Eisenhower for President (Or Anyone Else Who's Wary of the Military-Industrial Complex and the 'Intelligence' Behind It)

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, USPolitics.einnews.com

December 4, 2007

So the U.S. intelligence community has been working with the wrong assumptions about Iran's nuclear weapons program for years. That's a big surprise?

Lest we forget:

1. The intelligence community was certain that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons through the 1990s, when he wasn't.

2. The intelligence community didn't think Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear capability in the 1980s, when he was.

3. The intelligence community failed to uncover the 9/11 plot.

4. The intelligence community even failed to anticipate the collapse of the Soviet Union.

None of these failures can be considered a "whoops" moment. The intelligence community's failures are several orders of magnitude worse than "whoops." The faulty policies based on our faulty intelligence have had significant implications for U.S. and world, mostly disastrous.

It should not go without mention that right now, today, the U.S. has two carrier fleets positioned in middle eastern waters, on hair trigger alert, no doubt prompted largely by the perceived threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.

By most informed estimates the U.S. spends $40 billion a year on intelligence gathering and analysis. Based on the results of that intelligence work hundreds of billions more are invested in decisions on the size of our armed forces, their deployment and the types of weapons we produce.

Certainly a lot of useful things happen for our intelligence dollars. A number of destructive terrorist events have been headed off through good intelligence work. A nation with the worldwide varied interests of the U.S. needs to have reliable sensors out everywhere to protect itself.

But the new Iranian intelligence debacle legitimately raises the question, one more time, of why the U.S. is pouring so much of its national wealth into what former President Dwight Eisenhower once neatly summed up as the "military industrial complex."

In the 10 years from 1996 to 2005, years after the Cold War had long ended, world military spending increased by 34 percent. In 2005 alone world military spending surpassed a trillion dollars, with the U.S. responsible for about 80 percent of the increase. U.S. military spending accounts for nearly half of the world's total---7 times that of China, the second largest military spender.

In 2005, the last year for which all the numbers are available, the U.S. and its allies accounted for nearly three-fourths of all world military spending.

This year alone the U.S. is spending about $7 billion to maintain and improve its nuclear arsenal, more money in inflation adjusted dollars than Ronald Reagan spent at the height of the Cold War. More than 15 years after the end of the Cold War the United States today retains an active stockpile of 10,000 nuclear warheads, with some 1,600 weapons on hair-trigger alert.

Why?

Why is a legitimate question. Who are we planning to nuke? Who are we planning to fight? The Russians? The last thing Russia wants is a war to interrupt its current petro-dollar gusher. China? The last thing China wants is a war to interfere with its economic steam roller. The Arab countries? Are we planning to attack them with nuclear weapons, or invasion forces like the one mounted for Iraq in the event of another 9/11? Are we planning to "shock and awe" them with cruise missiles, stealth bombers and F-22s? To what purpose?

As a nation, the U.S. now spends about 41% of its national budget on current U.S. military spending, legacy costs from past conflicts and interest on the debt to pay for that spending. Meanwhile, our national infrastructure is deteriorating, our health, education and retirement systems are badly in need of repair, we are facing huge potential energy conversion costs, and have a myriad of other national needs resulting from decades of budget squeezes.

Does our nation really need to spend $700 billion+ this year to keep us safe from foreign enemies? Isn't it time to take a good hard look at where that money goes, and why? We're learned through sad experience not to swallow whole the intelligence estimates behind those answers. A common sense estimate is very much in order.

At the most recent Republican debate, John McCain challenged Ron Paul for being a pre-World War 2-type isolationist. Paul replied that McCain didn't understand the difference between being an isolationist and an interventionist.

Maybe it's time we had a serious national debate on that very subject.

Joe Rothstein, editor of US Politics Today, is a former daily newspaper editor and long-time national political strategist based in Washington, D.C.

See all previous articles by Joe Rothstein here.