{"id":68501,"date":"2024-06-09T14:32:56","date_gmt":"2024-06-09T19:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68501"},"modified":"2024-06-09T14:32:56","modified_gmt":"2024-06-09T19:32:56","slug":"the-military-industrial-complex-is-killing-us-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68501","title":{"rendered":"The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

We need to talk about what bombs do in war. Bombs shred flesh. Bombs shatter bones. Bombs dismember. Bombs cause brains, lungs, and other organs to shake so violently they bleed, rupture, and cease functioning. Bombs injure. Bombs kill. Bombs destroy.<\/p>\n

Bombs also make people rich.<\/p>\n

When a bomb explodes, someone profits. And when someone profits, bombs claim more unseen victims. Every dollar spent on a bomb is a dollar not spent saving a life from a preventable death, a dollar not spent curing cancer, a dollar not spent educating children. That\u2019s why, so long ago, retired five-star general and President Dwight D. Eisenhower rightly called spending on bombs and all things military a \u201ctheft<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The perpetrator of that theft is perhaps the world\u2019s most overlooked destructive force. It looms unnoticed behind so many major problems in the United States and the world today. Eisenhower famously warned Americans about it in his 1961\u00a0farewell address<\/a>, calling it for the first time \u201cthe military-industrial complex,\u201d or the MIC.<\/p>\n

Start with the fact that, thanks to the MIC\u2019s ability to hijack the federal budget, total annual military spending is\u00a0far larger<\/a>\u00a0than most people realize:\u00a0around<\/a>\u00a0$1,500,000,000,000 ($1.5 trillion<\/a>). Contrary to what the MIC scares us into believing, that incomprehensibly large figure is monstrously\u00a0out of proportion<\/a>\u00a0to the few military threats facing the United States. One-and-a-half trillion dollars is about double what\u00a0Congress spends<\/a>\u00a0annually on all non-military purposes combined.<\/p>\n

Calling this massive transfer of wealth a \u201ctheft\u201d is no exaggeration, since it\u2019s taken from pressing needs like ending hunger and homelessness, offering free college and pre-K, providing universal health care, and building a green energy infrastructure to save ourselves from climate change. Virtually every major problem touched by federal resources could be ameliorated or solved with fractions of the cash claimed by the MIC. The money is there.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All We need to talk about what bombs do in war. Bombs shred flesh. Bombs shatter bones. Bombs dismember. Bombs cause brains, lungs, and other organs to shake so violently they bleed, rupture, and cease functioning. Bombs injure. Bombs kill. Bombs destroy. Bombs also make people rich. When a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[5493,11759,15620,25525,34690],"class_list":["post-68501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-geopolitics","tag-counterpunch","tag-david-vine","tag-mic","tag-military-industrial-complex-2","tag-theresa-isa-arriola"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68502,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68501\/revisions\/68502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}