This is my response to Shapiro’s blog post, Why is there an Arms Industry? System would not allow me to respond directly. Sorry for the mess!!!!
Good post, most of all, I love your rage! Capitalism and arms sales go hand in hand, and have for many generations here in the U.S. We call it the military industrial complex, a phrase supposedly first uttered by President Eisenhower in 1960. Defense contractors push the “opportunity” for high tech jobs, and give millions to politicians for election campaigns; simply put, these are bribes. A letter to the editor in The Nation magazine this week illustrates the connection. Calls from Congress to cut the military budget, according to this enraged reader, misses the point of “…the importance of these jobs to American High-tech workers….. military contractors like Lockheed Martin, L-3 and General Dynamics are among the dwindling number of employers who offer U.S. engineers job stability”. So, for the sake of jobs in a very poor economy, we’re told we must acknowledge the necessity of war machinery that ends life in a most violent manner, rather than building items of “social uplift”, as Martin Luther King once uttered. Why do we have an arms industry? Simple, really. Capitalist social relations, paid off politicians, extremely powerful corporate elites, and very desperate workers who simply want to eat.
I recall talking to an employee of Honeywell, who manufactured land mines at the time, a number of years ago. I told her that no one should manufacture such items of terror, and couldn’t she make Honeywell thermometers instead? Well, after she told me where to go, in not so polite language, I got the point that assembling land mines that blow off the legs of innocent children in third world countries was how she supported her family. How does she sleep at night? I have no idea.
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