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military-industrial complex
Now It Can Be Told... After All the Harm Has Been Done
Timing is crucial in media and politics—and never more so than when war is at stake. It’s completely unsatisfactory for journalists to toe the war line for years and then finally report on atrocities.
Dec 26, 2024
This week, The New York Times reported that the U.S. government made war in Afghanistan while helping to “recruit, train, and pay for lawless bands of militias that pillaged homes and laid waste to entire communities.” Those militias “tortured civilians, kidnapped for ransom, massacred dozens in vendetta killings, and razed entire villages, sowing more than a decade of hatred toward the Afghan government and its American allies.”
Written by a former Kabul bureau chief for the Times, the article appeared under a headline saying that “U.S.-backed militias” in Afghanistan were “worse than the Taliban.”
Now they tell us.
The new reporting made me think of a chapter in my book War Made Invisible titled “Now It Can Be Told.” Here’s an excerpt:
* * * * *
Timing is crucial in media and politics—and never more so than when war is at stake. It’s completely unsatisfactory for journalists to toe the war line for years and then finally report, in effect: Now it can be told—years too late.
Virtually the entire U.S. media establishment gave full-throated support to the U.S. attack on Afghanistan in early October 2001. Twenty years later, many of the same outlets were saying the war was ill-conceived and doomed from the start.
Immediately after the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, with very few exceptions, even the mainstream news organizations that had been expressing trepidation or opposition swung into line to support the war effort. Two decades later, many of the same media outlets were calling the invasion of Iraq the worst U.S. foreign-policy blunder in history.
A pattern of regret (not to say repentance or remorse) emerged from massive U.S. outlays for venture militarism that failed to triumph in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is little evidence that the underlying repetition compulsion disorder has been exorcized.
But such framing evades the structural mendacity that remains built into the military-industrial complex, with its corporate media and political wings. War is so normalized that its casualties, as if struck by acts of God, are routinely viewed as victims without victimizers, perhaps no more aggrieved than people suffering the consequences of bad weather.
What American policymakers call mistakes and errors are, for others, more aptly described with words like catastrophes and atrocities. Attributing the U.S. wars to faulty judgment—not premeditated and hugely profitable aggression—is expedient, setting the policy table for supposed resolve to use better judgment next time rather than challenging the presumed prerogative to attack another country at will.
When the warfare in Afghanistan finally ended, major U.S. media—after avidly supporting the invasion and then the occupation—were awash in accounts of how the war had been badly run with ineptitude or deception from the White House and the Pentagon. Some of the media analysis and commentaries might have seemed a bit sheepish, but news outlets preferred not to recall their prior support for the same war in Afghanistan that they were now calling folly.
A pattern of regret (not to say repentance or remorse) emerged from massive U.S. outlays for venture militarism that failed to triumph in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is little evidence that the underlying repetition compulsion disorder has been exorcized from America’s foreign-policy leadership or major news media, let alone its political economy. On the contrary: the forces that have dragged the United States into an array of wars in numerous countries still retain enormous sway over foreign and military affairs. For those forces, over time, shape-shifting is essential, while the warfare state continues to rule.
The fact that strategies and forms of intervention are evolving, most conspicuously in the direction of further reliance on airpower rather than ground troops, makes the victims of the USA’s firepower even less visible to American eyes. This presents a challenge to take a fresh look at ongoing militarism and insist that the actual consequences for people at the other end of U.S. weaponry be exposed to the light of day—and taken seriously in human terms.
Despite all that has happened since President George W. Bush vowed in mid-September 2001 to “rid the world of the evil-doers,” pivotal issues have been largely dodged by dominant U.S. media and political leaders. The toll that red-white-and-blue militarism takes on other countries is not only a matter of moral principles. The United States is also in jeopardy.
That we live in one interdependent world is no longer debatable. Illusions about American exceptionalism have been conclusively refuted by the global climate emergency and the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the ever-present and worsening dangers of thermonuclear war. On a planet so circular in so many ways, what goes around comes around.
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The ‘Kids for Cash’ Scandal Is About Much More Than Biden's Ignominious Pardon
It’s about the system itself: structured on the value and, indeed, the necessity, of punishment, of “war” on all that is evil, from a kid stealing a candy bar to terrorists attacking America.
Dec 21, 2024
More than 15 years after the “kids for cash” scandal shocked the nation, it’s back, stirring not just public incredulity but, for some, soul-slicing memories of hell on Earth.
This is thanks to U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to grant clemency to Michel Conahan, one of two juvenile-court judges in Luzerne County. Pennsylvania, convicted of accepting cash from private detention centers—as much as $2.8 million over a period of about six years—in exchange for sending them children (my God, as young as eight years-old) convicted of petty offenses, such as fighting, shoplifting, underage drinking, to serve prolonged sentences in prison.
Conahan, along with Mark Ciavarella, had collected cash for sending more than 2,300 children to prison. Many of them were scarred for life by this experience. Some committed suicide.
This is the us-vs.-them mentality, a quick-grab governing concept that has given us both the military-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex: two looming cash cows that define far too much of who we are as a nation.
“My son did nothing more than anything that most of us as kids did, you know, experimenting and living his life and making mistakes, that we usually all get to just learn and evolve and grow from. He did nothing more than be at an underaged drinking party with tons of other kids, but he was caught.”
This is Sandy Fonzo, speaking recently with Amy Goodman in a highly emotional interview on Democracy Now!, in the wake of the news of Conahan’s clemency. Her son, a senior in high school, a star wrestler, spent a month in the juvenile detention center just as his senior year was beginning. He came out lost, emotionally shattered, wound up getting into a fight and had to stand before Judge Ciavarella again. This time he was walloped with an eight-month sentence.
“He lost his senior year.” Sandy said. “He never had the chance to wrestle again, any chance that he had for a scholarship. He came out of there very bitter, very angry, pent up with anger. He couldn’t look you in the eye. I don’t know what happened in that facility. My son was a very big, strong, proud boy, and he came out broken.”
“ ...It changed him. It broke him. It stole his youth, his childhood. He would never, ever recover. And it just became too much, and he shot himself in the heart.”
Kids for cash! Her son wound up killing himself—and that’s just one story out of, presumably, thousands. A kid does a “bad” thing and, whoops, off to prison with you! At the time, I wrote in a column:
Many of these kids had never been in trouble before, and many of the offenses that netted jail time were trivial in the extreme. Sixteen-year-old Hillary T., for instance, who lampooned her assistant principal on MySpace, was given a three-month sentence. (With a lawyer’s help, she got out after one.) Kurt K. was in the company of someone who was caught shoplifting at Wal-Mart; accused of being a “lookout,” he wound up doing almost a year of jail time. Jamie Q. exchanged slaps with a friend during an argument; she also was sent away for almost a year. She was 14.
While the judicial corruption of “kids for cash” is glaring, that’s hardly the entirety of the issue. As I read and remember the details, I see something far larger quietly looming in the background, behind the judges’ criminality—behind what I called at the time “the blurring of the line between profit and state.” It’s the system itself: structured on the value and, indeed, the necessity, of punishment, of “war” on all that is evil, from a kid stealing a candy bar to terrorists attacking America.
Here’s how Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) put it the other day, addressing his congressional colleagues as they were considering the passage of 2025’s National Defense Authorization, which allots $895 billion—two-thirds of the federal budget, for defense spending.
“When we talk about increasing Social Security benefits,” Sanders said, “well, ‘we just can’t afford to do that. We just can’t afford to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, or vision. We just cannot afford to make higher education in America affordable.’ That’s what I hear every single day. When there’s an effort to improve life for the working class of this country, I hear, ‘No, no, no, we can’t afford it.’ But when it comes to the military-industrial complex and their needs, what we hear is ‘yes, yes, yes’ with almost no debate.”
Understanding and transcending our troubles, our conflicts, is complex—way too complex, apparently, for so many of those in power to have the patience to try to comprehend, especially when they also have the far simpler option available of simply eliminating those troubles (no matter that it never works).
In a justice system immersed in such complexity—focused on understanding a lawbreaker rather than simply, and coldly, enforcing rules—corruption of various sorts would no doubt still be possible, but not at the simplistic, easily justified level of “kids for cash.”
This is the us-vs.-them mentality, a quick-grab governing concept that has given us both the military-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex: two looming cash cows that define far too much of who we are as a nation. As the National Priorities Project noted in a 2023 report:
In (fiscal year) 2023, out of a $1.8 trillion federal discretionary budget, $1.1 trillion—or 62%—was for militarized programs. That includes war and weapons, law enforcement and mass incarceration, and detention and deportation.
I can only hope that the reawakened “kids for cash” outrage shines a light on more than just two convicted judges, one of whom received clemency after a dozen years of imprisonment. I certainly can understand the anguish and anger this could cause for anyone—parent or child—wounded by their corrupt actions. But maybe it’s also time for a collective reassessment of our criminal-“justice” system as a whole and, indeed, our moral certainty that punishment and war keep us safe.
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Despite 100% Pentagon Audit Failure Rate, House Passes $883.7 Billion NDAA
"Instead of fighting the rising cost of healthcare, gas, or groceries, this Congress prioritized rewarding the wealthy and well-connected military-industrial complex," said Defense Spending Reduction Caucus co-chairs.
Dec 11, 2024
Despite the Pentagon's repeated failures to pass audits and various alarming policies, 81 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives voted with 200 Republicans on Wednesday to advance a $883.7 billion annual defense package.
The Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025, unveiled by congressional negotiators this past Saturday, still needs approval from the Senate, which is expected to vote next week. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Wednesday that he plans to vote no and spoke out against the military-industrial complex.
The push to pass the NDAA comes as this congressional session winds down and after the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) announced last month that it had failed yet another audit—which several lawmakers highlighted after the Wednesday vote.
Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), co-chairs and co-founders of the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus, said in a joint statement, "Time and time again, Congress seems to be able to find the funds necessary to line the pockets of defense contractors while neglecting the problems everyday Americans face here at home."
"Instead of fighting the rising cost of healthcare, gas, or groceries, this Congress prioritized rewarding the wealthy and well-connected military-industrial complex with even more unaccountable funds," they continued. "After a seventh failed audit in a row, it's disappointing that our amendment to hold the Pentagon accountable by penalizing the DOD's budget by 0.5% for each failed audit was stripped out of the final bill. It's time Congress demanded accountability from the Pentagon."
"While we're glad many of the poison pill riders that were included in the House-passed version were ultimately removed from the final bill, the bill does include a ban on access to medically necessary healthcare for transgender children of service members, which will force service members to choose between serving their country and getting their children the care they need," the pair noted. "The final bill also failed to expand coverage for fertility treatments, including in vitro fertilization (IVF), for service members regardless of whether their infertility is service-connected."
Several of the 124 House Democrats who voted against the NDAA cited those "culture war" policies, in addition to concerns about how the Pentagon spends massive amounts of money that could go toward improving lives across the country.
"Once again, Congress has passed a massive military authorization bill that prioritizes endless military spending over the critical needs of American families. This year's NDAA designates $900 billion for military spending," said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), noting the audit failures. "While I recognize the long-overdue 14.5% raise for our lowest-ranking enlisted personnel is important, this bill remains flawed. The bloated military budget continues to take away crucial funding from programs that could help millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet."
Taking aim at the GOP's push to deny gender-affirming care through TRICARE, the congresswoman said that "I cannot support a bill that continues unnecessary military spending while also attacking the rights and healthcare of transgender youth, and for that reason, I voted NO."
As Omar, a leading critic of the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, also pointed out: "The NDAA includes a provision that blocks the Pentagon from using data on casualties and deaths from the Gaza Ministry of Health or any sources relying on those statistics. This is an alarming erasure of the suffering of the Palestinian people, ignoring the human toll of ongoing violence."
Israel—which receives billions of dollars in annual armed aid from the United States—faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court last month issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The NDAA includes over $627 million in provisions for Israel.
Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), who voted against the NDAA, directed attention to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), set to be run by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
"How do we know that DOGE is not a good-faith effort to address wasted funding and unaccountable government? The NDAA passed today," Ramirez said. "Republicans overwhelmingly supported the $883.7 billion authorization bill even though the Pentagon just failed its seventh audit in a row."
"Billions of dollars go to make defense corporations and their investors, including Members of Congress, rich while Americans go hungry, families are crushed by debt, and bombs we fund kill children in Gaza," she added. "No one who voted for this bill can credibly suggest that they care about government waste."
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who also opposed the NDAA, wrote in a Tuesday opinion piece for MSNBC that he looks forward to working with DOGE "to reduce waste and fraud at the Pentagon, while strongly opposing any cuts to programs likeSocial Security, Medicare, the Department of Veterans Affairs, or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau."
"We should make defense contracting more competitive, helping small and medium-sized businesses to compete for Defense Department projects," Khanna argued. "The Defense Department also needs better acquisition oversight. Defense contractors have gotten away with overcharging the Pentagon and ripping off taxpayers for too long."
"Another area where we can work with DOGE is reducing the billions being spent to maintain excess military property and facilities domestically and abroad," he suggested. "Finally, DOGE can also cut the Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile program."
The congressman, who is expected to run for president in 2028, concluded that "American taxpayers want and deserve the best return on their investment. Let's put politics aside and work with DOGE to reduce wasteful defense spending. And let's invest instead in domestic manufacturing, good-paying jobs, and a modern national security strategy."
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