Veterans returning from World War II were grateful to get any kind of employment as they married, started families and attended college on the G.I. Bill. They were unconcerned that old line companies like General Motors, General Electric and Westinghouse continued to produce military weapons and supplies, even as they resumed production of automobiles, refrigerators and washing machines for a starved domestic market.
In Upstate New York, old line cotton mills and glove factories that had supplied uniforms and parachutes during the war, closed their doors. Chamber of Commerce officials heralded the “Loom to Boom” transition that brought in military contractors to take their place.
By the 1950s, the military-industrial complex was entrenched, and Uncle Sam was the principal customer. When Dwight Eisenhower completed his second term in the White House, he warned that reliance on war production to provide jobs in peacetime would change the character of our nation. He was prescient. But few were listening. It was as if World War II had never ended on America’s production lines. The military services continued to prepare for battle, vowing never again to be caught as short handed and as ill-equipped as they were when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Industry and the defense department collaborated on the design and production of new jet aircraft, tanks, machine guns, submarines and landing craft. The Army, Navy and Air Force were the principal customers. Foreign customers were welcome, even if their people were starving and their leaders had to borrow the money from us to purchase the weapons.
We became the world’s biggest arms merchant, and the world’s superior military force. We located our troops in many parts of the world, bolstered our intelligence capability, and believed we were ready for any contingency. Militarily. Even if we had to deal with despots to assure a flow of oil and permission to locate our airfields and to secure deep harbors for refueling and repairing our ships.
But many observers believed we contributed to making the world a more dangerous place and that we added to our list of adversaries. Involvement in Korea was deemed unavoidable. But Vietnam was a quagmire to be avoided. Once engaged there, we would not admit error. President Johnson’s contrived Bay of Tonkin episode drove us deeper into the muck. We would not admit error when we knew we could not win, and thousands upon thousands of our men had lost their lives. The nation was subjected to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s weekly body counts: we killed more of them than they killed of us, so of course we were winning. Sickening. McNamara knew it was cruel folly and eventually resigned. Johnson did not seek re-election, knowing his defeat at the polls was as certain as our country’s defeat in Vietnam. We left that country in chaos. Military leaders said lessons were learned, that we would be wiser, better informed in the future.
But the horror of September 11, 2001 revealed our sleuthing was woefully inadequate and that there were outrageous communication gaps between our CIA and FBI. We did have military might, and used it, as if we were responding to an attack from a nation state rather than a band of terrorists operating from several countries. We sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan to find a single individual said to have planned the horrendous attacks on American soil, Osama bin Laden.
Intelligence identified his location in Pakistan nine years later, and a brave, highly-trained group of Navy SEALS killed him and brought back his plans for further destruction for review by our military and CIA. But by then our financial surplus had evaporated into staggering debt from fighting two unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, chiefly on borrowed money from China, with little thought to the long-term political, humanitarian and economic consequences. We really had learned nothing from our experience in Vietnam.
Looking back, the whole world was in chaos from the 1930s through the 1940s, and in the early years of that global conflict, the outcome was uncertain. So the idea of building an enduring military defense following World War II was entirely appropriate. But we have gone far beyond that.
The character of our nation has been changed. We have conducted torture, sanctioned by the White House; ignored The Geneva Conventions, and intervened in other nations selectively, based on political considerations, not consistently on the basis of professed American values. At home, divisions deepen, economic disparities widen, and the sense of unity that kept us working together through World War II is missing. We cannot restore America without it. ***
Carlton E. Spitzer
No comments:
Post a Comment