25. Feb., 2011
"To survive in such a world, we would have to convert ourselves permanently into a militaristic power on the basis of war economy...We must have more ships, more guns, more planes-more of everything. This can only be accomplished if we discard the notion of 'business as usual'...We must be the great arsenal of democracy." --President Franklin D. Roosevelt: "The Arsenal of Democracy," December 29, 1940.
Now that President Barack Obama has phoned and spoken to King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa of Bahrain, and requested that he use restraint and not kill any more peaceful demonstrators, will he also phone and denounce the Pentagon and its heavily subsidized and permanent armaments industries?
As dozens of civilian protesters lay bleeding and dying in Bahrain, for years now the tiny nation has bought and stockpiled U.S.-made and manufactured weapons, including tanks and fighter jets that are being used to crush freedom and a democratic movement. It is the same story over and over again from Egypt to Iraq and from Yemen to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Tunisia.
The "made in America" logo is stamped on weapons that have killed hundreds of peaceful protesters. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which operates from Bahrain and patrols the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Red Sea, appears to be more interested in guarding shipping lanes for petroleum and detecting oil spills than from preventing the spilled blood from innocent civilians who want reform and democracy.
For the last ten years, the U.S. has also built-up an arsenic of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of armored vehicles and trucks and millions of pieces of military equipment, along with preemptive war ideologies, have poisoned the region. So much equipment remains that the Pentagon is considering to either sell or destroy the military gear left behind. The land has become toxic with mass slaughter and carnage too.
In both Iraq and Afghanistan, not only has these arsenic of democracies killed and destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, but its pollutants and poisons from ammunitions and weapons systems have caused an enormous increase in cancer rates and birth defects. The environmental degradation of farmland and water supplies have been ruined. Widows and orphans abound.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt probably never envisioned that his "Arsenal of Democracy" would become an "Arsenic of Democracy." In mobilizing a nation to defeat the Axis Powers, he never dreamt that at the end of World War II it would continue to mobilize for armed conflicts and that it would include tens of millions of soldiers, laborers, scientists, and educators.
Roosevelt never foresaw that the United State would grow from 14 foreign military bases in 1938 to an astounding 30,000 military installations in 100 nations by 1948.(1) He never realized thousands of corporations and businesses would become dependent on a military welfare state, and that the Pentagon would still continue to be masters of 10,000 foreign and domestic armed bases.
Roosevelt was deeply concerned about the War Department (Pentagon), especially since it wanted its ominous new building to be set apart from the Federal West Executive Area, apart from the entanglements with, and the limits of, the seat of government. He tried to reduce the size of the new building and its power. He even expressed concern for the psychological effects on those employed amid such a dominating impersonality.
But his Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, had other plans. Stimson believed the best way to rapidly mobilize the economy was to give industry an incentive to move quickly. Stimson wrote in his diary: If you are going to try and go to war, or to prepare for war, in a capitalist country, you have got to let business make money out of the process or business won't work." Stimson also believed that "there are times when men must die."
The Arsenic of Democracy, a kind of global parasitic militant imperialism, was born. A new but destructive United States emerged from World War II with an expansionist view based on the assumption that it could transform the world without becoming a classical imperial nation. It believed its vast economic strength, backed by a permanent war economy and armaments industry, could dominate the world marketplace of goods and ideas.
A new alliance between ruling elites, the military, industry, labor, science, education, government, and the mass media, became firmly entrenched in every U.S. state, city, town, and home. It was an alliance internalized by most citizens with a prolonged reliance on military power and large standing professional armies and mercenaries with the most advanced and superior weapons technologies. Sadly, this became the measure of human existence, achievement and yes, even democracy and freedom.
Over twenty-percent of U.S. citizens either directly or indirectly profit when their country sells weapon systems or goes to war. They profit when foreign countries go to war too, and when they sell armaments to belligerents...often to both sides.(3) And they profit even when their weapons that they manufactured are sold to anti-democratic rulers who crush popular movements and kill innocent and peaceful protesters.
Huge amounts of money are made in this Arsenic of Democracy. With over fifteen-percent of all businesses deriving funds from military-related production, and with over fifty-percent of major corporations profiting from military spending and weapons sells overseas, look for more "merchants of death" and war preparation-profiteering.(4) Still, expect a bureaucratized permanent military establishment that becomes an end in itself!
This is why both Republicans and Democrats are shying away from cutting the biggest slice of the U.S. budget: defense spending. It is the reason Defense Secretary Robert Gates has warned Congress and Obama not to reduce the Pentagon's budget and its war machine. It is why the Department of Defense directly lobbies Congress, and why every household will continue to pay almost $6,000 each year for the Arsenic of Democracy.
Roosevelt should have foreseen that massive arsenals and militaries are incompatible with democratic institutions, and that they destroy representative governments while enslaving the masses. Since they are based on aggression and the use of force, they always curtail civil liberties. Dependency on military power in pursuit of ideological, economic, social, and geopolitical gains undermines security and freedom at home and around the world too.
For this reason, then, "arsenic" is a good description of the Government's and Pentagon's permanent armaments industries, their arms sales, and the militarization of the United States and the world. Arsenic, a steel-gray poisonous element, is highly toxic and can lead to death. But not only does it cause the deaths of democratic movements in foreign nations, it poisons and destroys popular uprisings at home. Just wait and see.
Roosevelt claimed: "Our national policy is not directed toward war. Its sole purpose is to keep war away from our country and our people." The Arsenal of Democracy, which was transformed into the Arsenic of Democracy, had just the opposite effect. The United States as a permanent militaristic power, and its policies that are based on a war economy, will always directed towards war.
Its own people and the people of other nations it arms are always endangered. For the Arsenic of Democracy, this is merely "business as usual." But then again, there are times when men must die. In the Arsenic of Democracy, tragically there are also times when men must be sacrificed to continue to feed and clothe and shelter it, and too protect it.