Bush's Military Industrial Complex: More wars for Profits
By Mario deSantis, September 21, 2006

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist[1].”  President of the United States (and former General of the Army) Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961

Yesterday, I had glance at the first page of the Saskatoon's StarPhoenix and saw the pictures of four Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. I am sad to know that Prime Minister Harper is embedding more Canadian troops with the Bush forces[2] even though the American 'war on terror' cannot be won in Afghanistan[3]. I reiterate again that the 'war on terror' as currently waged under the auspices of the Bush administration doesn't make common sense. And it doesn't make common sense because the language used by the Bush administration is a language of war[4], and not a language where we can share meaningfully our experiences[5].

Over three years ago I wrote that our own neo-conservative war mongers are “inflated assets[6]” and I asked the readers to make some private comments in this regard.

Yesterday, at the United Nations, we heard an explosive comment against war monger President Bush from Venezuela President Hugo Chavez “Yesterday, the devil came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today... Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world[7].” And I wonder who is the devil, Bush or Chavez?

We are living in a spiraling unequal world where the social forces of politics, economics, business and military interventions converge. This convergence finds its expression in the establishment of the military industrial complex, whereby waging more wars[8] become the governmental business for maintaining and enriching the military industrial complex[9]. I must reiterate again and again that governments must not be run as a business, instead we must make sure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” [10]

The convergence of government and business materializes in the waging of wars under the American pretense 'With US or Against US,' a pretense which can be raised at any time and for any reason by the discretionary use of the hegemonic power of the United States. And in fact 'With Us or Against Us' is a F\false dichotomy[11]

A universal principle of good will for the most powerful country on the planet is to be generous and sympathetic towards other less fortunate countries, but this is not the case for the Bush administration[12].

References

[1] Military Industrial Complex, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-industrial_complex

[2] Fitzpatrick, Meagan "Afghanistan efforts to ramp up with 200 more troops, tanks"; CanWest News Service, September 16, 2006 http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=33f4e491-f5ed-4d7d-b448-44c1f98f483d

[3] Margolis, Eric "Afghanistan: Time for Truth"; Winnipeg Independent Media Centre, September 19, 2006  http://winnipeg.indymedia.org/item.php?3620S

[4] deSantis, Mario "Bush's Language of War Is Incompatible with Democracy: There is no such a thing as War on Terror"; Ensign, written  September 13, 2006

[5] deSantis, Mario "Bush's Government: An Unlearning and Disabled Organization"; Ensign, written September 16, 2006

[6] deSantis, Mario "We need a change of mind: Common Sense versus New-Speaks"; Ensign, March 10, 2003 http://ensign.ftlcomm.com/desantisArticles/2002_700/desantis763/commonsense.html

[7] CNN World "Chavez: Bush 'devil'; U.S. 'on the way down'"; September 21, 2006 http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/09/20/chavez.un/index.html

[8] THINK PROGRESS "Col. Sam Gardiner on CNN, 9/18/06; http://thinkprogress.org/col-sam-gardiner-on-cnn-91806/

[9] Wikipedia, "Military-industrial complex" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-industrial_complex

[10] Wikipedia, Gettysburg Address http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address

[11] Raspberry, William "'With Us or Against Us' is a False Dichotomy";  http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1014-04.htm  (Wikipedia: dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts)

[12] Grenwald, Robert "Iraq for sale",  http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/41878  An extract: "It is quite shocking… Halliburton is being protected at the highest levels of government. They are paying lobbyists huge amounts of money. They are giving campaign contributions. They're hiring former high-level military people… David Lesar has made over a hundred million dollars, the head of Halliburton, since this war began - that is an obscenity..."