"The military-industrial-complex [would] cause military spending to be driven not by national security needs but by a network of weapons makers, lobbyists and elected officials." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
"There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket." - General Smedley D. Butler
Neither the Iraq Study Group nor other establishment critics of the Iraq war are calling for the withdrawal of US troops from that country. To the extent that the Study Group or the new Congress purport to inject some "realism" into the Iraq policy, such projected modifications do not seem to amount to more than changing the drivers of the US war machine without changing its destination, or objectives: control of Iraq's political and economic policies.
In light of fact that by now almost all of the factions of the ruling circles, including the White House and the neoconservative war-mongers, acknowledge the failure of the Iraq war, why, then, do they balk at the idea of pulling the troops out of that country?
Perhaps the shortest path to a relatively satisfactory answer would be to follow the money. The fact is that not everyone is losing in Iraq. Indeed, while the Bush administration's wars of choice have brought unnecessary death, destruction, and disaster to millions, including many from the Unites States, they have also brought fortunes and prosperity to war profiteers. At the heart of the reluctance to withdraw from Iraq lies the profiteers' unwillingness to give up further fortunes and spoils of war.
Pentagon contractors constitute the overwhelming majority of these profiteers. They include not only the giant manufacturing contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing, but also a complex maze of over 100,000 service contractors and sub-contractors such as private army or security corporations and "reconstruction" firms.[1] These contractors of both deconstruction and "reconstruction," whose profits come mainly from the US treasury, have handsomely profited from the Bush administration's wars of choice.
A time-honored proverb maintains that wars abroad are often continuations of wars at home. Accordingly, recent US wars abroad seem to be largely reflections of domestic fights over national resources, or public finance: opponents of social spending are using the escalating Pentagon budget (in combination with drastic tax cuts for the wealthy) as a cynical and roundabout way of redistributing national income in favor of the wealthy. As this combination of increasing military spending and decreasing tax liabilities of the wealthy creates wide gaps in the Federal budget, it then justifies the slashing of non-military public spending-a subtle and insidious policy of reversing the New Deal reforms, a policy that, incidentally, started under President Ronald Reagan.
Meanwhile, the American people are sidetracked into a debate over the grim consequences of a "pre-mature" withdrawal of US troops from Iraq: further deterioration of the raging civil war, the unraveling of the "fledgling democracy," the resultant serious blow to the power and prestige of the United States, and the like.
Such concerns are secondary to the booming business of war profiteers and, more generally, to the lure or the prospects of controlling Iraq's politics and economics. Powerful beneficiaries of war dividends, who are often indistinguishable from the policy makers who pushed for the invasion of Iraq, have been pocketing hundreds of billions of dollars by virtue of war. More than anything else, it is the pursuit and the safeguarding of those plentiful spoils of war that are keeping US troops in Iraq.
(Because the role of oil is discussed extensively by many other researchers and writers, I would focus here on the role of the Pentagon contractors, both as a major driving force to the war on Iraq and a major obstacle in the way of withdrawing from that country.)
The rise of the fortunes of the major Pentagon contractors can be measured, in part, by the growth of the Pentagon budget since President George W. Bush arrived in the White House: it has grown by more than 50 percent, from nearly $300 billion in 2001 to almost $455 billion in 2007. (These figures do not include the Homeland Security budget, which is $33 billion for the 2007 fiscal year alone, and the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are fast approaching $400 billion.)
Large Pentagon contractors have been the main beneficiaries of this windfall. For example, a 2004 study by The Center for Public Integrity revealed that, for the 1998–2003 period, one percent of the biggest contractors won 80 percent of all defense contracting dollars. The top ten got 38 percent of all the money. Lockheed Martin topped the list at $94 billion, Boeing was second with $81 billion, Raytheon was third (just under $40 billion), followed by Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics with nearly $34 billion each.[2]
Fantastic returns to these armaments conglomerates have been reflected in the continuing jump in the value of their shares or stocks in the Wall Street: "Shares of U.S. defense companies, which have nearly trebled since the beginning of the occupation of Iraq, show no signs of slowing down. . . . All the defense companies-with very few exceptions-have been doing extremely well with mostly double-digit earnings growth. . . . 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. . . ."[3]
Major beneficiaries of war dividends include not only the giant manufacturing contractors such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, but also a whole host of other war-induced service contractors that have mushroomed around the Pentagon and the Homeland Security apparatus in order to cash in on the Pentagon's spending bonanza.
A highly profitable and fast growing industry that has evolved out of the Pentagon's tendency to shower private contractors with tax-payers' money is based on its increasing practice of the outsourcing of the many of the traditional military services to private businesses. "In 1984, almost two-thirds of [the Pentagon's] contracting budget went for products rather than services. . . . By fiscal year 2003, 56 percent of Defense Department contracts paid for services rather than goods."
What is more, these services are not limited to the relatively simple or routine tasks and responsibilities such food and sanitation services or building maintenance. More importantly, they include "contracts for services that are highly sophisticated, strategic in nature, and closely approaching core functions that for good reason the government used to do on its own. The Pentagon has even hired contractors to advise it on hiring contractors."[4]
but unfortunately the 'public' will never listen to the ' economic argument'. It is not that all the politicians are cynical but there is a common knowledge among the politicos that 'profit is a good thing' We live under the capitalism and 'Greed is Good'. Joe, the Public may make as many noises as he wants but both sides know about Joe that if it was his opportunity he would not miss a chance.
That is why emotional language does work, again, unfortunately. The US troops are hijacked by private interests, that is very true. But when God forbid, a real immediate casualty in Iraq among the troops will become a 1000 per day ( and it will inevitably happen if we stay there), we will run away. I say, God forbid, because I do not want more dead, No, Sir. And that is why the emotions now will serve the economics later.
Please, this is not a perfect world and we should not forget the very sinister part of the capitalistic game which is embedded in the brains of many: someone has to sit in the gutter so that I have fun under the sun. This time our troops are in the gutter. To take them out of there we need to threaten the people on the most deep emotional level. And that is not money. That is life and death.
by
Mark Sashine (72 articles, 19 quicklinks, 269 diaries, 4101 comments [131 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Jan 15, 2007 at 3:09:06 PM
Ismael has done his homework and explains clearly why 2 + 2 = 4. I read this article with extreme interest and conclude it is one of the best I've seen for getting to the root cause of our problems-very possibly, it is the best.
Thank you, Ismael, for the obvious hard work, vast knowledge background, and clarity that you bring to our present predicament.
I don't quite agree with panurg that the public will never listen to the economic argument-I think that is a self-fulfilling prophecy which should be replaced with, "How are we going to get this economic argument understood and accepted by the public?"
I also think that once it's understood, it will automatically be accepted.
A flip side of this coin might well be, "How do we get these companies to use their extraordinary resources for the betterment of humankind?" Getting us unhooked from fossil fuels might actually happen, if these companies had carrots leading them in that direction.
Whoever can solve that issue may very well save the world.
by
Daniel Geery (26 articles, 95 quicklinks, 126 diaries, 912 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Jan 15, 2007 at 4:36:39 PM
I've heard that every single Senator in Congress is a millionaire, most are multi-millionaires, and some are billionaires or multi-billionaires.
I don't know if the same holds true for the House of Representatives, but I doubt if it has many members who do not own a stock portfolio.
Senator Diane Feinstein's husband is a defense contractor, so we probably should also include close family members of Congressional representatives in this research. Many people put assets in the names of close family members for various tax and reporting reasons.
My guess is that although Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton are extremely obvious (he is still getting money from them, but it goes into some kind of escrow account), the ties of every other warmonger in Congress are just as real and as profitable, if not as overt.
I rather doubt if almost every Democrat in Congress has voted consistently for the war (illegal invasions and war crimes would be more descriptive than war) just because they fully support the Republican agenda. My guess is that the stock portfolios of each and every one of them are swollen with shares in the military-industrial complex, and that every time they voted to fund the Bush agenda in Iraq, the value of their portfolios increased substantially.
This is not to mention that many of them have gotten large campaign donations from defense contractors, which is public knowledge. That would be only an extremely small portion of their war profits. When you have a large stock portfolio filled with stocks that keep doubling in value, campaign donations are mere icing on the cake.
Unfortunately for us, the people they are supposed to be representing, their stock portfolios may not be publicly available to researchers. Some may even claim that they have financial asset managers handling their portfolios, and that they don't even know what is or isn't in them. Sure. They don't know how many millions of dollars they have, which is why they didn't chastise the Pentagon for being unable to account for $2.3 trillion dollars it had spent. As Katrin always points out, you shouldn't condemn people just because they're rich, and you have to cut rich people some slack. They just don't have time to keep track of all their possessions, you know, as they're much too busy buying new ones. In fact they're so busy that they don't even have time to read the legislation they're voting on, so you can't blame them for voting in their own interests and against ours.
Or can you?
Excellent article, Ismael, thank you.
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments) on Monday, Jan 15, 2007 at 6:52:49 PM
(0+)
Want to post your own comment on this Article?
How would you rate this?
You must be logged in (if signed up) to do ratings.
It's free to signup! And easy. And takes just a minute or two....
Contact Author
View Authors' Articles
(0+)
Must Read (0) 
Well Said (0) 
News (0) 
Touching (0) 
Funny (0) 
Supported (0) 
Interesting (0) 
Inspiring (0) 
Valuable (0) 
