As America's Economy Collapses,
"New Normal" Police State Takes Shape
By Tom Burghardt
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26021
Global Research, August 15, 2011
Antifascist Calling...
Forget your rights.
As corporate overlords position themselves to seize what little remains of a tattered social net (adieu Medicare and Medicaid! Social Security? Au revoir!), the Obama administration is moving at break-neck speed to expand police state programs first stood-up by the Bush government.
After all, with world share
prices gyrating wildly, employment and wages in a death spiral, and
retirement funds and publicly-owned assets swallowed whole by
speculators and rentier scum, the state better dust-off
contingency plans lest the Greek, Spanish or British "contagion" spread
beyond the fabled shores of "old Europe" and infect God-fearin' folk
here in the heimat.
Fear not, they have and the lyrically-titled Civil Disturbances: Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources,
otherwise known as Army Regulation 500-50, spells out the
"responsibilities, policy, and guidance for the Department of the Army
in planning and operations involving the use of Army resources in the
control of actual or anticipated civil disturbances." (emphasis added)
With British politicians demanding a clampdown
on social media in the wake of London riots, and with the Bay Area
Rapid Transit (BART) agency having done so last week in San Francisco,
switching off underground cell phone service
to help squelch a protest against police violence, authoritarian
control tactics, aping those deployed in Egypt and Tunisia (that worked
out well!) are becoming the norm in so-called "Western democracies."
Secret Law, Secret Programs
Meanwhile up on Capitol Hill,
Congress did their part to defend us from that pesky Bill of Rights;
that is, before 81 of them--nearly a fifth of "our" elected
representatives--checked-out for AIPAC-funded junkets to Israel.
Secrecy News
reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee "rejected an amendment
that would have required the Attorney General and the Director of
National Intelligence to confront the problem of 'secret law,' by which
government agencies rely on legal authorities that are unknown or
misunderstood by the public."
That amendment,
proposed by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) was
rejected by voice vote, further entrenching unprecedented surveillance
powers of Executive Branch agencies such as the FBI and NSA.
As Antifascist Calling previously reported, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit
against the Justice Department "demanding the release of a secret legal
memo used to justify FBI access to Americans' telephone records without
any legal process or oversight."
The DOJ refused and it now
appears that the Senate has affirmed that "secret law" should be guiding
principles of our former republic.
Secrecy News
also disclosed that the Committee rejected a second amendment to the
authorization bill, one that would have required the Justice
Department's Inspector General "to estimate the number of Americans who
have had the contents of their communications reviewed in violation of
the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 [FAA]."
As pointed out here many times,
FAA is a pernicious piece of Bushist legislative detritus that legalized
the previous administration's secret spy programs since embellished by
our current "hope and change" president.
During the run-up to FAA's
passage, congressional Democrats, including then-Senator Barack Obama
and his Republican colleagues across the aisle, claimed that the law
would "strike a balance" between Americans' privacy rights and the needs
of security agencies to "stop terrorists" attacking the country.
If that's the case, then why can't the American people learn whether their rights have been compromised?
Perhaps, as recent reports in Truthout
and other publications suggest, former U.S. counterterrorism "czar"
Richard Clarke leveled "explosive allegations against three former top
CIA officials--George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee--accusing them
of knowingly withholding intelligence ... about two of the 9/11
hijackers who had entered the United States more than a year before the
attacks."
Clarke's allegations follow closely on the heels of an investigation by Truthout journalists Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold.
"Based on on documents obtained
under the Freedom of Information Act and an interview with a former
high-ranking counterterrorism official," Kaye and Leopold learned that
"a little-known military intelligence unit, unbeknownst to the various
investigative bodies probing the terrorist attacks, was ordered by
senior government officials to stop tracking Osama bin Laden and
al-Qaeda's movements prior to 9/11."
As readers are well aware, the
9/11 provocation was the pretext used by the capitalist state to wage
aggressive resource wars abroad while ramming through repressive
legislation like the USA Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act that
targeted the democratic rights of the American people here at home.
But FAA did more then legitimate
illegal programs. It also handed retroactive immunity and economic
cover to giant telecoms like AT&T and Verizon
who profited handily from government surveillance, shielding them from
monetary damages which may have resulted from a spate of lawsuits such
as Hepting v. AT&T.
This raises the question: are other U.S. firms similarly shielded from scrutiny by secret annexes in FAA or the privacy-killing USA Patriot Act?
Echelon Cubed
Last week, Softpedia
revealed that "Google has admitted complying with requests from US
intelligence agencies for data stored in its European data centers, most
likely in violation of European Union data protection laws."
"At the center of this problem,"
reporter Lucian Constantin wrote, "is the USA PATRIOT ACT, which states
that companies incorporated in the United States must hand over data
administered by their foreign subsidiaries if requested."
"Not only that," the publication
averred, "they can be forced to keep quiet about it in order to avoid
exposing active investigations and alert those targeted by the probes."
In other words, despite strict
privacy laws that require companies operating within the EU to protect
the personal data of their citizens, reports suggest that U.S. firms,
operating under an entirely different legal framework, U.S. spy laws with built-in secrecy clauses and gag orders, trump the laws and legal norms of other nations.
Given the widespread corporate espionage carried out by the National Security Agency's decades-long Echelon
communications' intercept program, American firms such as Google,
Microsoft, Apple or Amazon may very well have become witting accomplices
of U.S. secret state agencies rummaging about for "actionable
intelligence" on EU, or U.S., citizens.
Indeed, a decade ago the European Union issued its final report
on the Echelon spying machine and concluded that the program was being
used for corporate and industrial espionage and that data filched from
EU firms was being turned over to American corporations.
In 2000, the BBC
reported that according to European investigators "U.S. Department of
Commerce 'success stories' could be attributed to the filtering powers
of Echelon."
Duncan Campbell, a British journalist and intelligence expert, who along with New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager, helped blow the lid off
Echelon, offered two instances of U.S. corporate spying in the 1990s
when the newly-elected Clinton administration followed-up on promises of
"aggressive advocacy" on behalf of U.S. firms "bidding for foreign
contracts."
According to Campbell, NSA
"lifted all the faxes and phone-calls between Airbus, the Saudi national
airline and the Saudi Government" to gain this information. In a second
case which came to light, Campbell documented how "Raytheon used
information picked up from NSA snooping to secure a $1.4bn contract to
supply a radar system to Brazil instead of France's Thomson-CSF."
As Softpedia reported,
U.S.-based cloud computing services operating overseas have placed
"European companies and government agencies that are using their
services ... in a tough position."
With the advent of fiber optic
communication platforms, programs like Echelon have a far greater, and
more insidious, reach. AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein noted on the widespread deployment by NSA of fiber optic splitters and secret rooms at American telecommunications' firms:
What screams out at you when
examining this physical arrangement is that the NSA was vacuuming up
everything flowing in the Internet stream: e-mail, web browsing,
Voice-Over-Internet phone calls, pictures, streaming video, you name it.
The splitter has no intelligence at all, it just makes a blind copy.
There could not possibly be a legal warrant for this, since according to
the 4th Amendment warrants have to be specific, "particularly
describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be
seized." ...
This was a massive blind copying
of the communications of millions of people, foreign and domestic,
randomly mixed together. From a legal standpoint, it does not matter
what they claim to throw away later in their secret rooms, the violation
has already occurred at the splitter. (Mark Klein, Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine... And Fighting It, Charleston, South Carolina: BookSurge, 2009, pp. 38-39.)
What was Google's response?
In a statement to the German publication WirtschaftsWoche
a Google corporate spokesperson said: "As a law abiding company, we
comply with valid legal process, and that--as for any U.S. based
company--means the data stored outside of the U.S. may be subject to
lawful access by the U.S. government. That said, we are committed to
protecting user privacy when faced with law enforcement requests. We
have a long track record of advocating on behalf of user privacy in the
face of such requests and we scrutinize requests carefully to ensure
that they adhere to both the letter and the spirit of the law before
complying." (translation courtesy of Public Intelligence)
Is the Senate Intelligence
Committee's steadfast refusal to release documents and secret legal
memos that most certainly target American citizens also another blatant
example of American exceptionalism meant to protect U.S. firms operating
abroad from exposure as corporate spies for the government?
It isn't as if NSA hasn't been busy doing just that here at home.
As The New York Times
reported back in 2009, the "National Security Agency intercepted
private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on
a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress
last year."
Chalking up the problem to
"overcollection" and "technical difficulties," unnamed intelligence
officials and administration lawyers told journalists Eric Lichtblau and
James Risen that although the practice was "significant and systemic
... it was believed to have been unintentional."
As "unintentional" as ginned-up intelligence that made the case for waging aggressive war against oil-rich Iraq!
In a follow-up piece, the Times
revealed that NSA "appears to have tolerated significant collection and
examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants."
A former NSA analyst "read into"
the illegal program told Lichtblau and Risen that he "and other
analysts were trained to use a secret database, code-named Pinwale, in
2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail messages."
Email readily handed over by Google, Microsoft or other firms "subject to lawful access" by the Pentagon spy satrapy?
The Times' anonymous
source said "Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes of
e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within
certain limits--no more than 30 percent of any database search, he
recalled being told--and Americans were not explicitly singled out in
the searches."
Nor, were they excluded from such illicit practices.
As Jane Mayer revealed in The New Yorker,
"privacy controls" and "anonymizing features" of a program called
ThinThread, which would have complied with the law if Americans'
communications were swept into NSA's giant eavesdropping nets, were
rejected in favor of the "$1.2 billion flop" called Trailblazer.
And, as previously reported,
when Wyden and Udall sought information from the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence on just how many Americans had their
communications monitored, the DNI stonewalled claiming "it is not
reasonably possible to identify the number of people located in the
United States whose communications may have been reviewed under the
authority."
Why? Precisely because such programs act like a giant electronic sponge and soak-up and data mine huge volumes of our communications.
As former NSA manager and ThinThread creator Bill Binney told The New Yorker, that "little program ... got twisted" and was "used to eavesdrop on the whole world."
Three years after Barack Obama
promised to curb Bush administration "excesses," illegal surveillance
programs continue to expand under his watch.
A Permanent "State of Exception"
Under our current political
set-up, "states of exception" and national security "emergencies" have
become permanent features of social life.
Entire classes of citizens and
non-citizens alike are now suspect; anarchists, communists, immigrants,
Muslims, union activists and political dissidents in general are all
subject to unprecedented levels of scrutiny and surveillance.
From "enhanced security
screenings" at airports to the massive expansion of private and state
databases that archive our spending habits, whom we talk to and where we
go, increasingly, as the capitalist system implodes and millions face
the prospect of economic ruin, the former American republic takes on the
characteristics of a corporate police state.
Security researcher and analyst Christopher Soghoian reported on his Slight Paranoia
blog, that according to "an official DOJ report, the use of
'emergency', warrantless requests to ISPs for customer communications
content has skyrocketed over 400% in a single year."
This is no trifling matter.
As CNET News
disclosed last month, "Internet providers would be forced to keep logs
of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to
review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of
Representatives committee approved today."
Declan McCullagh reported that
"the 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans,
who made data retention their first major technology initiative after
last fall's elections."
Significantly, CNET noted that
this is also a "victory" for Democratic appointees of Barack Obama's
Justice Department "who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new
requirements."
According to CNET, a
"last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial
Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names,
addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and
temporarily-assigned IP addresses."
However, by "a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored."
Consider the troubling
implications of this sweeping bill. While ultra-rightist "Tea Party"
Republicans vowed to get "the government off our backs," when it comes
to illicit snooping by securocrats whose only loyalty is to a
self-perpetuating security bureaucracy and the defense grifters they
serve (and whom they rely upon for plum positions after government
"retirement"), all our private data is now up for grabs.
The bill, according to Rep. Zoe
Lofgren (D-CA), who spearheaded opposition to the measure said that if
passed, it would create "a data bank of every digital act by every
American" that would "let us find out where every single American
visited Web sites."
To make the poison pill
legislation difficult to oppose, proponents have dubbed it, wait, the
"Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011" even
though, as CNET noted, "the mandatory logs would be accessible to police
investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes
in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well."
Soghoian relates that the 2009 two-page Justice Department report to Congress took 11 months (!) to release under a Freedom of Information Act request.
Why the Justice Department stonewall?
Perhaps, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation disclosed last year, political appointees
at the Department of Homeland Security and presumably other secret
state satrapies, ordered "an extra layer of review on its FOIA
requests."
EFF revealed that a 2009 policy memo
from the Department's Chief FOIA Officer and Chief Privacy Officer,
Mary Ellen Callahan, that DHS components "were required to report
'significant FOIA activities' in weekly reports to the Privacy Office,
which the Privacy Office then integrated into its weekly report to the
White House Liaison."
Included amongst designated
"significant FOIA activities" were requests "from any members of 'an
activist group, watchdog organization, special interest group, etc.' and
'requested documents [that] will garner media attention or [are]
receiving media attention'."
Despite the appearance of
reporting "emergency" spying requests to congressional committees
presumably overseeing secret state activities (a generous assumption at
best), "it is quite clear" Soghoian avers, "that the Department of
Justice statistics are not adequately reporting the scale of this form
of surveillance" and "underreport these disclosures by several orders of
magnitude."
As such, "the current law is
largely useless." It does not apply to "state and local law enforcement
agencies, who make tens of thousands of warrantless requests to ISPs
each year," and is inapplicable to "to federal law enforcement agencies
outside DOJ."
"Finally," Soghoian relates, "it
does not apply to emergency disclosures of non-content information,
such as geo-location data, subscriber information (such as name and
address), or IP addresses used."
And with Congress poised to pass
sweeping data retention legislation, it should be clear that such
"requirements" are mere fig leaves covering-up state-sanctioned
lawlessness.
War On Terror 2.0.1: Looting the Global Economy
Criminal behavior by domestic
security agencies connect America's illegal wars of aggression to
capitalism's economic warfare against the working class, who now take
their place alongside "Islamic terrorists" as a threat to "national
security."
Despite efforts by the Obama
administration and Republican congressional leaders to "balance the
books" on the backs of the American people through massive budget cuts,
as economist Michael Hudson pointed out in Global Research, the manufactured "debt ceiling" crisis is a massive fraud.
The World Socialist Web Site
averred that "as concerns over a double-dip recession in the US and the
European debt crisis sent global markets plunging--including a
512-point sell-off on the Dow Jones Industrial Average
Thursday--financial analysts and media pundits developed a new
narrative. Concern that Washington lacked the 'political will' to slash
long-standing entitlement programs was exacerbating 'market
uncertainty'."
Leftist critic Jerry White noted
that "in fact, the new cuts will only intensify the economic crisis,
while the slashing of food stamps, unemployment compensation, health
care and education will eliminate programs that are more essential for
survival than ever."
Indeed, as Marxist economist Richard Wolff pointed out in The Guardian,
while the "crisis of the capitalist system in the US that began in
2007," may have "plunged millions into acute economic pain and
suffering," the "recovery" that began in 2009 "benefited only the
minority that was most responsible for the crisis: banks, large
corporations and the rich who own the bulk of stocks. That so-called
recovery never 'trickled down' to the US majority: working people
dependent on jobs and wages'."
And despite mendacious claims by
political officials and the media alike, the Pentagon will be sitting
pretty even as Americans are forced to shoulder the financial burden of
U.S. imperial adventures long into an increasingly bleak future.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
"warned Thursday of dire consequences if the Pentagon is forced to make
cuts to its budget beyond the $400 billion in savings planned for the
next decade," The Washington Post reported.
The Post noted that
"senior Pentagon officials have launched an offensive over the past two
days to convince lawmakers that further reductions in Pentagon spending
would imperil the country's security."
"Instead of slashing defense,"
Panetta urged lawmakers to "rely on tax increases and cuts to
nondiscretionary spending, such as Medicare and Social Security, to
provide the necessary savings."
But as Hudson points out, "war
has been the major cause of a rising national debt." After all, it was
none other than bourgeois icon Adam Smith who argued that "parliamentary
checks on government spending were designed to prevent ambitious rulers
from waging war."
Hudson writes that "if people
felt the economic impact of war immediately--rather than postponing it
by borrowing--they would be less likely to support military
adventurism."
But therein lies the rub. Since
"military adventurism" is the only "growth sector" of an imploding
capitalist economy, the public spigot which finances everything from
cost-overrun-plagued stealth fighter jets to multibillion dollar spy
satellites, along with an out-of-control National Surveillance State,
will be kept open indefinitely.
On this score, the hypocrisy of
our rulers abound, especially when it comes to the mantra that "we" must
"live within our means."
As Wolff avers,
"where was that phrase heard when Washington decided to spend on an
immense military (even after becoming the world's only nuclear
superpower) or to spend on very expensive wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Libya (now all going on at the same time)? No, then the
talk was only about national security needed to save us from attacks."
"Attacks," it should be duly noted, that may very well have been allowed to happen as the World Socialist Web Site recently reported.
Driving home the point that war,
and not social- and infrastructure investment fuel deficits, Hudson
averred that "the present rise in in U.S. Treasury debt results from two
forms of warfare. First is the overtly military Oil War in the Near
East, from Iraq to Afghanistan (Pipelinistan) to oil-rich Libya. These
adventures will end up costing between $3 and $5 trillion."
"Second and even more
expensive," the economist observed, "is the more covert yet more costly
economic war of Wall Street against the rest of the economy, demanding
that losses by banks and financial institutions be passed onto the
government balance sheet ('taxpayers'). The bailouts and 'free lunch'
for Wall Street--by no coincidence, Congress's number one political
campaign contributor--cost $13 trillion."
"Now that finance is the new
form of warfare," Hudson wrote, "where is the power to constrain
Treasury and Federal Reserve power to commit taxpayers to bail out
financial interests at the top of the economic pyramid?"
And since "cutbacks in federal
revenue sharing will hit cities and states hard, forcing them to sell
off yet more land, roads and other assets in the public domain to cover
their budget deficit as the U.S. economy sinks further into depression,"
Hudson wrote that "Congress has just added fiscal deflation to debt
deflation, slowing employment even further."
While the global economy circles
the drain, with ever more painful cuts in so-called "entitlement"
programs meant to cushion the crash now on the chopping block, the
corporate and political masters who rule the roost are sharpening their
knives, fashioning administrative and bureaucratic surveillance tools,
the better to conceal the "invisible hand" of that bitch-slaps us all.
And they call it "freedom."
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, he is a Contributing Editor with Cyrano's Journal Today. His articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.
Vanity Blog
Festival letterari di settembre
Sì, lo sappiamo. I giorni
intorno prima e dopo Ferragosto anche chi ha fatto poche vacanze
solitamente non lavora e...
di vanityblog · 16 agosto , 2011
Ritorno di Fiamma
Minifestival di Poesia: Piera Degli Esposti dice un sonetto di Dante
di Fiamma Satta · 15 agosto , 2011
Lezioni Private
Effortless, ma davvero?
Quando lo leggo sulle riviste
straniere mi sembra di sentire tutta la leggerezza che esprime.
“Effortless” è una delle parole...
di Csaba · 15 agosto , 2011
| El magnate que pide pagar más impuestos |
| Warren Buffett critica que se "mime" a los ricos |
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|
| El presidente, en campaña |
|
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| Los republicanos, lejos del voto latino |
|
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|
| Los mercados, en vilo por una cumbre |
| Sarkozy y Merkel se reunirán para tratar de aplacar la ola de desconfianza; presión para que Alemania apruebe la creación de "eurobonos" |
|
Enviá tu comentario de la nota
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| Cameron promete medidas contra el "colapso moral" |
| Dijo que pondrá en marcha políticas sociales y educativas; guerra "sin cuartel" a las pandillas |
|
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|
| La hora de mirar hacia Alemania |
|
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|
| Postergan hasta septiembre el juicio contra Mubarak |
|
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|
| Avanzan los rebeldes en Libia y Khadafy llama a la resistencia |
| Los insurgentes lanzaron una fuerte ofensiva y se acercan a Trípoli; presión de EE.UU. |
|
Enviá tu comentario de la nota
|
| Irak tuvo su día más violento del año |
| Más de 70 personas murieron en una ola de atentados; el gobierno responsabilizó a Al-Qaeda |
|
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| Evo Morales, blanco de una protesta de indígenas |
| Marcha en defensa de una reserva ecológica |
|
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| Dura crítica de EE.UU. a Israel por Cisjordania |
| Preocupación por los asentamientos |
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| Síntesis |
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This is FREE intelligence for distribution. Forward this to your colleagues.
Re-Examining the Arab Spring
On Dec. 17, 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, set
himself on fire in a show of public protest. The self-immolation
triggered unrest in Tunisia and ultimately the resignation of President
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. This was followed by unrest in a number of Arab
countries that the global press dubbed the “Arab Spring.” The standard
analysis of the situation was that oppressive regimes had been sitting
on a volcano of liberal democratic discontent. The belief was that the
Arab Spring was a political uprising by masses demanding liberal
democratic reform and that this uprising, supported by Western
democracies, would generate sweeping political change across the Arab
world.
It is now more than six months since the beginning of the Arab Spring
and it is important to take stock of what has happened and what has not
happened. The reasons for the widespread unrest go beyond the Arab
world, although, obviously, the dynamics within that world are important
in and of themselves. However, the belief in an Arab Spring helped
shape European and American policies in the region and the world. If the
assumptions of this past January and February prove insufficient or
even wrong, then there will be regional and global consequences. Read more »
Dispatch: Why Turkey and Israel Are Concerned About Syrian Instability
Analyst Reva Bhalla examines the shift in the U.S. stance toward Syria,
Turkish concerns and implications of Syrian instability for Israel. Watch the Video »
August 16, 2011
Tomgram: Chris Hellman, The Pentagon's Spending Spree
China just
launched a refitted Ukrainian aircraft carrier from the 1990s on its first test run -- and that’s what the
only projected
"great power" enemy of the U.S. has to offer for the foreseeable
future. In the meantime, the U.S. Navy has 11 aircraft carrier task
forces to cruise the seven seas and plans to keep that many
through 2045.
Like so much else, when it comes to the American military, all
comparisons are ludicrous. In any normal sense, the United States
stands alone in military terms. Its expenditures make up
almost 50% of global military spending; it dominates the
global arms market; and it has countless more
bases, pilotless
drones, military
bands, and almost anything else military you’d care to mention than does any other power.
In other words, comparisons can’t be made. The minute you try, you’re off the charts. And yet, in purely practical terms, when you take a shot at measuring what the overwhelming investment of American treasure in the military, the U.S. intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security, and the rest of our national security establishment has actually bought us, you come up with a series of wars and conflicts headed nowhere and a series of post-9/11 terror attacks generally so inept it hardly mattered whether they were foiled or not.
Still, when it comes to cutting the U.S. national security budget, none of this seems to matter. The Pentagon “cuts” presently being discussed in Washington are largely in projected future growth, not in real funds (which continue to rise) -- and even then, the Pentagon and its many boosters in Washington are already crying bloody murder. Give some credit for all this to the giant weapons makers and to the military itself: both have so carefully tied military-related jobs into so many state economies that few congressional representatives could afford to vote for the sorts of real cutbacks that would bring perhaps the most profligate institution on the planet to heel and yet still leave the country as the globe’s military giant. You want, for instance, to cut back on that absolutely crucial Navy acrobatic flying team, the Blue Angels. (What would we all do without dramatic military flyovers at our major and minor sporting events?) Count on it, hotel keepers in Florida will be on the phone immediately! Add in the veneration of American soldiers and you have a fatal brew when it comes to serious budget cutting.
Absurdity, logic. Neither seems to matter. Still, the financial basics remain eye-opening, as TomDispatch regular Chris Hellman of the National Priorities Project makes clear. Tom
In other words, comparisons can’t be made. The minute you try, you’re off the charts. And yet, in purely practical terms, when you take a shot at measuring what the overwhelming investment of American treasure in the military, the U.S. intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security, and the rest of our national security establishment has actually bought us, you come up with a series of wars and conflicts headed nowhere and a series of post-9/11 terror attacks generally so inept it hardly mattered whether they were foiled or not.
Still, when it comes to cutting the U.S. national security budget, none of this seems to matter. The Pentagon “cuts” presently being discussed in Washington are largely in projected future growth, not in real funds (which continue to rise) -- and even then, the Pentagon and its many boosters in Washington are already crying bloody murder. Give some credit for all this to the giant weapons makers and to the military itself: both have so carefully tied military-related jobs into so many state economies that few congressional representatives could afford to vote for the sorts of real cutbacks that would bring perhaps the most profligate institution on the planet to heel and yet still leave the country as the globe’s military giant. You want, for instance, to cut back on that absolutely crucial Navy acrobatic flying team, the Blue Angels. (What would we all do without dramatic military flyovers at our major and minor sporting events?) Count on it, hotel keepers in Florida will be on the phone immediately! Add in the veneration of American soldiers and you have a fatal brew when it comes to serious budget cutting.
Absurdity, logic. Neither seems to matter. Still, the financial basics remain eye-opening, as TomDispatch regular Chris Hellman of the National Priorities Project makes clear. Tom
How Safe Are You?
What Almost $8 Trillion in National Security Spending Bought You
By Chris Hellman
The killing of Osama Bin Laden did not put cuts in national security spending on the table, but the debt-ceiling debate finally did. And mild as those projected cuts might have been, last week newly minted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was already digging in his heels and decrying the modest potential cost-cutting plans as a "doomsday mechanism” for the military. Pentagon allies on Capitol Hill were similarly raising the alarm as they moved forward with this year’s even larger military budget.
None of this should surprise you. As with all addictions, once you’re hooked on massive military spending, it’s hard to think realistically or ask the obvious questions. So, at a moment when discussion about cutting military spending is actually on the rise for the first time in years, let me offer some little known basics about the spending spree this country has been on since September 11, 2001, and raise just a few simple questions about what all that money has actually bought Americans.
Consider this my contribution to a future 12-step program for national security sobriety.
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