countries.

The US being the only nuclear superpower with the ability at this time, (deep water Navy and long distance Air Force capability), to conduct such operations, they are being used as the hammer against the other 'Stans nearly immovable anvil.

While the Americans play war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, the other 'Stans can see which way the wind is blowing and readily make deals not in their citizens best interest.

The US, Russia, and China need vast amounts of energy to drive their economies and are willing to do all most anything to gain access to it even if it means killing millions of people in those countries to get at the energy. (Humans being easily replacable from the Vampire Squids point of view.) (Look Japan and Germany were nearly bombed into oblivion during WW2 and easily bounced back economically.)

Althoug this analysis is crude and simplistic, why else would the Chinese and the Russians tolerate the Americans waging war in their respective spheres of influence. In the old days the Russians would have sent vast armies to counter these incusions, just as the Indians and Chinese are still fighting border wars to this day.

The Chinese weren't buying all those Treasuries because they thought it would convince Americans to buy their cheap manufactured goods, they did it knowing full well that those dollars would be used to fund the wars in the Middle East helping them gain access to vital energy reserves.

As we can see from recent posts on Zero Hedge, the plan, if their ever was an official one, is working well since the 'Stans are readily signing up deals with not only the Russians but the Chinese to supply oil and gas to their respective populations and eventually populations in Europe, Japan, and Korea.

Although you may think you see the obvious flaw in my analysis, namely that the Americans seem to be the losers in this whole geo-political game plan, as in, we seem to be fighting the wars but are not benefitting from access to cheap oil and gas.

But, the agreement was that we would fight the wars while the Russians and Chinese build the pipelines. The Chinese would fund the wars through Treasury purchases and the Russians would supply the Europeans with reasonably cheap energy while the Chinese are supplied with energy for their cheap manufacturing base. As more pipelines are built, energy supply spills over benefitting the Japanese and Koreans. We then set our sights on the oil and gas reserves down in South America. Why else are we building bases down in Columbia? To stop the flow of cocain and maryjane coming north? No my ignorant friend, to gain access to the newly discovered energy reserves in that section of South America.

All the rest is subterfuge and disinformation put out to placate the masses and keep the criminal enterprise going. Look its either that or we have all three superpowers going full bore at each other militarily over the vast energy fields located in those parts of the world.

Why bother fighting each other when all we have to do is steal or cajole and subjugate those countries into giving us what we want. And by us I mean the US, Russian, and China.

Listen, you have to think like a Vampire Squid with designs on the order of a world wide criminal enterprise that includes drug dealing, money laundering, and global control of mallable world populations, among other criminal enterprises.

It would be nice if we could all go back to the good ole days of the agrarian republic with the likes of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin, but those days never really existed except in historic romantic myths.

We live in the real world of today, and that real world is controlled by the blood sucking Vampire Squid. You may not like that fact, but it is reality.

[Anonymous]

go man go - keep up the good work george....i am so sick of the psycho-warriors who justify war to end depressions, cure terrorism, or solve oil crises especially when none of those problems is ever solved by violence and murder but always made worse....

i can assure you that the military industrial complex is in complete and total control of the usa....the elected visible part of government is a total farce....john kennedy lost control of his administration on key foreign and domestic policy issues and single handedly had to fight the state department, dept of defense, and nsa from carrying out a first strike on cuba and the ussr during the cuban missle crisis...those stupid subhuman trogladytes thought nuclear war was the solution to the world's problems....

one reason kennedy was murdered by these criminals was because he had ordered 1000 troops out of vietnam by the end of 1963 and was seeking detente with cuba....he was branded a traitor for pursuing peace....the mic wanted war to line their pockets and increase control over the world....

the cia is the most sinister entity in the world with only occasional competition from the fed.....the cia is legendary in creating confusing and deceptive ruses to stir up war and trouble....bay of pigs was one, 9/11 another...these fuckers have an iron stranglehold on america and it cannot be removed short of divine intervention....the murderers have proxies trolling this thread to justify their heinous evil....

the fed-cia axis of evil is involved in so much fakery and destruction that it boggles the mind....the fbi and cia collaborated in the murder of martin luther king - and is documented in the 1999 king civil case against one of the participants....this activity carries down to the present time with that arab murderer who was killing people in the northeast a few years ago out of a white van....the ft hood incident was another cia-op....these killers are mk-ultra mind control agents just as the murderer of rfk and john lennon were....

i can't believe that people can't see through this shit although at one time i was a nuke-em into the stone age cold warrior....amerika is lost and hopeless and governed by evil men and equally evil citizenry who fail to acknowledge and rise up against the monstrosities....

[mchawe]

David Chandler's short video (4.36 min) entitled, "Cutter Charges in the North Tower of the WTC"

here http://www.ae911truth.org/

Case proved........

[Anonymous]

GW - Good post. Great of you to remind people how ill-conceived, poorly executed wars should be on the top of our list of things to eliminate.

As a conservative, I find it ironic and funny the amount of resistance and vehemence todays party republican place in stonewalling $10B of spending they dont like... but they dont resist $1T of actually harmful war spending.

D. Eisenhower - "I hate war... like only a solider who has lived it can."

Eisenhower is most associated with your title phase of the "military industrial complex" and he also understood well that some basic human progress in govt is good (social security was the issue of his day). Maybe today we are ready for health care? I dont know... but I do know, that overtime basic public services are net positives:

public education >> social security >> medicare >> healthcare?

I would like to see more discussion about how to do each with less waste and more positive effects. I WANT to RATION and constantly improve each. Shouldn't we all?

[Wizened Variations]

I had a bit of trouble with the last paragraph of my previous entry:

The costs, both financial, and sociological will be viewed through the lens of a huge, restless, underclass that will have to be sedated until the memories of our rich 20th Century are buried with the death of those that witnessed them.

We talk, and, debate our economic malaise as though issues can be separated into neat little boxes, defined by our political prejudices.  We can only sense 'through a glass darkly' what our Nation's future might be in a world of 9 billion people, where our children and grandchildren live in our ruins.  

[theprofromdover]

Aaah, Cheney and Rumsfeld,

a pair of very naughty boys..............

One day Justice will knock at their door.

[Anonymous]

https://www.siteintelgroup.com/Pages/Default.aspx

mossad operation and the ....only....yes i said ....only...
source of "al quaeda" tapes....

isn't that special?

but all you soldiers out there and believers in this false war just keep on believing and chasing ghost and fighting and dying for nothing. you can keep doing what you are doing or stop. stop and realize that you have been had and are being used for a purpose. or you can just play the game of pretend and maybe you might feel it is easier to believe the lie that it is to go against the grain so to speak. the option is yours. i remember when i first saw carpenters starting to come in my barracks at ft benning georgia in 1971. i asked them what they were doing. they said they were there to build rooms because we were starting the new modern volunteer army. i being a draftee, thought to myself. cool. no more draft. but the concept troubled me and i kept it in the back of my mind all these years. why would they do this i thought? so now , fast forward to the year 2010 and we see full well what is going on. with the dumbing down in american schools, that has taken place all of these many years, it is quite apparent that the useful cannon fodder in the form of volunteers for this modern volunteer zionist american mercenary army of the 21st century, is fully manned by mind numbed robots who do not even know they are being used because they do not understand how to reason and to think for themselves. so i feel that this plan has been in effect for a very long time and now the realization of the end game for this overall plan is now in full effect and is bearing fruit. drink up boys and die for them. they don't care.

[Anonymous]

So in one word we are talking about corruption. On the right. AND on the left.

Quoting Paul Krugman is an ugly way to present fact.

[Wizened Variations]

The irony of our 21st Century wars is that the impending economic implosion will end these wars, regardless of how the US does on the ground'

Despite our belief suites, and, despite our desire to separate the reasons for war from the costs of the these wars, we cannot ignore these costs as part of what triggered our current decline. 

Before our multiple decade long downward adjustment is complete, all aspects of the genesis of the debacle will be debated and then cast in the historical prejudices of the time.  The costs, both financial, and sociological will be viewed through the lens of  through the lens of a huge, restless, underclass that will have to be sedated until the memories of our rich 20th Century are buried with the death that witnessed them.

[pros]

This huge force (much of it mercenary) is built and trained in Afghanistan/Iraq, but is designed to fight in NY and Los Angeles.

Who will be the Caesar to cross the Rubicon?

Congressmen who contemplated votes against TARP were informed that the failure to approve TARP would result in widespread civil disorder and that there were not sufficient troops to guarantee the safety of the legislative branch.

[spanish inquisition]

They share the blame because they are an integral part of our foreign policy.

If a country has specific resources or a key location, here is a list of escalation, whether they are a democracy or a dictatorship.

1. Give them money to be our friend. This implies be our puppet and do what we say. If this does not work, then move down the list. This could take 20 years..

2. Fund opposing factions within the government or regime (subtle regime change).

3. Create freedom fighters to overthrow regime (for freedom and democracy!).

4. If your victorious freedom fighters want you out of their country. Label freedom fighters that you created as terrorists.

5. Rattle sabers, fire up the media machine around the world. (well, the 4 guys that control it)

6. Go to UN and seek sanctions against your freedom fightersthe terrorist occupiers.

7. Negotiate with terrorist occupiers while trying to enlist the UN (or build a coalition) for military action. Plant info, evidence and create false flags. Make sure to ask for outlandish demands that are impossible to be agreed to use media to paint they are not negotiating in good faith ploy.

8. Attack anyway. Remember it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Besides, once in country you can easily plant evidence to back up your earlier assertions.

9. Let freedom and democracy rule! Oh, and start building prisons (well insulated in case someone stubs his toe and needs to scream)...

10. Continue laying the groundwork for the peace! (add another 20 years). This will entail rigging elections to keep the right people in place to maintain the correct path. Creating business opportunities (drugs) to increase cash flow to pay for continued loyalty. Moving in the big US campaign donors to do US govt work for inflated sums. Continue until you reach step 1.

It's pretty a pretty broad list, feel free to add to it or correct it. (I am guessing Iceland is at number 2).

[Anonymous]

Intriguing list! This would make for a great project in a history or political science class: have students pick different countries in modern history and see how the students' picks fit this list.

[swmnguy]

Politics aside, you can't take that much money out of the economy without it leaving a mark.  We've drained off a lot of excess production and wealth over the past 50 years; money that would look pretty good in our economy right now in the form of goods, services and jobs contributing to our economy, not rotting in a jungle or subsiding into a sand dune.  From a large-scale economic perspective, disastrous policy.

[Rainman]

The guns or butter economic philosophy is long gone. Now it's just guns and a little butter.

Eisenhower was right with his warning about the dangers of the military/industrial linkage . Getting out of this swamp of wasted resources now will be a long, tough slog......assuming it can be done at all. 

[Anonymous]

Well, GW, first, Happy New Year. Second, I hope your extended comment helped blow off the dangerous level of steam that was accumulating in your system--the adrenaline that riles you to keep that level of detail running in your mind..... whew! I'd have had a heart attack typing all that at 60 wpm.

Okay, I need to keep the discussion on money, since this is Zero Hedge and not the Economist, or The Nation, or National Review, or the Catholic Digest.....BTW do you really pay attention to any economist? Other than the apocryphal one who noted "In the long run, we're all dead"?

First, some satire--So, how do I make a trade based on your judgment of the current situation? HAL and its black-ops spinoff (I forget the symbol), LMT, XOM, perhaps BP are the large caps that benefit from our immoral, greedy obsession with being dependent on foreign oil. BTW, guess who still has oil after we've consumeed all theirs? Those environmentalists-- you gotta hand it to them. Way smarter than us.

Keeping those Wahabists stirred up in the SW Asia region helps NSA-dependent information companies. Patriot Act abusers? T, VZ, GOOG. Full body scanners to catch those poor terrorist wannabes? GE. You think the porn business will want some of those photos? Maxim Properties.

Now serious--GW, there will always be screwups like the last decade, and the one before that, and the one before that, and the one before that....or do you forget LBJ's/Nixon's Vietnam? Truman's Korea? Not blaming them, they meant well...but as a retired AF, Bible-thumping Baptist, I long ago concluded the world is bent on entropy, that it will take Jesus to return to heal it, and so we should at least attempt to stave off that entropy in order to give some a better life than they would otherwise have had.

I suspect those Iraqi women who won't be raped by Saddam's crazy sons have benefited, and there are others, particularly the Kurds in the north. On balance, making the LARGE value calculations, have we done more good than harm in Iraq? Probably. All Dubya did was actually do what his predecessors knew ultimately had to be done. The rhetoric was irrelevant.

I suspect you'd benefit more from an examination of your state of faith, GW, rather than micro-accounting the decimal places of value that have no bearing on the global decisions made by the Big Boys. Instead, ask God how you could serve Him better from the profits of your trading success to make the lives of those hurt by our leader's actions better. You could at least look in the mirror and smile, knowing you were the feet and hands of Jesus today.
Regards,
Colodude

[Anonymous]

"I suspect those Iraqi women who won't be raped by Saddam's crazy sons have benefited, and there are others, particularly the Kurds in the north. On balance, making the LARGE value calculations, have we done more good than harm in Iraq? Probably. All Dubya did was actually do what his predecessors knew ultimately had to be done. The rhetoric was irrelevant."

Utter nonsense. History's biggest monsters have all used this ends-justify-the-means calculus to rationalize their actions. Incidents of rape have increased as a result of the invasion and occupation. RE: The Kurds -- there will always be winners and losers in such a large geopolitical undertaking, but the US government didn't invade Iraq for altruistic reasons. Like most public justifications for war going back to antiquity, "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was simply a slogan for lumpen consumption. The dispensation of the Kurds has nothing to do with the defense of our country.

The notion that Iraq posed an imminent threat is preposterous. It was a poor, famine-ridden, third world country with a GDP of less than 1% of that of the US, no real industrial capacity to speak of, a joke of a conventional military, and no strategic weapons capabilities.

It was a war of aggression (i.e., the supreme crime against humanity based on the Nuremberg standard) launched over resources. Not just those in Iraq but of the entire region. All of those town-sized permanent bases all over Iraq were for establishing a permanent military presence in the region with border access in particular to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Throw in easy access to other nearby oil producers UAE, Oman and Qatar. So basically US foreign policy can be equated to some crackhead who breaks into your house and kills your family in order to finance his crack habbit.

There was also the neocon/Israel-firster kook factor: “securing the realm” for Israel (http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm), which also has nothing to do with defense of our country.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq has killed over a million, displaced millions, destroyed a society, unleashed a bunch of militant theocrats on same, and simply replaced one despotic regime with another. How you reconcile (rationalize) this with your "faith" I have no idea.

[bugs_]

Tiresome indeed. Should this clown continue

to get top billing on your site Tyler/Marla?

Half of his articles belong here, the other

half belong over at DU and Moveon.

[dnarby]

+1

[Anonymous]

1. After we had been in Iraq for a while, there was limited evidence of chem or bio weapons, not anything consequential considering that Iraq had already used such weapons on its own. What was important to me was the nuclear weapons manufacturing facility in Libya, a rather poor country with no science infrastructure. The centrifuges and nuclear material and most of the techs were supplied by Iraq. This makes sense as the construction of nuclear bombs could continue outside Iraq's borders and in secret. For this reason alone, the war in Iraq paid off.

2. As to all the weapons, the world is a weapons supermarket. Most industrial countries sell planes, subs, tanks, you name it. That we are good at it and sell lots of stuff is fine with me. If someone is choosing between a Swedish and a US tank, I hope they buy ours.

3. As to the expense, almost any amount of money is worth fighting terrorism. Important to remember, almost half the world is too dangerous to even travel. If terrorists have their way, most of the world will be unsafe.

4. As soon as dear leader was elected last year, terrorist events have been increasing, and his inept attempt at national security is laughable.

5. The reason G Bush was so disliked was the same as dear leader, an incessant media stream of criticism.

[Jestocost]

Somebody make them stop....please!

[Fred123]

Tiresome.

[Rollerball]

Certainly our "way" of life is becoming more difficult to justify even though it's sustained by "outside" financing.  Apparently, our super ego is the holy grail, and our creditors agree.  Or are they extorted at gunpoint.  So "we", as the global police, protect the sanctity of 3-D life by weilding the biggest sticks.  The real evil is the lie that corrupts both animus and ego - that money measures quality and deserves protection.  The highest branch is no greater than the deepest root, for neither can survive without the other.

[docj]

Not for nothing, but isn't this something like the 7th or 8th version of, essentially, the same story that's appeared on ZH under your pseudonym in the last couple of months?

All with, esentially, the same material (nothing particularly new, in other words), written just slightly differently?

[docj]

Seriously though: ace.mu.nu, www.blackfive.net

Have at them.

[Tic tock]

GW, fight the battles you can win... and focus on the positive. For how many years have upwardly mobile consumers lived comfortable and isolated? If human society becomes aware of the enchantment and it crumbles away, sure, it'll make conversations exceedingly dull, but imagine, as crime rises, as laws become more draconian..how much fun there's to be had by living on the edge, believing more fully that your loved ones may be mugged or killed or your lives torn from underneath you in moments. 

Isn't that the basic difference between Left and Right, those being the voice of a caring/nanny society and those who say we should each live our precious lives as we see fit?

[Anonymous]

I didn't get sny farther thsn 5 sentences. I will vote in anyone who talks like this. For the baby boomers: Social Security is gone, it went for war.... we went along with it for 60 years and Bush did it in for good, noone raised any stink when Paul O'Neil was fired... we spent it on war.... ok, it was a great cause.... but the government is broke. Ready for retirement?

[2500saturdays]

Here is a link to a 30 minute talk from Malalai Joya in Vancouver a couple of months back promoting her book "A Woman Among Warlords"

http://www.rabble.ca/audio/download/71204/rey-2009-11-28b.mp3

It's 30 MB and 30 minutes of your life but IMHO the truth about what is going on in Afganistan today.

The truth is getting harder to find.

[Nout Wellink]

Somebody showed me a stat last year, projecting the number of deaths caused by:

1. Car accidents

2. Illness

3. Terrorism

The last category was extremely low. Yet we spent hundreds of billions to prevent such events to happen.

[Anonymous]

Two Wall Street Journal articles from yesterday's paper analyze the terrorism threat. The second quotes Harvard scholar Graham Allison, who says "a more rational anti-terrorism policy would focus resources heavily, perhaps almost exclusively, on threats of nuclear and weapons of mass destruction terror. The good news is that, because it requires so much coordination to acquire fissile material, build a nuclear weapon, and successfully detonate it, the international community has many opportunities to stop such catastrophes before they occur—although Mr. Allison and other experts contend that present efforts are inadequate."

The author concludes: "Many object to this sort of analysis—no cost is too high, they say, to prevent the next 9/11. But if history is any guide, the next attack will probably not be like 9/11—it will be like NWA 253, something which threatens the lives of dozens or hundreds of people, not thousands. To the extent we overreact to these incidents—allowing them to disrupt our economy and our way of life—we do little but increase the value to terrorists of committing them."

Undressing the Terrorism Threat:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870413090457464465158767775...

Crunching the Risk Numbers:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870348100457464696371306511...

[Missing_Link]

3. Terrorism

The last category was extremely low.

Hey idiot.  If you'd been paying any attention at all, you'd realize that our efforts at preventing terrorism are not based on what has happened or is happening but what would happen in the future if nothing were done.

After everything we've seen in the last few years where the government gets hit over the head with a brick that it should have seen coming (subprime, CRE, Fannie, Freddie, etc, etc), give the government credit for being proactive about at least ONE real problem.

[DaveyJones]

The "government" also lies about everything including the source and solution of our problems. It uses scapegoats, strawmen, fake news, false flags and all sorts of tricks.

[Enkidu]

"...yet we spend hundreds of billions..." - Yum Yum!

[Anonymous]

We also spend tens if not hundreds of billions on worthless studies and community graft. I would like to think someone who adopts the nom de plume George Washington isn't a straight up kumbaya singer, even when making a valid point about "the complex". Most people don't know that Eisenhower also warned about the Scientific-Industrial Complex as well (think Cap n' Trade), because that wouldn't suit the viewpoint of most who like to dredge that specific speech up.

[Dantzler]

So folks can interpret the quote themselves. No reference to a "scientific-industrial complex" in this speech. A bit of a stretch to cap-n-trade, if you ask me. If anything today we have not "public policy that is the captive of the scientific-technological elite", but rather policy makers that invoke "science" to support their efforts to expand the scope of the state.

D.D.E., 1961

"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers."

 . . . .

"Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=old&doc=90&page=transcript

(disclosure: am a scientist; not a fan of cap-n-trade)

[delacroix]

william colby of the CIA once stated. when everything the american people believe is false, we will have succeeded.

[Mark Beck]

IMHO,

Perhaps William Casey and not William Colby?

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete wheneverything the American public believes is false."

One reference;

http://netctr.com/mediawatch.html

Its a good quote, but I think Casey is the originator. Sorry to say, I have been around long enough to remember. But many after Watergate questioned the CIA control of the press, when the truth shifted power to the media's control. Cooperation comes at a price. So CIA control only goes so far.

Many of the items we discuss on ZH are not hidden, and many times the positive spinology originates from the radio or TV producers own initiative. Most people can see past the propaganda when asked to rationalize, but the element of control is lost when the Government is unsustainable. There is no "game" anymore for the CIA to play. In the Government complex, relatively speaking for expending resources, they are unimportant and unnecessary and no longer control events. Events now control them. They are no longer a player. 

They are lost in the bloat.

We have;

http://www.dhs.gov/index.shtm

and CIA,

https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/index.html

who reports to;

http://www.dni.gov/

Org Chart;

http://www.dni.gov/aboutODNI/content/ODNI_Org_Chart_2010.pdf

The only thing CIA may be cutting edge on, with help from NSA, is cyber-intelligence and warfare. As far as terrorism goes, there has never been any credible threat to the Nation. Most people cannot justify the massive expenditures to fight terrorism. So, the president must grandstand over a airline passenger stashing explosives near his testicles.

The CIA needs more engineers than spies at the moment. James bond 2010 is now a geek. I do not need a gun if I hack your system.

Mark Beck

[PierreLegrand]

Always been more of a Angelton fan myself...

[Anonymous]

well that makes perfect sense since , angleton was a israeli mossad mole and a traitor, and participated in the assassination of JFK.....

[delacroix]

pierrelegrand=troll

[Anonymous]

I believe Hitler's war was caused by the American Great Depression as American wealth was not available to feed Europe's profligacy. As the Germans felt marginalized they looked to Hitler as their savior from their misery (unfortunately the Jewish community became the scapegoats for their own misery) - the real source of misery being the lack of spending by the SPENDY Americans. The World War was an artificial stimulant for the US economy - and has ever since been a source of fascination for politicians - left & right as a crutch for broken economies !! Look for World War 3 in 2011/12. Either way the Mayan calendar expects the world to end in 2012... haha