this is an acusation that I hear now and then - that USA are in a constant war (more or less) to test out their new weapons
true or false ?
If true - how does this differ from the nazis who performed human experiment on people
The OP is a little too conspiracy-minded, but I do think Dwight Eisenhower was right to warn us of the growing influence of the military-industrial complex on our government. He considered it a great enough danger to make it the central theme of his farewell address in 1961. Here’s the text of that speech. And here’s the crux of it:
The excellent documentary Why We Fight takes a look at the power of the weapons industry in lobbying our government.
We are pretty well screwed now. We spend more on defense than all the other nations combined. It will only go up with the fearmongering that people swallow so easily. The neocons tapped into something that will change America profoundly . They have won.We will war til we run out of people or resources.
It’s distressing that Hillary, with her last ad campaign, seems to be fearmongering in chorus with the neocons.
That is why I want Obama. She is a tool of the Military Industrial Complex and the corporations.
Someone has a book out now which makes the claim that the ability of our military to use high tech weaponry played a major part in the decision to go to war in Iraq. The thinking was that because it was so easy to smash Afghanistan, that we’d be able to do the same in Iraq.
I don’t see a conspiracy from it per se. I see the problem with the defense contractors and their combined clout. They’re very well represented and very well funded and get treated in kind.
Hey, they were right- everything from the invasion to “Mission Accomplished” went smooth as silk. It’s the occupation that has been rough. Much easier to smash than occupy.
Yeah. Our military is awesome…if you dare fight us on an actual battlefield…
I´ve always seen the US military industry as a big, fat socialist program…
Pause as conservatives unhinge.
As I see things a huge industry is being fed, mainly, for the purpose of not having to lay off the workforce and face the political concequences of an angry mob of Joe Bombmakers.
So the powers that be keep shoveling money into it to keep prospective voters well fed and happy.
In other words a welfare system to keep the weapon manufacturers out of the streets.
It`s a nice vicious circle, where the PTBs can stuff pork where it most benefits them, the masses that get the dough prop them up and so it goes.
And then you find that you´re up to the armpits on the best, most deadly and shiny pieces of modern meatgrinder machinery, well, if it wouldnt be used now and then it would gatter some dust and cobwebs. You also have to make sure that it looks as if all that expense its necessary, nay, essential for the survival of the nation; so you blow up a mudhut in northern Azkrakistan with a million dollar cruise missile launched from a billion dollar ship. But you may have nailed some bad guy (or some innocent poor schmuck) so it was worth it to show who´s the big dog in the yard.
I just wish there were some way to divert some portion of that huge (and artificially-maintained) chunk of our economy away from weapons manufacture and toward infrastructure construction and maintenance.
Like maybe telling Lockheed “No, we’re not going to buy a new bomber, but we’d be happy to give you a contract for some bullet trains.”
Our defense spending is equivalent to the military spending of the rest of the world combined . Yet they have convinced our citizens that we need more. If we are that stupid we deserve everything that happens to us.
Is this what passes for critical thinking in the Democratic party these days?
The U.S. doesn’t need to go to war to test its weapons. They have these things called ‘weapons tests’ which do that. They also have constant wargames, alone and with allies.
Do you honestly think generals sit around going, “Man, that Predator drone sure looks purty! I wish we could start a nice war so we could shake the bugs out of it.” ?
I mean, seriously?
Why would the weapons industry care whether or not the military goes to war? You can just as easily replace broken weapons in peacetime as wartime. If you really want to make a killing (ba-dum-ksh) the money’s in the ammo. If you have the power to get the the gov to start wars, you’d just mandate that all the ammo stocks must be shot off in training every so many weeks. Much safer and much more reliable in the long run.
Aside from which, lots of companies, many of which have no connection to the government in most years, instantly became part of the “military-industrial complex” in wartime. There are cloth makers down the road here who got large, pricey cost-plus contracts to operate churning out uniform material. So they do.
Besides which, gonzomax, don’t you know who the “neocon’s” are? They’re left-wingers who came over because the Democrats couldn’t handle anything remotely resembling security or military. Most of them were and are very leftist on social affairs. They tend to be academic types, and often atheists. For some reason, a lot of the older ones were (ethnically) Jewish, too. I dunno why.
I don’t think there is any evidence that Eisenhower was talking about the M.I. starting wars to “test” weapons. More than likely he was referring to the 1956 election when the military funded Democratic candidates who said that he had allowed a “bomber gap” and he had just been through a (losing) election cycle where the charge loomed that his administration caused a “missile gap” with the USSR. He was incensed and felt that citizens and elected politicians, and not the M.I., should decide where to spend defense dollars.
There are multiple complex and different reasons for the U.S. military actions 1945-2008 – no one reason. The idea of actually starting an action to “test” new weapons is just not one that I see as realistic among those many varied reasons we have started, or more often, intervened in existing conflicts.
Might they run particular missions differently to field test a weapon or two? Yes. But the U.S. actually starting or running “constant” war to test weapons is something dreamed up by folks talking out their bottoms or who just flat out hate America (as our conservatives say).
I agree that the US doesn’t start wars to test weapons. That’s silly.
But what’s not silly is that our huge defense budget and entrenched weapons industry encourage a militaristic approach to foreign policy.
*“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
–Abraham Maslow *
Seriously, more or less; try: “Man, that Predator drone sure looks purty! I wish we could send it to war so we could shake the bugs out of it.”
The US, safe on the top dog status has not been shy of waging wars in the last 60 years; can you think of any consecutive 4 or 5 years in that period where overtly or covertly the US hasnt blew stuff up somewhere around the world?, what the heck, make it 3 or 2. Theres been a constant state of war, no need for the generals to wish for it.
Of course there are people that argue that lobbing cruise missiles is not an act of war, Id contest that but Id rather bang my head against a wall.
I would never make the argument that the U.S. has always wisely decided to use force or has judiciously thought through the consequences of taking military action or had reliable Intelligence to put human life at risk or had military action turn out the way they thought it would.
Having said that, the OP asks if the U.S. causes “constant war” to test weapons true or false. False. That is wacky. I’d love to see someone try to make the case that was even a tertiary cause of a “war”.
The 2nd part made a Reductio ad Hitlerium argument that we all left alone (although I would point out what the Nazi’s did was cause a world war for weirdo “genetic” ideals and belief in Germany’s only proper place in the world and a belief in needed vengeance for the “betrayal” of Versailles and born out of the world-wide depression then raging – and other reasons and not really to “test” weapons)
I don’t like the [del]Repub-lite[/del] mainstream Democrats but I’d like to see some evidence that mainstream Democrats think this.