War Trumps Peace

WAR TRUMPS PEACE




It is very hard not to believe that there isn’t embedded in our point of view the belief that there is no profit in peace. Why else would we tend to jump into wars using our young people as cannon fodder without trying to navigate and negotiate the issues first.

They are many people in high places whose financial futures are dictated by war and its practice. Don’t believe that? Just ask yourself on what type of company sits John Major, George Bush Sr, Howard Baker (Reagan’s right hand man), Carlucci, National Security Adviser for Ronald Reagan, and shortly, the prime minister of England. It’s called the Carlyle Group and it racks in money by the bucketful doing among other things buying and selling military contractors. The process goes something like this: They buy military contractors who do not have a contract and, amazingly, after they buy them they wind up with a contract. Then they sell them for a hefty profit. Isn’t that an amazing feat? And they don’t even have to ante up their own money. The Saudi princes who sit on the Board, too, take care of all that.

How can any of these people operate to achieve peace in the world when the rest of us know that they profit on the sale of military hardware and armaments?. Isn’t there something amazingly inconsistent about sitting on a board that makes profits on war while they are charged with legislating the peace?

. But that is only the icing on the cake. Look at the stock market and the stocks that seem to be doing well. Most, tend to be concerned in one way or another with military hardware or the housing market.

Why is the military market looking so strong?

One reason, we’re paying 200 million dollars per Raptor, a 135% increase over the price they were sold at. Why? There’s no competition. Many of the former military subcontractors have been merged, or absorbed and so there are fewer companies out there who build these complex military systems. And so the price goes up. Less competition leads to higher prices.

But that’s only a small part of the story. While we are spending more than 400 billion dollars on open allocations to support the military, that doesn’t include what’s being invested in secret operations like the CIA, NASA or other clandestine operations who hire literally hundreds of thousands of people who labor away at things that are excluded from tax-payers’ knowledge. And we are purported to be a free and open society. Imagine if we were “closed” society.

Nor does it include the anti-missile system that’s been in the works since Reagan’s day and still doesn’t work although they expect to invest more than $264 billion in developing the system anyway. Can you imagine any other kind of enterprise investing more and more money in a system that hasn’t worked and no one believes will work year after year? Only in America.

Contrast those kind of potential profits to hardware manufacturers, distributors and others in the channel—including lobbyists, public relations people, advertising agencies, think tanks and others with an axe to grind—with the potential for profit in peace and its hard to see how we can ‘afford’ peace.

But here’s the irony.

There’s a vast body of untapped potential in peace industries. Like cleaning up the environment, finding new technologies that are recyclable, that contribute to clean air and water, that improve health and longevity--processes that eliminate toxins and employ new thinking to eliminate waste and restore the natural balance of things that clearly dwarf the profits to the arms manufacturers of today. . Yet, we’ve not yet even tapped into their potential. It is to Al Gore’s enduring credit that he shone a spotlight on these promising areas for development. Still, nobody is doing anything to see these needed industries develop? Why? They for the most part, conflict with those who profit from the status quo.

There are two facts to consider here: The rich are close to the source of authority and power; and there is a strong amount of inertia here that suggests that those closest to the source of power have no reason or incentive to change what they are doing now. And therein lies the conundrum.

Clearly, if we are ever going to change things, we need to change the power structure. We need to move the war-mongers out and the peace-niks in.

This will happen in time when the fish run out, when the job market is paralyzed, when everything we buy that is tangible comes from China; and every new idea is turned into cash in South Asia.

And until we can figure a way to do that, whatever administration that is in office, will continue to benefit from war while the rest in their mistaken patriotism, give the only thing they can give: the flower of this once great country.

What the solution should be should be driving this country til the election. If not, if we don’t get serious, if we leave the heavy-lifting to one percent of the population, we are doomed to the scrape heap of history as a country that saw in its power only the exercise of more power.

Les Aaron