Tuesday, August 12, 2014

THE AMERICAN WAY: WAR, MOM AND APPLE PIE





Did you ever wonder about the term ‘The American Military Industrial Complex?’   It is said that one third of our national budget is spent on National Security; but, once we include the military, Homeland Security, NSA, CIA (and all the other A’s we don’t know about) along with foreign aide and nation building we are probably closer to fifty-percent. 

We can’t afford health care for US citizens but we can spend a projected one trillion, five hundred billion ($1,500,000,000) for a new F-35 fighter aircraft that so far has been a production disaster.

(Just to get an idea how ridiculous this sum is: If you banged a hammer on top of your desk once every second for twenty four hours a day – it would take you 48,000 YEARS to bang out 1.5 trillion)

I have often written in this blog that war is the natural state with intervals of peace between conflicts in order to regroup.   But the real fact is that war and the military are a financial necessity for this country.  

The base of the US economy is no longer farming, but a military industrial complex.

We buy oil from Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia in turn buys military weaponry from us.   We give foreign aide to Israel and Israel returns the money in the form of weapons purchases.  We don’t just police the world, we arm the world.   We are supplying American weapons to Iraqi Kurdistan to fight ISIL that is armed with American weapons that we originally supplied to the Iraqi military.  This is not new.   The sick joke in Vietnam was: You can tell the North Vietnamese Army from the South Vietnamese Army – because the North Vietnamese have only fifty-percent American weapons. Many of the M-16s in Vietnam were made by the Mattel Toy Company (Made by Mattel – It’s Swell) and I was once issued a military 45 pistol made by Singer – a weapons spin off of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. 



Our economy depends on the military industrial complex.   The military is constantly purchasing tanks, cars, trucks, aircraft, ships, fuel, uniforms, electronic equipment, ordinance, small arms, medical supplies, food and toilet paper…   Much of the U.S.  economy is directly or indirectly supported by military expenditures and by the sales of weapons and supplies sold, or furnished to foreign nations in the form or foreign aide. 



WAR, GOOD GOD YOU ALL – WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR – THE ECONOMY”

the Ol’Buzzard








8 comments:

  1. Good post and love that Zappa quotation! Didn't Eisenhauer create the term "military-industrial complex"? Well, even if he didn't, he warned about letting it take over America. He saw what was coming alright.

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  2. The 'military industrial complex' was a warning from Eisenhower's departure speech in 1960.
    He originally included the word "Congressional" in it but was talked out of that by his aids.
    Eisenhower warned us but they won anyway.

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  3. It is more than a coincidence that the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are also the five leading weapons exporters in the world!

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  4. The thing that gets me is when Congress funds things for the military that the military doesn't want or need. Like an aircraft carrier that Trent Lott pushed thru because it would be built in his state. The Navy didn't want it and didn't have the personnel to man the damn thing. Or all the tanks the Army doesn't need, the list goes on and on.

    Congress is always willing to give the military things that go bang, but they could care less about things that would make life better for the troops!!

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  5. I have been off line for 5 days due to line problems caused by a huge series of storms here. No power for 2 days. It was interesting seeing what I missed while I was back in the 19th century. Your last 2 posts are right on the money! But anytime you can fit Frank into your post is a winner with me. It is demoralizing and mind boggling when you realize how embedded the Arms industry is in America...they are a major part of almost every states economy and the power of the lobbyists over the politicians. That's the power. They are your real corporate overlords.

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  6. Mattel and Singer...2 companies I would never have connected with military arms....very interesting.... Do you remember the company in Michigan that made sights for guns and how the Taliban discovered that they had engraved biblical verse around the eyepieces and used it for propaganda against America during the height of the Afghan incident? I posted about it at the time in 2010 in a post entitled, Who Would Jesus Shoot? http://thebrainpolice.blogspot.fr/2010/01/who-would-jesus-shoot.html

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  7. btw, I finally posted all 10 pages of my comic novella....the grand finale! It's very depressing, but life's like that.

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