The Breakdown of American Morality

The breakdown of American morality began very quietly, merely at first a plan to transition America from a producer of goods, in a free market economy, to a service based economy, and it took more than a generation of planning and insight to complete the transition.

But, consider, why would any nation desire to transition is productivity, the real economic backbone of an industrialized country, and thereby reduce the standard of living of its own citizens?

When you have finished reading this essay you will come to understand the darkness of our present society and the real reason, a war based economy and the need for perpetual manpower in that arena.

It began when the United States became the largest modern economy to become a producer of wars as a means to employ its population. It began during a period of relative prosperity, with its focus predominately under the Reagan/Bush Administration.

It was both during the cold war and at the beginning of its end, when policies changed to a global presence, beginning during the Second World War, but gaining its momentum and focus around 1950 with Korea, then Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, to the planned invasion of Iran, and Syria.

Eventually, the Neoconservatives would find an ear, and before the turn of the century such war mongers as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the Weekly Standard (Rupert Murdock) began to stage the US foreign Policy, many of these insiders were drawn into the George W. Bush administration, where their appetite could be appeased, and our need to be involved in wars of choice, had a ready ear, primarily, incidentally in the oil and drug rich Middle East, in contrast to the 1970’s oil and drug rich Golden Triangle which included Vietnam.

The Golden Triangle is one of Asia ’s two main illicit Opium producing areas. It is an area of around 350,000 square kilometers that overlaps the mountains of four countries of Southeast Asia; Myanmar ( Burma ), Vietnam , Laos , and Thailand , (Other interpretations of the Golden Triangle also include a section of Yunnan Province , ( China .) Along with Afghanistan in the Golden Crescent and Pakistan , it has been one of the most extensive opium-producing areas of Asia and of the world since the 1950s.

The New Direction

George H. W. Bush as President from1989 to 1993 took America into 18 separate conflicts, and another 21 under Reagan 1981-1989. Expanding the military industrial complex, (MIC) even against the advice of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, in his farewell address in January 1961, warned that “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.”

The Transition which began almost 60 years ago was fully implemented by September 11, 2001, by coincidence or design it was in time for the “terrorist” attack on the World Trade Center . Although history demonstrates, but with cooked intelligence, that the US was unprepared and lacked sufficient knowledge to prevent the attack, the facts present an alarming discrepancy. The administration knew of the planned attack, and “allowed” it to take place, of this there is NO question. A CIA asset Michael Riconisuito advised the Administration through Colin Powell, and John Ashcroft, who refused to act. There are also (9) different admitted communications that warned the Bush Administration of the pending attack.

Indeed, in September 2000, when the Pentagon issued its famous strategy document entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses," the belief was expressed that the kind of military transformation the planners were considering required "some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor,” to make it possible to sell the plan to the American public. They were either prescient or lucky because one year later, they had the "New Pearl Harbor" they had been hoping for.

This New Pearl Harbor idea was the Concept referred to in the PNAC paper developed in the late1990’s, which gave a neoconservative logic for Mid East wars of choice by first strike initiative, and which included the planned invasion of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. In the Eastern Mediterranean Region, Syria is the only substantial oil producer.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a bonanza for the American military-industrial complex. This was an event, a "New Pearl Harbor," that some had openly been hoping for. The reason! These attacks gave the perfect pretext to keep military expenses, which had been expected to fall after the demise of the old Soviet Empire, at a high level. Instead, they provided the rationale for dramatically increasing them, by substituting a “War on Terror” and a "War against Islamists" as a replacement for the “War against Communism,” and the "Cold War against the Soviet Union ".

In this new perspective, the gates of military spending could be open and flowing again. The development of ever more sophisticated armaments could go forward and thousands of corporations and hundreds of political districts could continue to reap the benefits. The costs would be born by the taxpayers, by young men and women who die in combat and by remote populations who happen to lie under the rain of bombs about to fall on them.

At the time, no one understood the reasons behind the transition, that there was a purpose in reducing America ’s standard of living, i.e. fewer high paying jobs, and economic despair equals a higher level of enlistment in the armed services, and its supporting industries.

But what are these wars really about? Is it the Oil, Drugs, Territory, Empire Building or merely Economic?

The answer can be quite alarming, considering, the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is the largest part of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) produced in the United States . But don’t underestimate the value of the Drug trade. The Military intelligence agencies all over the world value it greatly, as it is a large part of their black ops budget.

The MIC is generally defined as a "coalition consisting of the military and industrialists who profit by manufacturing arms and selling them to the government." (War profiteering) Eisenhower related... that until World War II, the United States did not have an armaments industry. Even though "American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well," the United States could "no longer risk emergency improvisation" of the country's national defense.

The fact that the MIC, benefits from international conflicts explains why it has almost always reacted negatively to discussions of international cooperation and detente. Thus, for example, in the late 1940s and early1950s, the Korean War and the "communist threat" were used as a “pretext” by the proponents of military buildup to overrule those who called for limits on military spending.

Representatives of the military-industrial complex, disproportionately ensconced in the State Department, succeeded in having President Truman embark on his famous overhaul of the U.S. foreign policy, which drastically increased the Pentagon budget and expanded the military-industrial establishment.

At the time President Eisenhower warned about the influence that the military-industrial complex exerted upon the government, most Americans believed that a massive Cold War defense budget was necessary for national survival. Today it is no longer necessary to marshal this level of public support for government spending, because the process of ceding control of public activities, including the defense of the United States , to private business is much further advanced.

The United States has and will continue to sacrifice the quality of life for its domestic population at the expense of the military industrial complex. The United States has become a war machine and unless we stop feeding this war machine, we as a nation will never have peace. The United States , in its own way, embodies a fascistic regime, where constant war becomes synonymous with peace and constant propaganda becomes synonymous with truth.

It is because of this giant war complex that America has a need to produce generations of warriors, a generation made ready by the reality of dwindling employment opportunities, and frequent recessions. This evolving into an integral concept of a theme of nationalism, if this sounds familiar it should, “National Socialism”, the theory behind the NAZI regime of Adolph Hitler, which is very closely akin to US foreign and domestic policies.

Germany produced the war machine, the men, the armaments, the assets for the war. Each country Germany over ran produced the remaining goods and services for the German complex.
For Example: Germany lack natural supplies in several key raw materials needed for economic and military operations. Germany obtained its iron ore from Sweden , its manganese and Oil from Russia , and Rubber from the Dutch and British.

In America , the turning point was September 11, 2001 a day of unification and the height of American patriotism, but the stage was actually set in 1981. The incoming presidency of Ronald Reagan and his mentor George, HW Bush.

Wars, especially modern electronic wars, are very murderous, but they are also synonymous with big cost-plus contracts, big profits and big employment for those who produce the required military gear. Wars are the ultimate paradise of profiteers.

Wars are also a way for mediocre politicians to monopolize both the news and the media in their partisan favor by whipping up patriotic fervor and by pushing for narrow-minded nationalism. Indeed, to inflame patriotism and nationalism is an old demagogic trick used to dominate a nation. When that happens, there is a clear danger that democracy and freedom will be eroded, and even disappear, if that development leads to an exacerbated concentration of power and political corruption, which has become self evident in the United States.

The MIC needs wars, many and successive wars, to prosper, and that is the very purpose of their existence. Old military equipment has to be repaired and replaced each time there is a hot war. But to justify the enormous costs of developing ever more deadly weapons, there must be a constant climate of fear and vulnerability.

For example, there are many reports, originating from medical and international observers, that the Israeli attacks against Lebanon and Gaza during the summer of 2006, allowed for the use of “new American Made Weapons”. Such weapons are reported to include depleted uranium (DU) bombs, 'direct energy' weapons and new chemical and biological weapons.

These weapons not only make the act of homicide easier but they also contaminate the environment with radioactive DU particles for decades to come.

Evidence of these ‘directed-energy weapons’ (DEW) were found to have been used in Panama during the 1989 US Invasion, it is a type of weapon that emits energy in an aimed direction without the means of a projectile. It transfers energy to a target for a desired effect. These weapons are very real.

But, in order to build a compact strong enough to steer a democratic country on the path to a permanent war economy it takes an alliance of interests between militarists, industrialists, politicians, sycophants and propagandists. These are the five pillars of the military-industrial complex, as can be found in the United States , and they all have one thing in common, Banks, ownership and control!

How do they make it work?

In 1991, at the end of the Cold War, the U.S. defense budget was $298.9 billion. In 2006, that budget had increased to $447.4 billion, and this does not include the more than $100 billion spent in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The 2009 budget is $515.4 Billion, and again does not reflect the current wars. It is estimated that American military expenditures represent, at a very minimum, close to if not more than half of total world military outlays (48 percent of the world total in 2005, according to official figures), while the U.S. accounts for less than 5 per cent of world population and about 25 per cent of world total output. As a percentage, the U.S. military expenses gobble up a minimum of 21 percent of the total American federal budget (2006=$2.5 trillion). Such a military budget is larger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of some countries, such as Belgium or Sweden . It is sort of a government within a government.

The 2009 Federal Budget has an outlay of $3.1 Trillion, with a projected income of only $2.7 Trillion. Again the financial cost of the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan are not part of the defense budget; they are appropriations.

Employment statistics
In 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense employed 2,143,000 people, while it estimates that private defense contractors employ 3,600,000 workers, for a grand total of 5,743,000 defense-related American jobs, or 3.8 percent of the total labor force. In addition, there are close to 25 million veterans in the United States . Therefore, it is safe to say that more than 30 million Americans receive checks which originate directly or indirectly from the U. S. military budget. Assuming conservatively only two voting-age people per household, this translates into a block of some 60 million American voters who have a financial stake in the American military establishment.

The private defense contractors
The five largest American Defense contractors are Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics. They are being followed by Honeywell, Halliburton, BAE Systems and thousands of smaller defense companies and subcontractors. Some, like Lockheed Martin in Bethesda ( Maryland ) and Raytheon in Waltham ( Massachusetts ) draw close to 100 percent of their business from defense contracts. Some others, like Honeywell in Morristown ( New Jersey ), have important consumer goods divisions. All, however, stand to profit when expenditures on weapons procurements increase. In fact, U.S. defense contractors have been enjoying big Pentagon budgets since March 2003, i.e. since the onset of the Iraq war. As a result, they have posted sizable increases in total shareholder returns, ranging from 68 percent (Northrop Grumman) to 164 percent (General Dynamics), from March '03 to September '06.

It should also be noted that private defense contractors play another social role: they are big employers of former generals and former admirals from the U.S. military establishment.

The political establishment
In the U.S., former President George W. Bush, an oilman, and former Vice President Dick Cheney, was a former chairman and CEO of the large oil service company Halliburton in Houston (Texas), epitomize the image of politicians devoted to the growth and development of the military-industrial complex. Their administration expanded the military establishment and they had adopted a militarist foreign policy on a scale not seen since the end of the Cold War and even since the end of World War II. Indeed, under the Bush-Cheney administration, the arms industry became very profitable. Multibillion dollar contracts to sell planes and tanks to various countries in an increasingly lawless world gained full swagger. Close to two-thirds of all arms exports in the world originate from North America .

Congress, for its part, is indebted to defense corporations that operate military plants in each congressman's district or senator's state, besides owing some gratitude to the lobbies that provide funds and media support in election times.

The "think tanks" establishment
The brain-trust and the sycophants behind the war-oriented economy form an interlocking network of Washington-based so-called 'think tanks' that are financed by the rich tax-exempt foundations which have billions of dollars of assets, such as, for example, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Scaife Foundation or the Coors Foundation, etc. Among the most influential and representative think tanks, whose mission is to orient American foreign policy, one finds the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Heritage Foundation, the Middle East Media Research Institute, the neoconservative Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, the Center for Security Policy, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) Pand the Hudson Institute. Such think tanks serve a double purpose: they provide government officials with policy papers on various topics, usually on the very conservative side; and, they serve as incubators for government departments, supplying them with already trained personnel and providing employment for public officials who are out of office.

The same revolving door that exists between the military establishment and defense contractors is also observed to exist between the Washington-based think tanks and U.S. government departments.

The "propaganda" establishment
The pro-war economy propagandists are to be found in the fundamentally right-wing American media industry, which are directly under the control of the Federal Government, which is also controlled by the same force that controls the media outlets, the large stock holdings by the Banks. This is because the selling of war-oriented policies requires the expertise that only a well-oiled propaganda machine can provide. The most potent propaganda tool is television. And there, Rupert Murdoch’s FOX News Network is unbeatable. There is no American media outlet more openly devoted to the neocon ideology and more committed to supporting new American wars than Fox News. CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC and ABC emulate it, but their professionalism prevents them from even coming close to Fox News in biased reporting toward war, and in unabashedly promoting U.S. Global domination.

Fox's propaganda efforts are closely coordinated with other Murdoch-owned print media, such as the Weekly Standard and the New York Post. The Washington Times, which is controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church , the neoconservative New York Sun, and other neocon publications such as the National Review, The New Republic, The American Spectator, the Wall Street Journal, complete the main pro-war propaganda infrastructure.

In conclusion, it is the conjunction of these five pro-war machines, i.e., the bloated military establishment, the large American arms industry, the Neocon pro-war administration with Congress being strongly under the influence of militarist lobbies, the pro-war think tanks network and the pro-war media propagandists that constitutes the framework of the military-industrial complex, of which President Dwight Eisenhower wisely feared the corrosive influence on American society, almost 60 years ago, in 1961.

"Over-grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty." --George Washington (1732-1799), 1st US President.

"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear." --General Douglas MacArthur, Speech, May 15, 1951

Is it possible now to reverse this trend? It may be too late; Hank Paulson and his successor Timothy Geithner are part of the financial oligarchy, a part of the banking oligarchy, whose interests are not the same as the interests of the American people. Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner are part of a global banking cartel, the same group of bankers all over the world, who seek to keep interest rates as low as possible, to make it as easy for them to borrow as much as they need. The reason, because when they make a bad bet, their respective governments bail them out with tax payer money. It’s really a war, there’s a global war going on between investors and speculators. Anyone who’s trying to invest money for a decent return, or work for a decent wage is being squeezed out or pushed out by speculators who have access to cheap money through political connections.

It’s not a coincidence that the primary GDP-boosting activities of America are war, and the same individuals that service the war councils are on the board of directors of these banks and in Washington , and on each of the companies that reap the windfalls of domestic and military spending.

Wake UP!