Tag: military industrial complex

Lawmakers Benefit From Booming Defense Stocks

Since U.S. military actions in Afghanistan were authorized in September 2001, the stocks of the top five defense companies have risen in value by an average of nearly 900%, strongly outperforming the S&P 500 index.

Among those who have benefitted from investments in the stocks are nearly four dozen members of Congress, the people who approve funding for the contracts that make up the bulk of the companies’ revenues.

At least 47 members of Congress and their spouses hold between $2 million and $6.7 million worth of stock in companies that are among the top 100 defense contractors, a Sludge analysis of financial disclosures found. 

The war in Afghanistan has caused an estimated up to 174,000 direct war deaths, according to the Costs of War Project, with economic costs reaching over $2.26 trillion there and in Pakistan. The total cost of post-9/11 wars including Iraq and other operations has surpassed $6.4 trillion through last year.

At least 11 U.S. senators hold up to $1.7 million in defense industry stocks and at least 36 U.S. representatives hold a maximum value of over $5 million. Congress only reports its investments in broad ranges, so it’s not possible to know exactly how much their stocks are worth. Members of Congress have at least 108 investments in 16 major defense contractors, including all of the top 10 companies by defense revenue.

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Ask not what the war cost the US, but who profited from the war

After twenty years and trillions flowing through the Pentagon’s war chest, the real winners were thousands of private military contractors that profited immensely.

The Taliban’s stunning takeover of Afghanistan in the aftermath of a bungling US departure has led many to conclude the war in Afghanistan ended in failure. But it is unlikely to be a view shared by many in the US military.

For them, the twenty-year-long conflict has been a massive success.

When discussing the politics of war, a central premise is often put forward: Cui bono? Who benefits? John Boyd, a former Air Force fighter pilot famously expounded on a theory where there was no contradiction between the military’s stated mission and disregard for combat success:

“People say the Pentagon does not have a strategy,” he said. “They are wrong. The Pentagon does have a strategy. It is ‘Don’t interrupt the money flow, add to it.’”

And add to it they did.

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Now Would Be A Great Time For George W Bush To Shut The Fuck Up

George W Bush has issued a statement on the situation in Afghanistan, and there are not enough shoes in the world to adequately respond to it.

“Laura and I have been watching the tragic events unfolding in Afghanistan with deep sadness,” the Hague fugitive writes. “Our hearts are heavy for both the Afghan people who have suffered so much and for the Americans and NATO allies who have sacrificed so much.”

Bush tells the US Armed Forces, diplomatic corps, and intelligence community how proud he and his wife are of their “sacrifice” and “courage” and that they “kept America safe” and “made America proud” with their decades-long occupation which accomplished literally nothing besides making horrible people very rich. And, it won’t surprise you to learn, the statement contains exactly zero apologies to anyone for anything.

Can you believe this person? Imagine being George W Bush in the middle of August 2021 and saying to yourself, “I know just what people need: a pep talk on Afghanistan from me, George W Bush!”

I mean, the gall. The absolute gall.

This is after all the same man who ordered the disastrous invasion in the first place under the justification of the plot hole-riddled 9/11 narrative after already having decided to oust the Taliban a month before the towers came down. The same man who rejected the Taliban’s offer to turn over Osama Bin Laden in October 2001 if the US would just show proof that he is guilty and end its bombing campaign. The same man who repeatedly rejected Taliban offers to surrender after the invasion began. The same man who initiated decades of lies about what was happening in Afghanistan in order to justify an occupation maintained for power and profit.

And after all that phony hand-wringing about “the oppressed people of Afghanistan“, the United States is after twenty years of occupation leaving the Afghan people the single most miserable population of any nation on earth. After all that phony hand-wringing about “the Taliban’s war on women“, Afghanistan has remained the worst place in the world to be a woman throughout the entirety of the occupation.

And it is entirely the fault of the US-centralized empire. The Taliban only came to power in the first place because the US backed their predecessors (whom they also actively radicalized) against the Soviet Union and its leftist Afghan allies in the eighties, then Bush invaded and rained explosives from the sky for twenty years, killing hundreds of thousands of people.

After four decades of interventionism and two decades of full-scale occupation following generations of shocking savagery and terrorism being inflicted upon the Afghan people by the British, it is perfectly fair to say that one hundred percent of Afghanistan’s problems today can be blamed entirely on the US and its allies.

So now, as the nation reverts back to Taliban control after a long and sadistic intermission and many Afghans are so fearful that some fell to their deaths desperately clinging to departing US military planes, it would be a fantastic time for George W Bush to shut the fuck up.

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The Propaganda Multiplier

It is one of the most important aspects of our media system, and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.

The key role played by these agencies means Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.

A study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles were based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0% on investigative research. Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews were in favor of a US and NATO intervention, while propaganda was attributed exclusively to the opposite side.

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America’s Generals Lied, Lost Wars, And Looted The People They Claimed To Serve

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress in June that he wanted to understand “white rage,” why “thousands of people” tried “to assault this building and … overturn the Constitution of the United States of America.”

If Milley really wants to understand the “rage” of the American people he should start by asking why he and his fellow generals can’t win any wars. As a Marine Corps officer who served at the tail end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I saw firsthand the rapid ideological transformation pervading the military in the wake of these disasters in the Middle East.

Unable to win wars overseas, the military’s leaders went “woke.” Currying ideological favor is easier than trying to end insurgencies. It is also necessary if military leaders want to keep the gravy train of taxpayer funding. Donald Trump’s America First foreign policy and his devastating critique of George Bush and Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2016 election put the military-industrial complex on high alert. Trump was pushing the American right-wing away from the expensive and unending foreign interventions the military-industrial complex needed in order to justify its existence.

For too long, America’s generals have relied on a “stab in the back” thesis to justify their failure on the battlefield. The narrative set in after Vietnam and has calcified today. Former national security adviser and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster tweeted on July 8 in regards to the sweeping march of the Taliban that the “US media is finally reporting on the transformation of Afghanistan after their disinterest and defeatism helped set conditions for capitulation and a humanitarian catastrophe.”

McMaster’s attempt to deflect blame for military failure on an insufficiently obsequious media is unacceptable. He and his fellow generals knew full well that Afghanistan was unstable and that our strategy wasn’t working. Instead of speaking up, they lied to the public and then jumped into the private sector to reap the reward of misbegotten trust.

Milley and his fellow generals deserve, richly, to feel the full weight of the American people’s anger. For 20 years, these leaders lied consistently to the American people and their political masters about the wars in the Middle East. In December 2019, Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post published a devastating series of articles on America’s failure in Afghanistan. Using 600 “lessons learned” interviews with top military staff and diplomatic personnel collected by the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Whitlock illustrated just how pervasive the gut rot in America’s military really was.

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How Amazon’s $10 Billion Contract Squabble with the Pentagon Reveals the Shady Nature of Military Contracts

Earlier this month the US Department of Defense (DOD) canceled a $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract awarded to Microsoft in 2019. The goal of the contract was to modernize the Department’s IT operations using cloud computing.

The JEDI cancellation occurred following a lawsuit from Amazon after the company was denied the contract. Amazon alleges that they were rejected because the Department of Defense was pressured by then President Donald Trump to “screw Amazon.” The motivation for this move, it was claimed, was driven by Trump’s personal animus for then-CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.

Amazon claims insider sources responsible for the book Holding The Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis provide evidence for Trump’s direct intent to “screw Amazon,” but you need not trust another book published by Washington insiders for this story. Trump’s personal problems with Bezos, valid or not, are extremely public. Tweets targeted at Bezos’ include:

“The @washingtonpost, which loses a fortune, is owned by @JeffBezos for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company, @amazon.” December 7, 2015.

“If @amazon ever had to pay fair taxes, its stock would crash and it would crumble like a paper bag. The @washingtonpost scam is saving it!” December 7, 2015.

“Really sick to watch the Fake and totally Slanted News(?) coming out of MSDNC and CNN. It bears NO relationship to the Truth or Facts. They are merely offshoots of the DNC, much like the @nytimes and the Amazon @washingtonpost. Just like 2016, but worse. Sad, but we will win big!” June 3rd, 2020.

“Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers. Towns, cities and states throughout the U.S. are being hurt – many jobs being lost!” August 16, 2017.

Prompted by Amazon’s lawsuit, the DOD launched an investigation that yielded a 317-page report evaluating Amazon’s allegations. The authors claimed that lack of cooperation from White House officials prevented them from reaching any clear conclusions.

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