NOW! The magazine of Youth & Student CND

The Terror of War-Corporate Greed Feeds the US War Machine

By Katy Beinart

The attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11th were horrific, and got the deserved attention of the global media and aid and emergency services rushing to help. Four months later, the US reaction to those attacks has caused civilian death on a greater scale, as well as precipitating a massive humanitarian crisis. Far from being ‘satisfied’ at routing the Taliban and destroying most of the country, the US Government is now planning military action against Somalia and Iraq and George Bush has dubbed Iran, Iraq and North Korea an ‘Axis of Evil’.

Excuse me, but on the same day he unveiled a military budget of $396.1 billion for 2003, and a plan to spend $2.1 TRILLION on the military over the next five years, which could be said to be pretty evil in itself. $ 380,000,000,000 per year = $ 1,041,095,890 per day = $ 43,378,995 per hour = $ 722,983 per minute = $ 12,049 per second being spent on killing machines.

Looking at what the money is being spent on and who is being contracted to carry out the work, it doesn’t look like an anti-terrorist operation. It looks more like a plan for complete global dominance, including dominance of Space. Here’s an example of US military ideology, from ultra right-wing Republican Senator from New Hampshire, Bob Smith: “With the technology that we have already developed and demonstrated, we have the opportunity today to move forward to the comprehensive missile defense architecture that President Reagan envisioned almost 20 years ago, more than the marginal defense this Administration has been struggling with for the past few months. We need to incorporate forward-deployed capabilities like the Navy Theater Wide program and the Air Force Airborne Laser and space-based missile-defense programs to ensure we can stop missiles in their boost phase, dropping the debris fallout over our adversary’s homes, not ours. We also need to incorporate space sensors and integrate everything together with our theater defense systems to form a comprehensive architecture to defend this nation and our deployed troops. Space is absolutely critical to future war fighting! This increasing importance was demonstrated in the Gulf War and in the Balkans. I firmly believe that whoever controls space will win the next war”.

It’s no wonder that Bob Smith and the Bush administration are such firm advocates of missile defence and military spending. The companies that have won the biggest contracts in the new defence budget, Lockheed Martin, TRW, Boeing, Raytheon, and Northrop-Grumman have close links to the Bush administration, and have bankrolled politicians on both sides of the House to ensure defence spending remains top of the agenda.

Vice President Cheney is a former member of the board of TRW. His wife, Lynn Cheney, was a longtime member of the Lockheed Martin board stepping down only as her husband prepared to take office. Bruce Jackson, vice president of corporate strategy and development of Lockheed Martin, said “I wrote the Republican Party’s foreign policy platform.” Bush’s appointee as deputy director of the National Security Council is Stephen J. Hadley, previously a partner in Shea & Gardner, the Washington law firm of Lockheed Martin. Other Bush administration officials drawn from the aerospace industry include Albert Smith, a Lockheed Martin vice president, appointed undersecretary of the Air Force; Gordon England, vice president of General Dynamics, named Navy secretary; and James G. Roche, retired president of a Northrop-Grumman division, appointed as Air Force secretary. In a report by the Arms Trade Resource Center, ‘Tangled Web: The Marketing of Missile Defense’, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and TRW are shown to have given millions of dollars in “soft money donations” and “PAC contributions” to members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat, in the last few years. The intense lobbying of these massive multinational corporations is pushing forward the military agenda with no regard to financial, or human, cost.

The result is increased militarisation and decreased spending on ‘social’ budgets in the US. However, this has a global impact. The direct impact of Bush’s ‘War against Terrorism’, as we have seen, has been the destabilization of the whole region round Afghanistan, including Kashmir, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel and the Middle East. There has been an escalation in violence in Kashmir. Countries are now increasing their aggressions and military spending in a response to the increased aggression and military spending of the US. In Europe, some ministers have expressed concern at America’s extension plans for the war, which could be encouraging as if Europe made a stand, we could break the stranglehold the US has on world politics. However, one likely consequence of this, which is in the wings already, is a European Army, with its own nuclear deterrent.

America’s determination to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty will lead to counter anti-missile action by China and Russia. These countermeasures are technologically simple and cheaper and will force the U.S. to attempt to counter the countermeasures. Meanwhile Non-Nuclear Weapons States will have no protection from possible attack by Nuclear Weapon States, and the level of fear and anger, and therefore likelihood of terrorism, will increase.

Along with increased military budgets worldwide, come increased social problems as less money is spent on healthcare, education, housing, aid and development. In desperately poor countries like Somalia and Iraq, the result of more war will be massive humanitarian catastrophe like that in Afghanistan, where at least 3,767 Afghan civilians had died in U.S bombing attacks, and hundreds of thousands are desperately trying to survive in refugee camps cut off by war and winter. In other countries, the result of cuts to social and welfare budgets is likely to be, you’ve guessed it, fear and anger. And that means terrorism.

Israel’s justification for its aggression against Palestine is that it is a ‘War against Terrorism’. The Palestinian people are simply being destroyed by a lack of basic human rights, to homes, to education for their children, to peace. Their anger is illustrative of what could happen on a wider scale if more and more people are displaced and denied basic human rights.

The US Government is not going to suddenly change its mind while it is being bankrolled by Arms Corporations. That is why it is imperative that we build a global movement against corporate greed and capitalism, against war, and for peace and justice for all.

What you can do:

-Join the CND March on 30th March!

-Read the alternative media and contribute your voice-

www.indymedia.org.uk


-Get sussed on disarmament diplomacy and treaties-www.acronym.org.uk

-Write to MPs, local newspapers, phone your local radio station and tell them what you think

-Join your local peace group or Youth and Student CND group (phone or e-mail the office for local contacts) and get active-hold stalls, hold local meetings

blockade US bases!!