Progressive Media Advocates
The Military Industrial Complex is a term coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to describe the web of policies and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the military industrial base. The articles in this category address the relationship between our legislators and the lucrative defense contract industry.
Lawrence Wittner: At the very time when (thanks to sequestration) state governments are cutting back aid to low-income women and their children, the government of the State of Maryland seems en route to providing the Lockheed Martin Corporation with a handout worth millions of dollars.
Brent Budowsky: The partial list of Republicans, career diplomats and nonpartisan military leaders that I emphasize here as Hagel supporters speaks volumes about the bipartisan security tradition that Colin Powell, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel represent.
Lawrence Wittner: Dozens of local jurisdictions have passed resolutions that call for ending the U.S. military role in Iraq and Afghanistan, reducing the Pentagon budget, and funding domestic programs.
Lawrence Wittner: In the context of severe budget cutting by Congress, popular domestic social programs are being sacrificed to support the U.S. military budget — so much so that it currently consumes more than half of the U.S. government’s discretionary spending.
Tom Hall: If Lockheed Martin had been building boats at the time, the Pilgrims would never have reached Plymoth Rock on the Mayflower.
Sharon Kyle: Mikey Weinstein established The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, dedicated to ensuring that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.
John R. Moffett: Our world-spanning military, paid for by American taxpayers, serves the interests of defense contractors and the government officials that funnel the money to them but it does not serve the American taxpayer.
Ivan Eland: With yawning American budget deficits and a $15 trillion national debt, it would save significant amounts of money to reduce the number of carriers and carrier air wings well below the excessive 11 and 10, respectively.
Lawrence Wittner: Mitt Romney seems likely to become the Republican candidate and the next president, so we should carefully examine his first major foreign and military policy address
Lawrence Wittner: By scrapping plans for nuclear weapons “modernization” and for national missile defense—programs that are both useless and provocative—the United States would save $271 billion (well over a quarter of a trillion dollars) in the next ten years.
Rebecca Griffin: Depending on whom you ask, the Pentagon either got a free ride or the deal decimates the military budget. Given the leverage that Republicans had in this debate, it’s not surprising that the Pentagon got off easy in the first round of cuts.
Gary Corseri and Eric Shine: Today, the most disturbing sign of this take-over of all of the civilian commons by the military, at least in the U.S., comes in the form of a new, or reinvigorated, Department of War.
Jonathan David Farley: How I learned to stop worrying about where my academic research funding came from and love Raytheon
Tom Hayden: It is time for our most prominent liberal economists to broaden their analysis of the domestic crisis to include spending for these unfunded wars. Only Joseph Stiglitz has done so.
John Lasker: The mysterious deaths of female soldiers coincide with an increase in reported sexual violence against women in the military.
Norman Solomon: And so, the secretary of state condemns awful Iran, invoking “our sense of human dignity, the rights that flow from it and the principles that ground it.” But don’t hold your breath for any such condemnation of, say, Saudi Arabia — surely an “awful” government that “routinely violates the rights of its people.”
Mark Dempsey: The U.S. currently spends more than the rest of the world combined on its military but less than 2% of its budget on humanitarian aid, even if clean water would do more to promote peace.
Ivan Eland: Missile defense is an expensive relic of the Cold War, which the U.S. can no longer afford given its huge budget deficits and high debt levels. Keeping the program alive are Republicans who want to preserve this white elephant to realize the grandiose “Star Wars” dream of their hero, Ronald Reagan.
David Greenberg: Eisenhower’s speech itself has come to be romanticized all out of proportion to its merit, and the reasonableness of straightforward critiques of Pentagon spending cannot account for the mad embrace of Eisenhower in recent decades by anti-war leftists and so-called realists.
David Swanson: A poll last spring found that 85% of Kandaharis consider the Taliban “our Afghan brothers.” The poll was commissioned by the Pentagon. The same poll found that 94% favored peace negotiations, not war. So, out of the goodness of our racist hearts, we brought them more war.
Robert Reich: Has the President’s olive branch on extending the Bush tax breaks for the rich opened a new era in bi-partisanship? Doubtful.
Ivan Eland: The United States could undermine Chinese support for North Korea by giving South Korea five years notice that it will abrogate the U.S.-South Korean security alliance.
Brent Budowsky: There should be no misunderstanding about this: If the START Treaty becomes the next weapon of aggressive partisan warfare, it would demoralize America’s allies and embolden America’s enemies.
David Swanson: The Korean War was waged in supposed defense of the way of life in the United States and in supposed defense of South Korea against aggression by North Korea.
Ron Wolff: It was announced this week that the pullout of NATO troops from Afghanistan will be — 2014! Amazing as it might sound, 2014 is exactly the same deadline I have set for myself for the imposition of a low calorie diet. I’ve had this objective since 2002, but it’s always been part of a long-term strategic plan, not something I wanted to rush into prematurely.
David Swanson: The most silvery of possible silver linings here may lie in the possibility of a reborn peace movement. George W. Bush’s new memoir actually reveals the surprising strength the peace movement had achieved by 2006.
Walter Moss: And all hope is not yet lost that enough Republican senators would follow the lead, not of Kyl, but of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, their chief expert on arms control.
Tom Hayden: Persistent waffling on dates for American troop withdrawals has eroded any remaining patience with the Obama White House among peace activists and voters, a majority of whom favors a timeline for US troop withdrawals.
Tom Hayden: President Obama’s visit to India last week further cemented the US alliance with Hindu-dominated India in its long proxy war over Afghanistan against Muslim Pakistan.
JP Sotille: Everyone is a potential target in the War on Terror’s lingering “With Us or Against Us” protection racket, and drones are the crooked-nosed enforcers that kill without remorse, without hesitation and without accountability.
Carole Bartolotto: The good news is that you can easily replace cow’s milk with almond, soy, rice, hemp or coconut milk instead. I love Trader Joe’s Vanilla Almond Milk.
Robert Reich: The fact is, global corporations have no allegiance to any country; their only objective is to make as much money as possible — and play off one country against another to keep their taxes down and subsidies up.
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
Recent Comments