Opinion: U.S. built economy dependent on war

By Robert Ramano
STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Religious bigotry, suicide bombings and forced demolition of Palestinian homes to build settlements for Israelis are all symptoms of a much deadlier problem. Even though it is framed that way, this situation has nothing to do with the Israeli or the Palestinian people and neither one is benefiting from it.

Since the year 2000, over 7,420 Palestinians and Israelis have been killed, according to the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Most of the Palestinian deaths were caused by high-tech weapons like F-16 fighter jets, tanks and unmanned drones. This violence has been chalked up to insanity and ethnic unrest, but it is a symptom of a larger, age-old problem — the military industrial complex.

War profiteers running the military industrial complex are certainly benefiting by keeping this conflict going. The Israeli government receives $7 million per day from the U.S. to play the innocent victim in front of television cameras. That’s $2.55 billion per year. In 2006 Israel exported $3.4 billion in defense products — well over a billion more than it received in U.S. military aid — which is quite a profit. Israel is now the fourth largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain.

Unmanned drone technology – all the rage in modern warfare — is in part developed and manufactured by the Israeli arms giant Elbit. The drone models Hermes 450 and Hermes 900 have seen extensive use along the Gaza strip, according to Israeli, Lebanese and Palestinian reports. The Hermes 450 has been used by the Royal British Air force in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as by the U.S. for surveillance along the border. Other nations, including Mexico and Croatia, have ordered or used these drones in combat. Chaos is spread around the world by arms dealers like Elbit to increase their bank accounts.

War in the Middle East and throughout the world cannot be reduced to base economics. Wars can be manipulated and prolonged, however, for solely economic reasons. People who are attacked will defend themselves, thus forcing the other side to fight back and perpetuating the cycle of endless war.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney called the war on terrorism “a war that will not end in our lifetimes.” This blatant packaging of war to perpetually sell it, serves, as Indian writer Arundhati Roy said, “to fuel yet another war, this time against Iraq, by cynically manipulating people’s grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent and running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning.”

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in his farewell address to the nation in 1961. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

It is ironic that President Eisenhower was a staunch anti-communist during the Cold War, but also fueled the nuclear arms race, contributing to the modern military industrial complex — the Office of Homeland Security.

“The U.S. has made a lasting commitment to defeat al-Qaida but also to support the democratically elected sovereign governments of both Pakistan and Afghanistan. That commitment will not waver and that support will be sustained,” President Obama said on the war on terrorism.

In the Obama era, the United States is committing more troops to Afghanistan in this war on terrorism. Are we as, Americans, being sold a war without end, again?