WAR CAPITALISM
Back in the Ronald Reagan era, I began to use the term "war capitalism" in speeches and writings. It became obvious to me that the Reagan administration, led around by the nose by corporations that made ungodly sums of money when they could manipulate the U.S. into a war. The democratically-elected government of Nicaragua was not a threat to anyone, but the Reagan administration found reason to finance an illegal war against that elected government. It began to support the Contras clandestinely. When Congres began to smell a rat, Reagan went underground and made secret deals for weaponry with the nation of Iran. It all was pushed by certain corporations that I called "war corporations."
This has continued since then. Both political parties have had candidates and office-holders who did the bidding for these war corporations. No longer was the government of the United States and its military under the control of the American people, but fell under the control of private corporatons that not only bought votes, not only paid the White House and Congress to start wars [e.g. Greneda, Panama, etc.], but profits were made in astronomical amounts from these wars that were previously unknown. Our nation was being run by corporations that made immense profits from managing to get the U.S. into wars. Democracy be damned.
CorpWatch [www.corpwatch.org] traces the big money being made via war by our clandestine government, the war corporations. Here are a few examples of how it is done...
RECONSTRUCTION: The victor of modern wars "make extraordinary profits by giving contracts to their favorite companies to rebuild what they have destroyed and then hand the bill to local taxpayers."
LOGISTICS: "Private companies do many of the routine activities in the military from cooking food to repairing fighter jets under a program called 'the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program'. . .The federal government has an open-ended mandate and budget to send these companies anywhere in the world to run humanitarian or military operations for profit..."
SECURITY: "Today's mercenary is more likely to wear a business suit or stand guard over an oil pipeline. Companies like Defence Systems Ltd. guard British Petroleum's pipelines in Colombia. Dyncorp polices the Mexican border, while Military Professionals Resources Incorp. trains U.S. soldiers in Kuwait and Iraq in live-weapons fire."
INTELLIGENCE: "From satellites that can photograph postage stamps from outer space to covert operatives who are searching for Osama bin Laden, private companies now help run much of the clandestine services for organizations like the CIA." Science Applications Int'l. Corp. of San Diego is designing eavesdropping software for the National Security Agency in the U.S. to monitor phones, faxes, and email.
Do you want private war corporations starting wars or paying to buy Presidents and Congress-persons to start wars? Is the CIA not secretive enough, we have to have private secret corporations doing the CIA's work? Think what could be done with the money spent to fight unnecessary wars. Think of the American men and women in the military who lose their lives fighting unnecessary wars, or wars started by the secret purchase of politicians of both parties. This is what Americans need to be moved by and act! Most of the rest of today's political debates are led and managed by these war corporations and their lackies.
[some material here was taken from www.worldwidewamm.org's "Worldwide wamm" periodical for July-August 2010.....quotes from corpwatch.org]
