The Permanent War

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

In 1963 Lyndon Johnson faced a situation similar to Truman's, but he apparently didn't bother to resist. At a December meeting with the Joint Chiefs he reportedly pleaded, "Just get me elected and then you can have your war." But he told confidants that Vietnam wasn't worth fighting for and was "just the biggest damn mess I ever saw." Both Truman and Johnson, facing elections, knew the vast political clout Pentagon lobbyists wielded on Capitol Hill. Johnson said privately that he feared impeachment if he pulled out of Vietnam.

Much has been made of the notion -- particularly in Oliver Stone's controversial 1991 film JFK -- that the military-industrial cabal killed President Kennedy because he was planning to pull the plug on its gravy train. But it didn't need to kill Truman or Johnson to get what it wanted: continuous war.

In his farewell address, Eisenhower echoed the sentiments of another outgoing president and former army general 165 years earlier. George Washington, in his farewell address, said Americans should "avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty."

It's no wonder Washington and his compatriots felt that a standing army during peacetime posed a threat to democracy. The idea of having lots of professional military personnel looking for ways to justify their existence is truly scary. "A standing army in time of peace is an evil," wrote Robert Yates, a New York judge and delegate to the federal convention, in the New York Journal in 1787. "The nations around us, sir, are already enslaved. . . . By means of their large standing armies they have lost every one of their liberties." History proves Yates correct in saying that creating a class of people dependent on the defense payroll erodes liberties at home. Jingoism, groupthink, and even vigilantism become infectious. Mussolini and Hitler both capitalized on this reaction.

William D. Hartung, director of the Arms Trade Research Center, part of the World Policy Institute, advises in his article "The Hidden Costs of War" that, at the very least, jingoism undermines U.S. diplomacy:

One of the greatest potential costs of relying on war and preparations for war as a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy is the danger of distorting the U.S. role in the world from that of a vibrant democracy that is ready to defend itself and its allies when necessary, to that of a garrison state that uses force to get its way on a wide range of issues that have little to do with self-defense.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print