Sure. And if I was discussing the military-industrial complex, I’d have mentioned Eisenhower. But it was Jim B. who cited Gore Vidal and Qin was responding to that.
You’re making the assumption that the tail is wagging the dog. Weapon makers don’t create wars in order to sell their products. Governments create wars without any outside influence and businesses just respond to the existing conditions by selling governments the weapons it wants. If governments decided to turn around and spend billions of dollars on education and health care instead, these businesses would be happy to sell them school and medical supplies.
Let’s stipulate that “The Military-Industrial Complex” is sometimes a useful way of talking about the world, just like “The AFL-CIO” or “Democrats” or “Conservatives” or “America” or “Cuba” can be a useful way of talking about the world.
So what next? The Military-Industrial Complex–in the name of selling weapons systems and starting wars–is behind the embargo of Cuba? And if a president thinks about normalizing relations, he gets a call from Halliburton, and pretty soon changes his mind?
Because that’s not what’s happening. How does Halliburton (and their ilk) profit from the embargo? Halliburton made money from the Iraq War, from Afghanistan, from Libya. Every time we lob a cruise missile at a tent and hit a camel in the butt somebody in the Military-Industrial complex gets paid.
We aren’t lobbing cruise missiles at Cuba. We aren’t building warships to guard against the Cuban threat. We aren’t stationing nervous soldiers in the Florida Keys to clutch their rifles and scan the horizon.
Nobody in America makes a dime from the embargo. Not even sugar producers, because we already have sky-high tariffs against foreign sugar. American businesses, and the military-industrial sector of American business, loses potential profits every single day we refrain from normalizing relations with Cuba.
Now, if corporate profits are the guiding principle of American foreign policy, how could this be? Either Halliburton is somehow making secret profits from this and I’m somehow not able to see how, or the current Cuba policy is not driven by corporate interests.
And in fact, the correct answer is that current Cuba policy is not driven by corporate interests. It is driven by electoral politics and inertia. This is obvious to anyone who has opened a book or followed events since they read Howard Zinn back in college during the 80s.
I disagree with your premise that weapon makers never contribute to the creation of wars. I also disagree that weapon makers would turn to health care and education where they have no expertise. To say that Halliburton and its chief executive Dick Cheney had nothing to do with creation of the Iraq conflict is contrafactual. Also, according to the logic you have used, all teachers and doctors should become arms manufacturers. Yet they do not.
Ruthless entrepreneurs don’t just invent products, they drive the markets to create demand. Arms entrepreneurs are no different in that respect than people lighting a world’s fair with electricity to create a market, or Henry Ford paying his workers double his competitors so they could buy his product and lowering the price of the product.
So what does that have to do with the price of oil in Cuba?
Do you contend that we continue the embargo against Cuba because Dick Cheney/Halliburton/Their Kind make money from the embargo? And that any time a president tries to change the policy, he gets a call from Dick Cheney who tells him, “Kid, this isn’t your night”?
Old Jeane Kirkpatrick joke (possibly from This Modern World):
Question: How do you tell the difference between a totalitarian and an authoritarian regime?
Answer: In a totalitarian regime, the state organizes fraudulent elections and tortures and kills its political opponents.
In an authoritarian regime, many of these services are provided by the private sector.
There’s a huge difference between saying corporations market their products and even try to influence the government and saying the government is controlled by corporations.
Because think about it. If the government does things only because its corporate masters order it, why war? Sure that benefits the weapons companies but how did they get first dibs? Why don’t other major corporations have the government dancing to their tune? If Lockheed can order the government to declare war, why can’t McDonalds order the government to declare vegetarianism illegal?
Obviously, big businesses have influence and they do get favors from the government. But at most they can nudge the government in some direction it was already going. They couldn’t have got a war in Iraq going unless the government had already been ninety percent willing to start one. Corporations don’t have their hands on the steering wheel; they’re just riding in the back seat and yelling suggestions.
And government is the chauffeur.
You know who else killed his own people?
Who are you going to find to support that claim? David Irving?
For the record, Hitler killed plenty of Germans - and not just Jews and other groups he didn’t consider Germans.
[Emphasis mine.]
Did you actually read the post?
Maybe I should have read it more closely. Still, I do clearly remember that is what people were saying 30 years ago (the Shah was worse than Hitler).
You have yet to provide evidence for your moronic claim that the Shah was “genocidal” and considered “worse than Hitler”.
Please provide your evidence to support such a jaw-droppingly stupid argument that most Iranians, including myself would find laughable.
Thanks.
Your post may have been a little to harsh for these boards:). In any event, I never claimed the Shah actually was worse than Hitler, just that at one time people said this.
I said nothing about you, I commented on your post.
You claimed the Shah was “genocidal”. That is an extremely stupid claim.
Nice weaseling. Ok, who were the “people” who said this?
Beyond that, once more, please explain why you so foolishly claimed the Shah was “genocidal”.
Thanks.
I don’t know how to get myself out of this corner I have now apparently painted myself into. But to reiterate, I am just remembering what people said c. 30 years ago. I have so far been unable to find a recent reference, but I will keep searching. BTW, I also was just referring to what I heard in my OP. I was not personally making a claim. I know it seems hard to claim that now. But it’s true:).
Ok, I’ll take your word for it and we all make mistakes.
As others pointed out, that emphasis was there in my post.