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Comment by eevilspock | Hacker News Reader

A good time to listen to or reread Eisenhower's 1961 speech warning of the Military-Industrial Complex.

"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions."

Nice intro with video of Eisenhowr giving the speech: http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-mili...

Full text of speech: http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

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Also relevant: "War is a Racket", by the WWI-era General Smedley Butler.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

Thanks for bringing this up. I also like to highlight another part of the same speech:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."

I'm glad someone said it, but I have the feeling that if anyone could have slowed or reversed the national infection, Eisenhower would have been that person. (It would have been unreasonable to expect of Truman, anyway.) It makes me wonder if Ike actually even considered the MIC a problem during most of his presidency, or whether perhaps it was only when they stopped taking his calls as a lame duck that he had his epiphany.

It's easy to blame him, but he had surprisingly little power to stop it. The President (then, as now) could point it at any target he wished, but could do little to shut it down.

Congress is where the true power lies. They could, with a single vote, shut down any and all of it. Blame them.

Or, if you rather, blame yourself for voting the wrong people into Congress.

It's really a cop-out to blame the voters. We're never going to be as well-informed, persuasive, or powerful as a five-star general who is also a re-elected President. (No one will ever be that well-informed, persuasive, or powerful.) Eisenhower could have ordered projects, divisions, and fleets mothballed and sent the money back to the Treasury, and the media couldn't have incited any riots about it. Do you think Obama has that option now? Prior to WWII in this country the phrase "standing army" was one of derision.

At this point, the only way to stop these particular pigs from feeding at the trough would be to destroy the trough. That will happen eventually, but you might not enjoy it.

> We're never going to be as well-informed,

Cries of "we're too stupid, save us from ourselves!" are unlikely to ever be answered with acceptable solutions.

> or powerful as a five-star general who

You have all the power in the world. You don't seem to know it. Maybe that's the problem.

> Eisenhower could have ordered projects, divisions, and fleets mothballed

No, Congress could have done that. Not Ike. He might have tried, and he would have been cockblocked. Too much money in it. Do you think the coast states would have wanted fleets mothballed with their economies tanking soon afterward?

> Prior to WWII in this country the phrase "standing army" was one of derision.

Why isn't it now? Why when I mention the idea that I think having a standing army is bad now, people treat me like a kook?

The truth is, you want to have a standing army. You vote that way. You get neurotically worried if someone like me suggests that maybe we don't need a navy at all (but how would we save the poor oppressed people of X with our bombs and collateral damage?!!?!).

> At this point, the only way to stop these particular pigs

You're the pig.

> Cries of "we're too stupid..."

Nobody claimed stupidity. Well-informedness is a matter of security clearance.

> You have all the power in the world. blah, blah, blah

Why hide behind ambiguous vitriol? If you actually have a point make it.

> Eisenhower could have ordered projects, divisions, and fleets mothballed.

Executive orders give the POTUS extraordinary powers during war-time and times of national emergency. Entire wars have been fought upon executive order. Do you want to discuss specifics or just continue being nasty to people you're talking to? See http://www.veteranstoday.com/2009/01/29/obama-could-issue-an...

> You're the pig.

Classy. What particular item of conversation makes you say that to the person you're responding to? I didn't see anything that could have provoked that.

> Executive orders give the POTUS extraordinary powers during war-time and times of national emergency.

Executive orders do not give POTUS powers, they are means by which POTUS exercises power the office already possesses.

Why... people treat me like a kook?

You might want to re-read your comment. Upthread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7949955), I've already made the unnecessary-military argument you're struggling to articulate, and I mentioned the "standing army" phenomenon here because Eisenhower's voters had lived most of their lives in that intellectual climate. It's clear that he could have relied on that built-in skepticism in a way that no leader today could.

Now I'm "a pig" because I'm a little skeptical of the tired Eisenhower hagiography one always reads in these threads? Just face it, your hero didn't save us. Anyway the MIC is just a specific example of a general trend with this nation. You might even like some of the other examples: the War on Drugs, the War on Immigrants, the War on Fat, etc. If a system always does the same thing, one expects that system to keep doing that thing. "Voting" isn't somehow external to the system under discussion.

Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex in the speech draft.

Pretty much `they` have won and we - the 99% - have lost. Queue the downvotes ;)

To be fair, one could also consider the media a leg of that stool. After all, has any journalist or pundit challenged the assumption that the goat-and-beard enthusiasts are as dangerous a threat as the Soviets were? Before that, did anyone challenge the assumption that the Soviets were as dangerous a threat as the Nazis were? The narrative is inescapable.

For a significant proportion of the Cold War the United States wildly exaggerated (by multiple orders of magnitude) the strategic threat posed by the Soviets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap

Few here work for the Military Industrial Complex, so you ought not expect many downvotes.

But many if not a majority do work for the Advertising Content-Industrial Complex, and any critique of said complex does bring on the downvotes[1][2]. Occasionally, under articles that attract ACIC dissenters, such critique will garner support[3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7837683

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7733713

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773

The Military-Industrial Complex is often brought up in the context of US capitalism, but was quite relevant to the USSR. In that case, a giant chunk of the country's economy was taken up for military production. The military commanders, KGB, and all of those employed by the USSR's Military-Industrial Complex had a strong interest in justifying their continued existence.

It's worth noting many believe excessive military spending was a key factor in taking down the Soviet Union.

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