The soaring military spending has also meant that beneficiaries of war dividends are essentially looting the national treasury in order to line their pockets. These include not only the Pentagon and its military contractors but also members of the key Congressional committees who have grown increasingly addicted to generous contributions to their reelection that come from the fortunes of the Pentagon and its business clients.
U.S. lawmakers have additional, more direct, financial interests in war and military spending: "Members of Congress have invested nearly 196 million dollars of their own money in companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a day from Pentagon contractors to provide goods and services to U.S. armed forces."- This means "lawmakers charged with overseeing Pentagon contractors hold stocks in those very firms"- [5].
It also means that our esteemed lawmakers know how or where to invest most profitably: "Shares of U.S. defense companies have nearly trebled since the beginning of the occupation of Iraq. . . . The feeling that makers of ships, planes and weapons are just getting into their stride has driven shares of leading Pentagon contractors Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., and General Dynamics Corp. to all-time highs"- [6].
It is not surprising, then, that many elected officials with input or voting power in the process of the appropriation of the Pentagon budget find themselves in the pocket of defense contractors. Neither is it surprising that these dubious relationships should serve as breeding grounds for the near legendary levels of waste, inefficiency, and corruption that surround the military-industrial-congressional complex.
Two major conclusions follow from this discussion. The first is that, as pointed out earlier, war and political instability in the Middle East are the major driving forces behind the soaring price of oil; and that, therefore, to contain or reverse the rising trend of energy prices requires bringing U.S. troops home. The second conclusion is that achievement of this goal, the goal of ending U.S. wars of aggression, is possible only if (a) money or profits are taken out of war, and (b) money is taken out of elections [7].
References:
[1] See Roger Burbach, Bush Ideologues vs. Big Oil: The Iraq Game Gets Even Stranger, available at http://www.counterpunch.org/burbach10032003.html (last visited Sept. 11, 2006).
[2] Melinda K. Ruby, "Is Oil the Driving Force to War?"- unpublished Senior thesis, Dept. of Economics and Finance, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa (spring 2004); see also Herman Franssen and Elaine Morton, "A Review of U.S. Unilateral Sanctions Against Iran,"- Middle East Economic Survey 45, no. 34 (26 August 2002), pp. D1-D5 (D section contains op eds. as opposed to staff-written articles).
[3] William D. Hartung & Michelle Ciarrocca, "The Military-Industrial-Think Tank Complex,"- Multinational Monitor (Jan./Feb. 2003), available at click here (last visited Sept. 11, 2006); DiLip Hiro, Secrets and Lies: Operation Iraqi Freedom and After (Nation Books 2004).
[4] Hartung, W. D. 2007. "Bush Military Budget Highest since WW II"-, Common Dreams, available at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0210-26.htm
[5] Abid Aslam, "US Lawmakers Invested in Iraq, Afghanistan Wars,"- Common Dreams (8 April 2008), http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/08/8155/
[6] Bill Rigby, "Defense stocks may jump higher with big profits"-, Reuter, available at: click here[7] "Taking money out of war"- in order to end imperial wars of aggression was, perhaps most forcefully and convincingly, formulated by the late General Smedley D. Butler, in his famous War Is a Racket (Los Angeles: Feral House, 1935 and 2003).
Ismael Hossein-zadeh, author of The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), teaches economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.
