I don't want to finish this vignette without mentioning Herk's sibling, the F35, reportedly the most expensive military weapons program in US history. Not at all atypical performance in the industry, the contractor's projected cost of $226 billion for 2900 planes and a fly date of 2012 has since become $400 billion for 500 fewer planes with a fly date delayed to 2017. The Pentagon's plan to terminate part of the shoddy program was thwarted by the contractor marching up Capitol Hill to lobby the House Armed Services Committee. 11
We may never see the end of the F35 boondoggle. It has become the premium cash cow for its maker.
In Closing
There is no need to look in to any of the rest of the war galaxy. Its members are basically indistinguishable at a distance from one another. What they have in common is far more than what differentiates them. They are all merchants of death or complicit accessories. They all wallow at the bottomless government trough. They all, along with government, the patron saint, are enemies of humanity and peace. Their threat to the long-term survivability of our species can't be underestimated nor must their current depletion of resources needed to uplift the common good today be overlooked.
Swords into Plowshares?
Looking inside the war industry is easy to do. Changing it to a "peace" industry clearly quite another. My dozens of proposals for what to do collect dust as do those of others. But, in closing, I want to resurrect one of them I cited in one of my books, the civilianization of the war industry. I learned of the idea from Ellen Hodgins Brown, lawyer, prolific book and article writer, and founder and chair of the Public Banking Institute. Her idea is to "civilianize" the war industry.12 Turning swords into ploughshares, of course, is an old idea and one that has worked temporarily in the past as when at the end of WWII a large portion of America's GDP was converted from military to civilian outputs. Ms Brown gives as examples of civilianization turning bases into industrial parks, schools, airports, hospitals, and recreation facilities; and converting factories that churn out war machines into factories producing consumer and capital goods such as machine tools, electric locomotives, farm machinery, oil field equipment, and construction machinery for modernizing infrastructure. She cites evidence of how a well-designed military conversion program can create more jobs, not less than the military can create. Moreover, successful conversion would avoid throwing millions of trained people out of work.Another reason I highlighted Lockheed Martin is because it is a very diversified corporation. Besides being a merchant of death, it sorts the mail but is not the USPS; cuts Social Security checks but is not the SSA; counts the census but is not the Bureau of the Census; monitors air traffic; but is not the FAA; runs space flights but is not NASA; and helps spy on Americans but is not NSA. 13 Lockheed Martin, in other words, knows how to do a lot of things. It would seem ripe for civilianization. Give its owners and top management perp walks before the court of public opinion if not also before the International Criminal Court and rehabilitate the underlings with good, socially responsible civilianized jobs,
Notes
1. See, e.g., pp. 166-168 of my book, America's Oldest Professions: Warring and Spying. Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.
2. Ibid., pp. 33-34.
3.Thompson, L. Five Reasons the Defense Industry Is Still A Better Investment Than Other Sectors. Forbes, September 10, 2012.
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