The future of the Military-Industrial Complex

So I’ve been reading this book and its given me some new insight or thoughts as to the role of the U.S. Military and what I think it should be. Since I cannot link it, I will write it here. It may seem a bit fragmented since I’m trying to collect bits and pieces of it from throughout the book.

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The following are comments by the character Senator Kenneth Yamakoa, Presidential Candidate and Decorated Vietnam War Veteran (volunteer). He is a third generation Japanese-American running on the Democratic ticket.

“War, I believe, is an extreme measure to which we must resort when the American people and their land face foreign invasion. It is an instance where the fundamental human right to survive is at stake. It is where we as a nation commit murder because the only other alternative is to see Americans murdered. Therefore, I believe Vietnam was not a “war”, but an act of barbarism committed by a selfish nation with no respect for human dignity. I believe it requires a good deal of courage to admit this fact and that to admit it is the only true coin by which we can ever repay those remembered here, who died for our country…

…What were the men who survived Vietnam, the commanders who watched their soldiers die, what sort of message were they supposed to give the mothers of the dead? He died with honor for his country, but it was the Vietcong assholes who blew him away, so you see ma’am, it wasn’t my fault…? What am I supposed to tell them? That you didn’t want to die for nothing, for such a worthless war? Is that it?

…As a politician, I intend to attack the idea that patriotism is measured by the size of the defense contract. In other words, I want to dismantle the military-industrial complex. And do you know what I really want? Soldiers whose confidence and pride rests not on fighting a war, but who are confident and proud that they don’t have to.

…Now as you know, my own brother died in Vietnam, as many of you know. I understand the grief of the families of those killed in action and I share it. It is not my intention to disparage the honor of veterans. My campaign has a long-term strategy for U.S. Defense. First, over the next eight years, I will order that all U.S. bases abroad be shut down. Second, and parallel to this order, unless the lives of American citizens and the territory of the United States is itself under threat, it will be the policy of my administration to forego any future U.S. military action.

You would be perfectly correct when you say that the world has become increasingly violent in the aftermath of the cold war. It’s also true that our leadership in world affairs remains of vital importance. In the ten years since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has become the sole superpower with unsurpassed military strength. But to what purpose? What are we trying to accomplish using the taxes, resources, and sometimes even the lives of the American people? Has our intervention overseas been welcomed or appreciated even if it is in the name of “human rights” or “the war on drugs”?

What we send our servicemen to do is so uncertain that we even give these operations names like “just cause” and “restore peace” as if to reassure ourselves by reading the label. Under my administration, it will be over—our role as the “world’s policeman”, just like the cold war, has ended.

As a soldier in Vietnam, I fought in the battlefields of the cold war and I saw the operation of the machine. War produced good profits back home; while in the jungle in those fields of fire, it produced the greatest sorrow imaginable. What I couldn’t understand then, when I was nineteen, what I can’t understand today, as a grown man, is why it was patriotic to love that hideous machine impersonating my country. I say to the country I love, let us instead commit ourselves to a role in the peace and security of the world that has true meaning for the American dream.

It has been a dream deferred. It was a future Americans fought for, yet we have been denied the just fruits of our victory. I refer not to the cold war, but to another. There has been in recent years a renewed appreciation of the generation of Americans that fought in the Second World War. We often think of it as “the good war”, the last one fought for clean and clear motives, the last one where America defended itself against an attack on its own soil.

In those days of terrible sacrifice, Americans took responsibility, laying plans to ensure that what these soldiers and sailors fought for would be preserved and held in trust. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his Secretary of State Cordell Hull spoke in 1942 of an “international agency which can, by force if necessary, keep the peace among nations.” Just as we rediscover the heroism of the “greatest generation”, we should remember that their fight was under those principles.

In April of 1945, with victory at hand, our allies came to America to sign the U.N. charter in San Francisco. The headquarters of the United Nations was placed here in New York City. To stand in the D.C., the city of the nation which had dreamed of it, to protect a just and lasting peace, one built on the principles of freedom, or our American Dreams; they were stranded by the tides of circumstance, by the rivalry of the cold war. But that war is over, and so it is time we take responsibility for the peace we promised the world and ourselves nearly sixty years ago.

My administration will work to make the United Nations what our ideals meant it to be, a true collective security organization for a world of freedom, that transcends any need for military nationalism, including our own. What is the use of our strength without the courage to face the unseen? What is the worth of our world power if we do not use it to make a better future? I believe the spirit of this nation lives or dies by such ideals. It is time to see if America is alive or dead.

Kawaguchi, Kaiji. Eagle: The Making of an Asian-American President.
Viz Communications Inc., San Francisco, CA. November 2001