Progressive Book Club asked Robert Scheer, Nick Turse, Lawrence Korb, and Frida Berrigan to discuss Scheer's new book, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America. Scheer argues in the book that the military-industrial complex (comprising politicians, ideologues, the pentagon, and defense contractors) has exploited fear of terrorism to justify massive spending on pointless weapons systems at enormous taxpayer expense. Far from making America safer and stronger, he writes, this arrangement has diverted billions of dollars from the nation's true needs while doing nothing to combat terrorism. And Scheer points out that where there should be outrage there is silence, since few politicians of either party, in Congress or on the campaign trail, are prepared to question the wisdom or morality of ever-greater defense spending, for fear of seeming "weak" or unpatriotic.

Robert Scheer, a contributing editor to The Nation, is editor in chief of Truthdig.com and author of numerous books. His weekly column, distributed by Creators Syndicate, appears in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Lawrence J. Korb is Senior Fellow at American Progress and a Senior Advisor to the Center for Defense Information. He is a former undersecretary of defense.

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of TomDispatch.com.

Frida Berrigan is Senior Program Associate of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation and a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus.



From: Frida Berrigan
To: Nick Turse, Robert Scheer, Lawrence Korb

What Nick raises is important, and reminds me of Bob’s examination of the United States’ role in the world.

Despite Bush’s campaign promise for a “humble” foreign policy, U.S. flexed a lot of military might in the last seven years. And it’s been all heat and no light—if that is the right expression.

Scheer opens The Pornography of Power with Nixon’s “live and let live” comment about the Soviet Union and ends it with Washington’s embrace of a “respectable defensive posture” and prescription for “harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations.” And it seems to me that he suggests that  as long as the United States rejects both Nixon and Washington and sees itself as the center of the universe, this is how it is going to be—the United States fighting fundamentally unwinnable wars that have lots of bells and whistles for the technophiles glued to CNN and and lots of pork and profit for corporate America.

So, the new Pax Americana Bush Doctrine becomes more than an operating principle, it becomes an article of faith. They believe that “the United States possesses the means—economic, military, diplomatic—to realize its expansive geopolitical purposes”—and thus no decision-- no matter how poor, ignorant and irrational—is wrong so long as it emanates from US-Firstism (and—fringe benefit—it makes money for and perpetuates in perpetuity the MIC).

War as a response to terrorism, the belief that missile defense rather than treaties will protect us from nuclear Armageddon, the rejection of human role in global climate change, the wholesale acceptance of Lockheed’s re-invention of the F-22 as a counter-terror tool and other MIC shenanigans, the way this nation understands war and its utility, and on and on and on-- all are part of the Bush administration’s “the American Century” and WORK. Even though—as Nick points out—it doesn’t WORK, and the biggest kid on the block has been losing wars against smaller and smaller adversaries consistently for the past six decades.

-- Frida Berrigan


From: Nick Turse
To: Robert Scheer, Lawrence Korb, Frida Berrigan

Hello Bob, Lawrence, and Frida:

I’d like to raise a question for all of you, one that builds off something Frida mentioned and also a point in Bob’s book. 
 
Frida notes that when she lectures, she hammers home that “the al Qaeda war-chest is akin to a speck of dust in the vast expanse of the mega-church of U.S. militarism.”  And in his book, Bob rightly draws attention to the many high-tech, Cold War-style weapons systems that have been laughably re-cast as anti-terrorist weaponry, and the absurdity of a defense budget “roughly equal to that of all the world’s nations.”  He goes on to make a smart point that “it is inconceivable that any hostile state could emerge in the next twenty years with an ability to match the United States in a combat zone ... (p.234).”

That said, I wanted to raise the converse of Bob’s point -- the U.S. military’s persistent inability, since World War II, to awe-into-submission or decisively defeat any but its weakest foes.  We’ve seen this in Korea in the early 1950s, Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, Lebanon in the early 1980s and Somalia in the early 1990s.  More recently, victory in Afghanistan has proved worse than elusive, while a ragtag insurgency in Iraq more or less fought the Pentagon's technological dominance and superior firepower to a standstill for years.

With ample evidence of the military’s incapability -- despite all its high-tech weaponry, mountains of money, and obviously staggering destructive power -- to actually “win” its wars, this would seem to be another argument against the out-of-control defense spending.  Yet, I rarely see this point of view voiced, even by staunch critics of the military-industrial complex.  Is it simply too uncomfortable (and perceived as too unpatriotic) to raise the point that Iraqi guerrillas with pickup trucks, garage door openers and rifles designed in the 1940s wreaked havoc on American troops with high-tech satellites systems, heavy armor and artillery, air power and total control of the skies, sea power, specialized military vehicles, body armor, newer small arms and boatloads of high-tech gadgets? 

Failure to even seriously address this issue seems especially odd today, since the military has been rather candid about, at least temporarily, buying off a large segment of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.  Yet, I still haven’t heard any critics even raise the idea of using even more of the defense budget as protection money -- which conceivably could be much cheaper and more effective than providing gear for troops that are generally only up to the task when it comes to “powers” like Grenada and Panama.

Any thoughts on this?

-- Nick Turse


From: Frida Berrigan
To: Robert Scheer, Lawrence Korb, Nick Turse

In his inaugural address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself-- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” He spoke as the nation crept from the shadow of the Depression only to find itself on the precipice of World War II. The years that followed would be marked by fear. Whole nations pocked with bomb craters, under occupation and anticipating invasion. Religion, ethnicity and difference assaulted and threatened with annihilation. Pogrom and Pearl Harbor, Holocaust and Hydrogen-Bomb brought new dimensions of terror to imagination, language and politics.

The fear was real. But, FDR suggested it was an emotion to avoid or overcome, a physical reaction that weakens the spirit and dims the mind. After World War II, fears multiplied—the evil empire, the missile gap, the red tide, the mushroom cloud-- and so did the dollars flowing to the companies incorporated to obliterate fear.  Today, we are again afraid. This time the boogeyman is terrorism. As Robert Scheer elucidates—our fear has been masterfully manipulated to shift the military industrial complex into hyper-drive.

Whenever I lecture, I hammer on the absurdity of the “war” – global, long or otherwise-- on terrorism. I talk about the U.S. military budget—now approaching half a trillion dollars and the U.S. war budget (which is-- as Scheer points out—completely separate from the military budget) totaling more than $700 billion so far and increasing every day.  I make the point that the al Qaeda war-chest is akin to a speck of dust in the vast expanse of the mega-church of U.S. militarism.

And I talk about fear. I confess my own fear of terrorism. I joined my fellow New Yorkers in the exodus from Manhattan September 11th. As I walked towards Brooklyn that afternoon, I could not keep from turning back to what was no longer there. I saw the ash-covered, anguished faces of strangers and knew my expression mirrored theirs. I breathed in the dust from the smoldering Pile for weeks after. I mourned for all who lost a loved one on that day.

Reading Scheer’s book brought me back to the fall of 2001 when fear and grief were chiseled into support for war. Since then, the United States has launched attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, struck in Yemen and Somalia, put North Korea and Syria and Libya on notice, adopted a tougher stance towards China, and menaced the world with the false and hopeless choice of “with us or against us.” And now, the Bush administration beats the “all options” drum against Iran.

Despite the endless choices of enemies offered by the Bush administration, history teaches us to be suspicious of leaders who foment fear. The Pornography of Power is equal parts extended meditation on the political utility of fear; precise accounting of the mad-money being made from hyped red-alerts; and impassioned wake-up call to the brains gone blank with fear. Robert Scheer’s book is an invaluable bulwark against the dangerous irrationality of fear and lively reinforcement of the history lesson that we must be continually re-learning.

-- Frida Berrigan


From: Robert Scheer
To: Nick Turse, Lawrence Korb, Frida Berrigan

I am thrilled with Korb's comments because it is a challenge that Democrats need to hear. Why do both candidates favor an increase in military spending when there is no militarily significant enemy in sight?

Democrats have got to face up to the fact that they have long been the war party and that we will not get the needed progressive domestic programs funded unless we cut defense spending which accounts for the majority of discretionary funds available in the federal budget. Case in point is the DNC attack on McCain over his previous and very warranted attack on the Boeing air-tanker leasing program. Thanks to McCain, as detailed in my book, the top procurement officer in the Air Force and the CFO of Boeing both were sent to federal prison and yet the Dems dare criticize him for exposing such rank corruption.

The tanker deal, ultimately worth $100 billion in taxpayer dollars, is now back on the table and last week the Democratic Senators from the State of Washington, in a scene reminiscent of the Henry "Scoop" Jackson days, when Richard Perle was his staffer, and he was known as the Senator from Boeing, acted as cheerleaders at a company celebration of their new contract chances. That is money that will not be available for flood control, education, mortgage relief or health insurance for uninsured kids but the Dems are as shameful as the Republicans in acting as if this is free money rather than a squandered opportunity cost.

-- Robert Scheer


From: Lawrence Korb
To: Robert Scheer, Nick Turse, Frida Berrigan

Hello Bob, Nick and Frida:

Reading Bob's latest book brings to mind three observations:

First, why I was attracted to the Republican Party. I came of age politically during the Eisenhower years and was always comfortable with Eisenhower's approach to foreign intervention and defense spending. He got us out of Korea, kept us out of Vietnam, and tried to keep the lid on defense spending. The panic that enveloped the nation after the launch of Sputnik gave the Democrats in Congress the opening to blow the lid off the defense budget.

Second, Bob validates Mark Shield's observation that Richard Nixon was our last liberal president. Not only did he pursue détente with the Soviet Union and China, he slashed defense spending to pay for such liberal institutions as the EPA, OHSA, AMTRAK, and affirmative action. The distinguished diplomatic historian, Gaddis Smith, argues that if Nixon had been elected in 1960, he never would have sent nearly 600,000 Americans to Vietnam to referee a civil war.

Third, had the first President Bush been reelected, defense spending in the 1990's would have been considerably less than it was. Many people forget that President Clinton during his 1992 campaign complained that Bush was trying to kill such platforms as the V-22 Osprey and the Seawolf submarine. Moreover, after losing the fight with the Pentagon over the issue of gays, Clinton refused to do battle with the Pentagon and ended up spending more on defense than the first President Bush had projected.

-- Lawrence Korb


From: Nick Turse
To: Robert Scheer, Frida Berrigan, Lawrence Korb


Hello Bob, Lawrence, and Frida:

Since his days at Ramparts covering the Vietnam War, Robert Scheer has been a muckraker extraordinaire, digging deep into American military policy and exposing the dangers that the U.S. military-industrial complex poses for Americans and the rest of the world.

It's a testament to the absurd times we live in that The Pornography of Power has so many positive passages about the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush as well as the latter's Secretary of Defense, Richard Cheney (before he became Dick Cheney 2.0, the current Vice President) and even current Republican presidential candidate John McCain. In any other world, Scheer would undoubtedly devote all his time to taking each of these men to task for their contributions to the military-industrial complex, not their actions in the opposite direction. But these are strange days indeed.

In his meticulously researched text, Scheer examines the effects that 9/11, the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and Bush administration policy, writ large, have had on the U.S. military and the major weapons manufacturers of the military-industrial complex. As he notes, "Money earmarked for the GWOT only represents part of the bonanza of 9/11 reaped by the defense industry, as the rest of the Defense Department budget grew dramatically - even though most of that increase was devoted to weapons that were relics from Cold War planning" (p. 14). He then lays bare the obvious folly of billions of dollars spent on high-tech weapons systems, like stealth aircraft, advanced submarines and nuclear weapons, with the flimsy justification that somehow these arms will be useful and necessary to fight terrorists and guerrillas.

But these aren't simply common sense assertions. They're backed up by some excellent case studies in profit-making, militarized leaps of logic, fear-mongering, waste, and insider deals, including an excellent account of the efforts to justify the production of Lockheed's all but useless F-22 Raptor. (Useless, that is, unless you have a fantasy future war with China -- discussed in chapter 11 -- complete with dogfights in the skies, lodged somewhere in your brain). This advanced fighter, designed to counter non-existent Soviet aircraft, was haplessly rebranded as an anti-terrorist weapon for such critical missions as protecting the launch of Space Shuttles -- "presumably," Scheer writes, "from an alien air force capable of shooting down older F-16 planes."

In this same vein, the book contains an especially insightful chapter that centers on Iraq War architects Richard Perle and Douglas Feith and pulls back the curtain on the confounding and corrupt world of defense contractors, lobbyists, and government officials (sometimes, it seems with all three rolled into a single package). It's a lesson in the ways they feed (and are fed by) the military-industrial complex and what it means for the rest of us.
The Pornography of Power concludes with a chapter titled "Empire vs.
Republic, You Decide," offering some especially kind words about another Republican president and military man, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and his famous farewell address in which he warned the United States about the "unwarranted influence" of the "military-industrial complex."

Of course, at the time, Ike's Pentagon was spending a cool $23,000,000,000 a year. Today, that would equal around $200 billion - but would still be dwarfed by current Pentagon spending. However, as Scheer notes, today's outlay is a much lower percentage of the Gross Domestic Product than it was in Ike's time - meaning that it should theoretically be economically easier to eliminate defense industry jobs than it was in 1961.

For many reasons laid out by Robert Scheer -- including Democrats seeking to look tough and use defense spending as a jobs program (as other social programs are slashed away) -- this looks unlikely. Still he concludes the book with the assertion that "we can have peace and prosperity, and we can easily afford to cushion the fall for those who have grown dependent on the defense dollar." He further offers, "there is much reason to hope that the military buildup of the George Bush years is an aberration..."

He does, however, voice a caveat, essentially wondering aloud if he is being overly optimistic. I wonder the same -- and fear he is. Nonetheless, if his book were somehow made into required reading for U.S. citizens, I would be instantly more hopeful.

-- Nick Turse