Here is a half-minute clip of one of the most significant Freudian slips I’ve ever heard. Earlier this year George W. Bush meant to be talking about Russia, but he made the mistake of momentarily looking up from his written speech. He denounced “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.” He caught himself, “I mean Ukraine.” Then he mumbled an ad lib, “Iraq too.” There is truth in this short clip!
I often listen to interviews while doing my morning exercises, and this morning I heard Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg in an interview with Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news.
Chomsky and Ellsberg pointed out that the US doesn’t have a military-industrial complex — the US is a military-industrial complex. What is the product that a military-industrial complex needs to manufacture first and foremost? The answer is enemies.
Consider if weapons manufacturers were non-profit instead of for-profit. Then NATO, which served to counter the power of the USSR, might have ended in 1991. That’s when the USSR collapsed and no longer had anywhere near the military and economic power of the US and its allies. Instead, NATO expanded, and its biggest funder, the US, pressed member nations to share more fully in NATO’s military expenses — i.e. buy more weapons — when in fact those European countries seemed to prefer spending their federal budgets on things like free higher education and healthcare for all.
Daniel Ellsberg named five arms-producing companies: Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Lockheed. He said, “If you have no scruples about where you invest your money, then those firms are a good bet.” A few minutes later he said that Biden’s team is “in no way better than the foreign policy team of Trump, or Obama, or anybody else.”
What can we do?
On the national level, we can demand that our leaders in government use all the power they have to insist on negotiations rather than on increases in military budgets, upgrades in the nuclear arsenal, escalation of military conflict, increased use of UN-prohibited sanctions, and other acts of war! Negotiation is a lot cheaper and less deadly for people and planet than what we’ve been doing with our massive and growing military budgets.
On a personal level, well, I have a few folks I’ve been on the outs with for awhile. We were once close and it’s possible that if I take action, we might be able to re-connect. And I can certainly stop making more enemies.
Connection — with people and planet — is still the real bottom line, I believe.