Why the hell didn't anyone heed Eisenhower's warning about the Military Industrial Complex?

[Peace Patriot]

7. I agree. JFK was assassinated for his efforts at world peace...

...which included...

--refusing to support the CIA invasion of Cuba and vowing afterward to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces" for lying to him about it;

--refusing to annihilate Soviet Russia with nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile crisis (--the entire MIC pushed hard for it, and thought the U.S. had "missile superiority" and would "win" with only a few hundred thousand casualties on the east coast; JFK was horrified and had only one ally in that fight, his brother, RFK);

--removing U.S. military bases that threatened Soviet Russia from Turkey in exchange for Russia's removal of missiles from Cuba (ending that crisis);

--opening backchannels to Krushchev and Castro (to get around the CIA) to end the Cold War and all the "little wars";

--beginning the de-escalation in Vietnam (just before he was killed; three days after he was killed, LBJ said, "Now they can have their war"--he was referring to the CIA and Vietnam);

--the "Nuclear Test Ban Treaty" (very first effort to limit nuclear weapons)--another result of JFK's backchannels to Krushchev;

--the Russia "wheat deal" (helping Russia to prevent mass starvation after a failed wheat crop);

--his implied desire to "beat swords into plowshares" by directing military resources at space exploration;

--and probably his support for civil rights for black citizens (racism related to militarism/fascism).

Within the space of five years, MLK and RFK were assassinated as well, and the Vietnam War was raging.

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Highly recommended: James Douglass' recent book, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters." Best book on the JFK assassination and on WHY.

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By the time Eisenhower uttered those famous words--in his last weeks in office--the MIC was already poised to destroy our democracy and did so with alacrity as soon as they were challenged. The pity of it is that JFK was planning to lay his plans for world peace before the American people in the 1964 election and would have won hands down. LBJ ran in his stead and did so on a peace platform and won one of the biggest landslides in presidential history on the issue of PEACE. But LBJ was lying--he was quickly escalating the Vietnam War even as he spoke of peace and painted his opponent as "trigger happy." JFK would not have been lying.

I remember the 1964 election very well. It was my first vote for president. I voted for peace--and got death instead: two million Southeast Asians, and almost 60,000 U.S. soldiers. The horror of it was beyond belief. And what was that war FOR? It was not for oil, as we have lately seen. It was a pure WAR PROFITEER war.

We have never recovered from that. We've been on a war footing ever since, and, though the MIC had to bide its time, due to the domestic revulsion at the Vietnam War, there was no demobilization, as there should have been, and the MIC gathered strength with every administration afterwards, and proceeded with illegal wars (for instance, the war on Nicaragua) and "little wars" (like Grenada), and escalating to the Iraq War, the first outright corporate resource war. Meanwhile, the MIC and the CIA and collusive administrations were supporting horrible fascist dictatorships in Latin America, where hundreds of thousands of people were tortured and killed and the Pentagon began planting a thousand military bases around the world.

We are in the complete thrall of the MIC today but I don't know that there was anything we could have done about it in 1959 (when Eisenhower spoke out). We had just emerged from the horrible "McCarthy era" (a "communist" under every bed)--a scary and extremely jingoistic era. And we should remember that both JFK and RFK were "Cold Warriors" to begin with. It wasn't until the Cuban Missile Crisis that they understood the madness of the MIC. They changed (as Douglass so brilliantly documents) and began looking for ways to avoid Armageddon, to de-escalate the war on "communism" (which had become a war on socialism and leftism) and to create a safer and more just world. When they and MLK were murdered, it sent the people of the U.S. into a tailspin as to our ability to exercise democratic control of our government.

I think we have more prospects for serious reform now than we did then. The MIC and our transglobal corporate rulers are so out of control that they may trigger their own demise. Frankly, I think they did so with their "final control" on the American people: the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines, now 80% owned and controlled by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold. The sorts of people that ES&S is putting into office--like this Scumbag Congress and certain governors, completely unrepresentative officials--is going to wake people up, eventually. Their permitting Obama to be elected was a clever move--a means of getting us all to forget the horrors of Bush Junta war crimes and financial crimes--but the bad guys are obviously still in control, and, in trying to break us entirely, they are arousing rebellion. I hope the rebellion attacks the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines as a first priority but who knows what the "straw" is going to be, that "breaks the camel's back"? How much can the American people take?

We need to dismantle the MIC and all big corporations--pull their corporate charters and seize their assets for the common good. It seems impossible but, if what is happening in Latin America is any guide, after all those folks have suffered, it is NOT impossible. It is our right. We are a democratic people. And it is our legacy. We started the democracy revolution worldwide. Now we need to reclaim it. And I have never, ever lost faith in the American people that we will do so.