" While the Pentagon turns out B-2 bombers at $865 million a copy, foreign creators are flooding our markets with cars, bikes, tape recorders, shoes, machine tools, movie cameras, calculators, TV sets, and integrated microcircuits." Melman said that 19 years ago and it holds true today.
One reason the U.S. fell behind, Melman explained, is that "about 30 percent of the nation's engineers, scientists and technicians work directly or indirectly for the military. The loss to the civilian economy is incalculable." Consumer electronics, he said, "declined dramatically while the Government employs thousands of electronic engineers in its military labs."
That was true when Melman spoke and it is true today. We have an army of death scientists toiling away in germ warfare labs ($50 billion wasted on this nauseating research alone since 9/11), in space warfare labs, in nuclear warfare labs, in electronic warfare labs, as well as in labs specializing in conventional ways to kill people.
Melman said one reason for the continuing dominance of the MIC is that the U.S. "is now a military form of state capitalism in which top managers of the military forces and their economy have dominant power---economic, political and military." Translation: the Pentagon rules!
Today, Melman might add the Pentagon spends more for war than all 50 states spend for all peaceful purposes; that the Pentagon's armed forces are bigger than the next dozen countries combined; that the Pentagon leads the world in arms sales; and that the Pentagon operates 800 overseas bases for "defense" when, in fact, they are used, like Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, for aggression.
As of Jan. 1 of this year, the National Priorities Project of Northampton, Mass., says, the Pentagon has spent $445 billion to wage war in Afghanistan and $815 billion for Iraq, for a total of $1.26 trillion. This at a time when the American Society of Civil Engineers reckons $2.2 trillion is needed to restore our infrastructure. Example: 33% of all roads are in poor or mediocre condition. Does the Pentagon need to spend $19.3-billion on atomic energy when the same sum could pay 295,000 elementary school teachers?
Cutting the Pentagon down to size and converting to civilian economy will require "a new coalition of working people, professionals, trade associations, mayors---all suffering from the prosperity of the military-industrial complex, all needing a turn away from militarism." "What we need," Melman concluded, "is a political opposition that would take down the entire military system."
We saw the faintest stirrings of hope for change in June when the U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a resolution to spend at home the $125 billion the Pentagon is wasting this year waging wars in the Middle East. In depressed Detroit, the unemployment level is 38% and Rep. John Conyers(D-Mich.) blames the White House's lack of leadership for the lack of job creation. Given our infrastructure needs alone, why isn't there a job or job-training for every person who is willing to work?
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