Is the Military-Industrial Complex Behind the Push to Impeach Trump?

In his last major speech to the American public, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “military-industrial complex” — a loose-knit cabal of defense contractors that had the potential to usurp the power of the government for its own ends — to profit from war, dictate how and when and for how much the armed forces should procure weapons, and possibly even help foment conflicts around the globe.

As a former commanding general in Europe in World War II, Eisenhower was in a position to know all about the forces that shaped the war, the delivery of armaments, wartime programs and the men in and out of government that greased the wheels to make everything happen. At the time, few watching Eisenhower on television really thought the people, companies and groups that made up the military-industrial complex had the power, the influence or the wherewithal to really threaten all that Eisenhower discussed. Today, however, knowledgeable observers would almost certainly argue otherwise.

One should recall that prior to 1943, the Pentagon did not exist as an entity. A decidedly permanent structure, the Pentagon was originally built for a temporary purpose — to plan, fight and administrate the logistics efforts of World War II. But when the so-called “Good War” was over two years later, the Pentagon was not hastily deconstructed — no, it remained intact, and it helped ensure that the massive increase in military spending justified by World War II was at least partially sustained and ultimately surpassed as the Cold War almost immediately began and lasted for the next four decades.

Especially in the age of President Donald Trump, the military and its suppliers have become more powerful and influential than ever before, and the number of military officers and ex-military personnel serving in cabinet positions is just a small testimony to that fact.

But even before President Trump, close ties of all presidents after Eisenhower to the military-industrial complex (or simply to the military itself) virtually guaranteed that the armed forces were one of the first and most important recipients of government largesse to be considered when budgets were up for discussion. Constant conflicts, bases around the globe and “black budgets” for secret programs kept military expenditures high, claims of downsizing from candidate Trump in 2016 notwithstanding.

In his last year in office, President Obama dropped 26,171 bombs in seven countries — Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria and Pakistan. Special Forces were active in as many as 140 countries, and that count has since risen. The F-35 fighter jet program is projected to cost more than $1 trillion when it’s all paid for, and new nuclear programs, missiles, troop deployments and research are expected to take at least a 20 percent share of government expenditures in fiscal 2018 — second only to entitlement spending, which ironically incorporates payments to citizens who happen to be veterans.

Like Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama was eager to enter the United States in new conflicts and expand old ones. He had no qualms about turning Russia back into a bogeyman for the United States, and a “pivot to Asia” in 2011 looked to be an excuse to start a new arms race in the region with China and potentially other large players. Instead of trying to contain the horrific war in Syria, Obama and other lawmakers such as Senator John McCain of Arizona were all too happy to expand its scope, supplying the “moderate rebels” (who were really just ISIS and al-Qaeda by other names) with arms and funds to continue the conflict there well into the future.

President Trump campaigned on the idea of reducing conflicts and trying to remove the U.S. from limited wars that benefitted no U.S. interests, as in Libya and Iraq (which he said he would not have battled in 2012 and 2003, respectively). Perhaps sensing the danger of a pacifist president to their economic interests, many defense contractors actively supported Hillary Clinton for the presidency. After all, if America had no enemies to fight, what would it need its massive military spending advantage for (which currently stands at more than four times the size of its next-closest competitor, China)? No, for the military-industrial complex, it’s vital that at least one dominant arch-enemy be made a scapegoat and a reason to keep building, stockpiling and using new weapons.

Perhaps sensing that the military “deep state” is too strong an entity to go up against, when he was still a candidate for office, Trump vowed that he wanted to “strengthen” and “build up” the nation’s military as no president had done since Ronald Reagan. In Trump’s mind, this might have made it safer for the “deep state” to “allow” his election. And perhaps to hedge his bet, Trump (an alumnus of military school) decided he would pepper his cabinet with military and ex-military men as no president had in modern memory.

But almost immediately, there was a clear response from the globalist-and-Democrat-aligned portions of this deep state; Trump’s first national security advisor Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was forced to resign due to allegedly improper ties to the military-industrial complex’s original enemy number one — Russia. It’s likely no coincidence that one of the loudest voices crying out about the need for intense hearings over the Russian affair has been Senator John McCain, one of the loudest critics of President Trump and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, which oversees appropriations for the military in excess of $600 billion.

McCain, who critics contend never heard of a conflict he didn’t want the United States to enter or influence in some way, would like to see continued demonization of Russia, Syria, Libya and Yemen in a quest to make sure that the budget for the military continues to spiral out of control — even if it means bankrupting America for future generations. This is a danger that ex-President Eisenhower specifically warned about in his 1961 speech and that Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky brought up on the Senate floor, only to be outrageously labeled a Communist sympathizer by McCain in front of his Senate colleagues.

As further evidence of the growing power of the military-industrial “deep state,” President Trump has ceded much of the day-to-day command authority for the conflicts he originally stated he wanted to pull the U.S. out of (such as those in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and other places) to the Pentagon. This effectively grants regional war-fighting authority to an unelected body that’s ultimately only interested in its own preservation and expansion. While this may be a way for Trump not to have blood on his hands, it also grants enormous control and influence to exactly the entity that Eisenhower warned about back in 1961.

This same entity may have been horrified when former President Reagan proposed bilateral nuclear disarmament to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986. Five years later, the Soviet state collapsed, and America’s longtime Cold War enemy no longer existed for all practical purposes. Those invested in the massive infrastructure of the military-industrial complex may have been horrified by the sudden seeming victory of the United States in a Cold War that many of them probably hoped for financial sake would go on for decades (or possibly even centuries) into the future. As far as Wall Street was concerned, Silicon Valley then seemed to take over as the main engine of America’s economy for a few brief years during the Internet boom (when coincidentally, America’s budget deficit last turned into a surplus).

Conspiracy theorists may point to a 1997 Project for a New American Century (PNAC) document entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” that hinted at the potential of a new enemy that could take the place of the Soviet Union as America’s nemesis number uno, with the 9/11 terror attacks as the catalyst that created the new $40-billion-per-year-budgeted Department of Homeland Security.

However, the fact of the matter is that as a threat, al-Qaeda is not on par with the Soviet Union — it boasts neither the weapons, nor the manpower, nor the threat capability (despite 9/11) of the latter entity. Although for the better part of 10 years, the U.S. pursued al-Qaeda (which was more heard about on the news than seen) and its ally, the Taliban (which is still extant to a large degree in Afghanistan), the Pentagon may have realized that America likely wouldn’t justify ad infinitum the same expenditure of taxpayer money on an enemy that was invisible, as opposed to one that was very real and much larger (Russia).

Hence, there appears to be a strong desire to return Russia to the status it previously was accorded during the Cold War. And so, if and when President Trump talks warmly about Russia or about admiration for Russian leader Putin, it may only make the blood boil of CEOs in defense companies that populate the military-industrial deep state. This, in turn, surely has indirectly stimulated discussions about the impeachment of Trump in Congress.

Is it a coincidence that Senator McCain blocked the vote to repeal Obamacare in the Senate? A failure to overhaul Obamacare could make Republicans — and Trump himself — highly unpopular in 2018, and if the Democrats are returned to power in the Senate as a result, Trump’s presidency might well be in danger.

In the meantime, any way that the influence of the military deep state can be reduced via pressure to “drain the swamp” in Washington would be good news for America.


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