On Sunday, President Barack Obama has issued to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. He will address the public tonight his decision to send more troops and outline his new Afghanistan strategy from West Point, the United States Army’s elite military academy.

President Obama faces a difficult task. He must first win over the anti-war community that once cheered for Obama for opposing the Iraq war have now voiced their discontent about his decision to divert military resources back to Afghanistan.

In an open letter to Obama, filmmaker Michael Moore not only criticized Obama’s decision for escalating the war in Afghanistan, but warned him that his decision could tarnish his legacy. Meanwhile, MoveOn.org urged its members to send messages to the White House voicing their opposition to the troop increase.

To be honest, Obama’s capitulation to the pro-war hawks of both political parties is not surprising. To understand why, it is important to understand former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning of the impending dangers of the military-industrial complex.

The Warning
In his farewell speech to the nation, Eisenhower’s admonishment of the military-industrial complex was a warning against the impending dangers of fraud, distorted priorities, and the entrenched interest of defense contractors.

Eisenhower warned:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Eisenhower worried the complex would alter American domestic order over time, entrenching and expanding a powerful federal state to pursue social and national security. However, by the time he raised concerns, it was already so firmly established.

Crossing the Rubicon
After World War II, America’s foreign policy pendulum started swinging the other way at the start of the Cold War. Instead of reverting back to its traditional isolationist character, our foreign policy shifted to a comprehensive containment strategy.

Of the many numbing qualities of the cold war, desensitizing people to open-endedness could be considered the most significant. The need for a military-industrial complex was not so much for purposes of economic expansion directly, but for maintaining US hegemony “a while longer” throughout the world through direct intervention by American armed forces.

The cold war blurred the difference between wartime and peacetime activities and it obscured the difference between war profits and civilian profits. The origins of this policy can be traced a top secret paper written, National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68), issued in April 1950 shortly before the Korean War by the National Security Council and signed by President Harry S. Truman in Sept 1950. Drafted Paul Nitze, the plan laid out the basic public economic policies that the US pursues to the present day.

NSC-68 argued that The Soviet system required “the ultimate elimination of any effective opposition” and “that it has a sufficient atomic capability to make a surprise attack on us.” The paper continues, such an attack would be “swiftly and with stealth” unless the US maximizes its “economic potential” to “develop a level of military readiness which can be maintained as long as necessary.”

From an economic point of view, it concluded that “one of the most significant lessons of our World War II experience was that the American economy, when it operates at a level approaching full efficiency, can provide enormous resources for purposes other than civilian consumption while simultaneously providing a high standard of living.”

With this understanding, a permanent war economy was created – a system which served as a win-win solution for US militarism and the economy. The only problem, defense contractors cannot operate indefinitely if there are no profit to be made. Or can they?

Editor’s Note: This was meant to be posted prior to Obama’s address last night, but I minor emergency came up that required my intimidate attention.

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