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I Heard Them Cheer
by James Glaser December 12/13 2016 
Donald Trump, President-elect Donald Trump gave a speech, and it scared me. Our future President was saying he wanted to build up our military—our military which is already the most powerful military in the history of the world, and the people cheered. Our new President, well, he will be President in less than two months said, “We build up our military not as an act of aggression, but as an act of prevention.” How many rulers throughout history have said words similar to Trump’s? We have been in an almost constant state of war since 1941, and there is no end in sight. We have poured trillions and trillions of dollars into our military for decades, and it is never enough. There is a reason for that. We have a Military Industrial Complex that is owned by rich American families, and they have been getting richer and richer off our military spending and our wars for 75 years now, and they do not want that profit-flow to end. Every new break-through in technology means new weapon systems developed that must be bought and added to our arsenal. There is a problem though with what Donald Trump wants to do. You can only make “new and better” weapons systems for so long before people in the Pentagon start wanting to try them out, and there is no better way to increase profits to the Defense Industry than to have a war and use those weapons up so new ones have to be bought to replace them. Every gun, every ship, every tank, or airplane built means a continuation of those profits. Also, every bullet shot, every bomb dropped, or missile fired means a replacement must be bought. And as I am sure you can see, every plane or helicopter destroyed or weapon used up means a replacement must be bought. We, the United States of America have been on a war time economy for many decades, and nobody in our leadership in Washington even talks about peace anymore. They can’t because millions of good-paying jobs depend on our wars and our military spending. Any transition to a peace time economy is going to be painful for our country. If you think about it, it took World War II to get Germany and Great Britain to change their industrial base from a military buildup to a more peaceful civilian endeavor. Most of those countries who suffered the brunt of WWII have stayed out of war. I guess they learned the consequences. Here at home in the US, actual war did not reach our 48 States in WWII and never since then. Yes there was 9/11, but that was just used by Washington to increase military production and allowed us to start several more wars in the Middle East, and the profits have been amazing. So, yes, we have a new President, but he has an old plan. We are going to continue building up our military might, and if you think about it, there is nobody who will try to stop it. For all practical purposes, there is no anti-war movement in this country. Remember, the people cheered. |
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