The Military-Industrial-Congressional Cabal, Part Two
"The Japanese and Chinese and others are paying for our wars. How much longer will they continue to do that? I'd submit that they won't continue very much longer at all."
"So we're coming to a fiscal crisis point that will not only stop these two wars, regardless of what we think about them. It will probably stop us being able to do just anything overseas. You will probably see forces beginning to come home from Germany, from Korea and from other places where we have extended them to protect the peripheries of our empire. What I'm talking about, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of the American empire."
Wilkerson then goes onto confirm that the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is really about oil.
"So if there is a strategic reality for our being in that region, if that strategic reality is one that Cheney and Bush, and now apparently some members of the Obama administration, believe essential to the future of our allies -- and yet our fiscal condition is going to compel us to retrench, where does that leave us?"
"Maybe you're happy that we're coming home, maybe you're happy that the military is going to have to confront this fiscal situation? I am because I see a silver lining to this. I see a gradual movement away from being, shall we say, primus inter pares [first among equals] to being pares inter pares [equals among equals]. I see us moving away from being the hegemon of the world which was clearly the decision of the Bush administration when it published its national security strategy --look at section five-- in 2001 and 2002 to being a cooperating, consulting, reasonably powerful and willing to lead when leadership is required, country."
"Wow! Does that sound like America pre-WWII maybe, in a certain way? Does that sound like America living up to what it's supposed to be, a democratic republic?"
Showing posts with label arms production. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arms production. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Military-Industrial-Congressional Cabal
Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, describes the origins of the US Military-Industrial-Congressional complex and how it has bankrupted the republic. "This country is the greatest debtor nation in human history."
"In 1947 a constellation of world leaders --and principally US leaders-- revealed that there had been a massive change of power in the world. Let's just sum it up simply by saying that the United States looked at being not the rather democratic republic it had been for the 150 plus years prior but the New Rome ... what we looked at in 1947 was being Imperial Rome."
"Until 2000 I would maintain that most presidents had done a fair or good or not-so-good-but-average job of the tension between these two fundamental sides of us [ie. democratic republic versus imperial Rome], the past, the present and the future. When we got to 2000 we decided that that's no longer the way we're going to do things ..."
"In 1961, probably the most capable man to assume the presidency in the Twentieth Century, in his Farewell Address, warned us what was happening with regard to the tension between what we had had and what we had created. I'll call it a national security state ... and I'll call it a well-governed democratic republic on the other hand ... that tension that Eisenhower described [was] a real, sneaking, insidious, powerful problem. It was called a Military-Industrial-- and he wanted to say but was advised against saying -- Congressional complex."
"The Military-Industrial-Congressional complex is not an insidious force out there, sneaking up on us a riding down Pennsylvania Avenue to take over Washington. It is an enormous power, basically undetected, not overseen adequately and in a particular sense of the Cold War when contractors have moved together to become primes and subs and colluded and [become] monopolistic, it has become a real and constant danger for this country, certainly to the democratic republic that we like to think we are."
"When war is as profitable as it was to Lockheed Martin who leads this clan of defense consortiums where share prices go up by 25-and-three-quarter on March 19, 2003 to a year later about $126 0r $127 a share, when war is that profitable you're going to have more of it ... the war instrument is the instrument of choice for US presidents ... it's got us to bankruptcy ... this country is the greatest debtor nation in human history."
Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, describes the origins of the US Military-Industrial-Congressional complex and how it has bankrupted the republic. "This country is the greatest debtor nation in human history."
"In 1947 a constellation of world leaders --and principally US leaders-- revealed that there had been a massive change of power in the world. Let's just sum it up simply by saying that the United States looked at being not the rather democratic republic it had been for the 150 plus years prior but the New Rome ... what we looked at in 1947 was being Imperial Rome."
"Until 2000 I would maintain that most presidents had done a fair or good or not-so-good-but-average job of the tension between these two fundamental sides of us [ie. democratic republic versus imperial Rome], the past, the present and the future. When we got to 2000 we decided that that's no longer the way we're going to do things ..."
"In 1961, probably the most capable man to assume the presidency in the Twentieth Century, in his Farewell Address, warned us what was happening with regard to the tension between what we had had and what we had created. I'll call it a national security state ... and I'll call it a well-governed democratic republic on the other hand ... that tension that Eisenhower described [was] a real, sneaking, insidious, powerful problem. It was called a Military-Industrial-- and he wanted to say but was advised against saying -- Congressional complex."
"The Military-Industrial-Congressional complex is not an insidious force out there, sneaking up on us a riding down Pennsylvania Avenue to take over Washington. It is an enormous power, basically undetected, not overseen adequately and in a particular sense of the Cold War when contractors have moved together to become primes and subs and colluded and [become] monopolistic, it has become a real and constant danger for this country, certainly to the democratic republic that we like to think we are."
"When war is as profitable as it was to Lockheed Martin who leads this clan of defense consortiums where share prices go up by 25-and-three-quarter on March 19, 2003 to a year later about $126 0r $127 a share, when war is that profitable you're going to have more of it ... the war instrument is the instrument of choice for US presidents ... it's got us to bankruptcy ... this country is the greatest debtor nation in human history."
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