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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOne Graph That Sums Up Why We're Going to War With Syria
If ever there was a sign of the military industrial complex in America, this graph is it.
Reports that the United States is very near to launching an attack against Syria to punish Damascus for the use of chemical weapons sent Raytheons stock price to a 52-week high this week.
Who is Raytheon? The manufacturer of the BGM-109, more commonly known as the Tomahawk missile, the weapon of choice of the Obama administration in any strike against Syria.
Raytheon stock has surged over the past two months, coinciding with the biggest U.S. military build-up America has mounted since it launched an assault against Libya in 2011.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/61599/the-one-graph-that-sums-up-why-we-re-going-to-war-with-syria
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)hughee99
(16,113 posts)During the committee hearing. I'm glad to see we (I'm from MA) sent such a principled advocate to represent us. I'd be shocked if Warren didn't vote against it.
Link Speed
(650 posts)Three weeks before the shit hit the fan.
There was some serious money moving around.
Uncle Joe
(58,284 posts)I hope there is a way to find out.
Link Speed
(650 posts)Someone knew.
another_liberal
(8,821 posts)I think knowing everything is part of their purview.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)nikto
(3,284 posts)...I would have to believe that, to avoid feeling guilt over profiting from death.
I know that is not your reason.
But you honestly believe there are no insiders trading on illegal info, and trying to drive policy, or when they can't,
at least maximize profits from policy, from the corporate sector?
It is a slam-dunk to conclude Wall st/Stock market has mucho shady activity going on, behind opaque walls of de-regulation.
I know you oppose the attacks, and I give you credit for that, for sure.
But IMO, there's much to much $$$ involved to conclude otherwise.
Uncle Joe
(58,284 posts)nikto
(3,284 posts)He was only US President for 8 years, top commander of US forces in WWII,
and someone who had been all around the world.
We can't depend on his opinion.
We need to depend on the rageful opinions of rural white people who have never been
more than 300 miles from home in their lives (except for 3 exotic nites in Vegas).
Yes, we need true wisdom.
Maybe we should just read tea-bags.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)I don't know how we ever won WWII with him in charge.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)I have.
I had the chance to talk at length with his granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, about it. I wanted to understand exactly how he meant it.
He mentioned the idea of a MIC as one of two suggestions of a potential threat in terms of four things, POTENTIAL influence in decision-making, growing the federal government too large and drowning out private capitalistic interests, not funding adequately progress in human achievement, and of growing the federal debt too large. I've provided that part of the speech below in context.
It's clear that some folks, including you in your comments, have ignored the complete context of that statement and picked and chose what you want to agree with and amplified and altered the meaning of those parts.
-------------------------------------
III.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.
IV.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
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.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present
and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
V.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Uncle Joe
(58,284 posts)It has been since the advent of the 21st Century.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Even the Iraq war was done for reasons unrelated to the idea of a "MIC"
PNAC architected it for political /ideological reasons, not reasons relating to a "MIC". That didnt stop them frm using it to enrich their cronies after the fact, but that is not what you are asserting. You're asserting accusations that policy is made because of a MIC, and that is not so.
Uncle Joe
(58,284 posts)Of course political/ideological reasons played a role as well but policy isn't made in a vacuum.
The politicians in power make it, and the MIC both funds those politicians' elections based in large if not overwhelming part on those politicians sympathetic views and furthermore influences corporate media propaganda in support of war.
Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)Or, better, we could. Have a nice day!
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)the proverbial Dog.
iamthebandfanman
(8,127 posts)you mean military action causes military stocks to change?
no way!
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)K&R
Great freeze-frame, says it all.
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)the rise in gasoline toooooooooo. When it rises we know somewhere a war will commence.
We all know when "secret" intelligence is not privy to the media its got to be a lie. We also know since the US government is completely effed up when the media with its print, air, tv, radio is not to be trusted. I remember the leading up to the Irag war how our most trusted media just KNEW that Irag had WMD and it didn't even see any evidence, wow how hypocritical.
Many knew otherwise like me. I knew it was a lie. But boots went on the ground and over 100,000 Iragis died and over 2,000 Americans died and for what? Because 1) Saddam painted W's daddy face on the ground; 2) Oil; 3) Contractors
10 Billion in cash was taken to Iragi, where did it go? W's administration never included the cost of both wars therefore the US deficit went into the trillions.
Gopers now are all over the map on Syria. Boots on the ground; before approving the air strikes Pres O MUST agreed to everything re sequester; Pres O is only trying to taking away from Bengahazi, IRS and gosh darn those other scandals; He's a secret Mulsim; Before approving Pres O MUST void Obamacare, and thats to name a few.
David Brooks and the other warmongers are pissed that he went to Congress, but Pres O did because he wanted a OPEN debate.
So many difference aritcles and stories that truly nobody actually knows the truth at least for me sitting on the outside. DU basically only post the (-) ones and call it gospel.
Madmiddle
(459 posts)sucking up welfare money from hardworking taxpayers. The people don't want this war because we can't afford this shit anymore, nor are we putting up with it. The fact that these assholes are insisting on blasting men, women and children, back to the stone age for getting gassed, by American made illegal weapons is an outrage!!!
WillyT
(72,631 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)pangaia
(24,324 posts)Among other not so nice things.
bhikkhu
(10,711 posts)...as there wasn't much of an actual build up in 2011. From that time to this, defence spending is actually down.
http://www.heritage.org/~/media/Images/Reports/2010/b2418_chart1_1.ashx?w=600&h=478&as=1
Raytheon did land a $126 million dollar missile contract in June, which perhaps accounts for their stock bump.
liberal_at_heart
(12,081 posts)TBF
(32,004 posts)I will keep researching and see if I can get that.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
Orsino
(37,428 posts)Might show why certain parties want such a war, or more war in general, but Syria? Not certain.