18 September 2010
By Jacob G. Hornberger An article in last Sunday’s New York Times
provided an interesting analysis of the Egyptian
military, one that holds some important lessons for
America. The article described the military in Egypt as “the
single most powerful institution in an autocratic
state facing its toughest test in decades, an imminent
presidential succession.” The military, which has been
the recipient of almost $40 billion in U.S. foreign
aid for the past 30 years, has made it clear that it
will not permit anyone to assume the presidency
“without ironclad guarantees that it would retain its
pre-eminent position in the nation’s affairs.” The paper pointed out the big role that the
military and military-industrial complex have come to
play in Egyptian life: “The Egyptian military has
turned into a behemoth that controls not only security
and a burgeoning defense industry, but has also
branched into civilian businesses like road and
housing construction, consumer goods and resort
management.” When he was leaving office, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower, who had been an army general in World War
II, issued a fascinating warning to the American
people: This conjunction of an immense military
establishment and a large arms industry is new in
the American experience. The total influence —
economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in
every city, every State house, every office of the
Federal government. We recognize the imperative need
for this development. Yet we must not fail to
comprehend its grave implications. Our toil,
resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the
very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard
against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military
industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We
should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and
knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper
meshing of the huge industrial and military
machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and
goals, so that security and liberty may prosper
together. In other words, Big Government was a necessary evil
but because of the Cold War. Once the communist threat
was vanquished, Big Government proponents argued, we
could dismantle the standing army and the
military-industrial complex. Alas, however, it was not to be. When the Soviet
Union disintegrated in 1991, along with the Berlin
Wall, the time had finally come to dismantle the huge
military behemoth that had been constructed over the
almost 5 decades of the Cold War. There was no foreign
regime that had the military means or even the desire
to invade and occupy the United States. The time had
arrived to relieve the American people of the
tremendous (and always growing) tax burden needed to
fund the enormous military machine along with the
grave danger it posed to the American people, as per
Eisenhower’s warning. But the military and the military-industrial
complex would hear nothing of it. Notwithstanding the
demise of the Soviet threat and the end of the Cold
War, they were as determined as the Egyptian military
behemoth to preserve their pre-eminent position in
American society. Now, it’s true that the military behemoth in the
United States doesn’t use its vast resources to engage
in commerce and industry, as the one in Egypt does.
But it spends its money in a way that the Egyptian
military cannot — by maintaining an enormous string of
expensive overseas military bases in more than a
hundred countries, as part of the biggest overseas
military empire in history. What happens if U.S. troops are forced to suddenly
exit Iraq and Afghanistan, thereby diminishing the
threat of terrorist blowback against the United
States? No problem — U.S. officials are already
preparing for that contingency, by falling back on the
drug war as a way to preserve the existence of
America’s military behemoth. Last week Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
said that drug cartels in Mexico are looking more like
“insurgencies” and pointed to the growing threat they
are posing. She said that the situation is “looking
more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago.” In other words, if the “war on terrorism” starts to
lose steam, there’s always the possibility of
stationing U.S. troops in Mexico to fight the drug
war, thereby provoking them into retaliating with some
sort of attack on U.S. troops or even on federal
officials or federal buildings in the United States.
Then, we’ve got a new excuse to keep the military
behemoth in existence, along with a new round of
illegal enemy combatants, indefinite detention,
torture, kangaroo tribunals, denial of federal court
trials, threats to national security, suspension of
habeas corpus, illegal wiretapping, kidnapping,
rendition, assassinations, etc., etc., etc. The American people would be wise to heed the
warning of President Eisenhower. There is no better
time than now to dismantle America’s military behemoth
(as well as to legalize drugs). It’s a necessary
prerequisite to restoring a free and prosperous
society and a limited-government republic to our land.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The
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