Tag Archives: War Profits

It Is All About The Money – Why The Military Industrial Complex Continues To Bilk The American Public, by Charles “Sam” Faddis

Posted on October 8, 2021 | Leave a comment

America’s many wars are about profits for the complex, not the safety of Americans. From Charles “Sam” Faddis at andmagazine.com:

Years ago, I was running operations in an Asian country and trying to get a handle on the status of a particular nation’s effort to develop a new tank.  After a decade of effort and massive expenditures, this country was no closer to having a working domestically-produced main battle tank than when it started.  It seemed a colossal failure.

Then I realized I did not understand what was going on at all.  I thought the goal was to produce an armored vehicle that could win wars and that the nation in question was failing miserably to achieve that goal.  I was wrong. The goal was to make money, and at that, the military-industrial complex of this nation was succeeding brilliantly.

No tanks that could win a war had been produced.  It was unclear if or when they ever would be.  But a lot of people and very powerful corporations had made billions and were going to make billions more.

I had wondered how long this could go on.  The answer was – forever.

All over America, people are dealing with the fallout from Afghanistan. They are wondering what it was all about. They are thinking of lost loved ones, shattered lives and mangled bodies and thinking – never again. We are collectively awash in a powerful mix of emotions, regret, anger, grief.

Not so in the halls of power where the uniformed bureaucrats and the leaders of the most powerful defense contractors on the planet decide the fate of young men and women who aspire to serve their nation and protect their fellow citizens.

You may think the lesson learned from Afghanistan is “never again.” They don’t think any such thing.

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Posted in Business, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, History, Military, Politics, Propaganda

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Investors in US Weapon-Makers Only Clear Winners of Afghan War, by Jessica Corbett

Posted on August 22, 2021 | 1 comment

The Afghanistan war was never meant to be won or lost, it, and the profits that flowed from it, were meant to be perpetual. From Jesse Corbett at consortiumnews.com:

Share prices of military manufacturers vastly outperformed the stock market overall during the Afghanistan War.

May 25, 2002: Two U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopters land at Bagram Airfield in Parwan, Afghanistan, after completing a mission. (U.S. National Archives)

As the hawks who have been lying about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan for two decades continue to peddle fantasies in the midst of a Taliban takeover and American evacuation of Kabul, progressive critics on Tuesday reminded the world who has benefited from the “endless war.”

“Entrenching U.S. forces in Afghanistan was the military-industrial complex’s business plan for 20+ years,” declared the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Public Citizen.

[Related: A People’s Guide to the War Industry, Part 1 and  Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4 and Part 5.]

“Hawks and defense contractors co-opted the needs of the Afghan people in order to line their own pockets,” the group added. “Never has it been more important to end war profiteering.”

In a Tuesday morning tweet, Public Citizen highlighted returns on defense stocks over the past 20 years — as calculated in a “jaw-dropping” analysis by The Intercept — and asserted that “the military-industrial complex got exactly what it wanted out of this war.”

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Posted in Business, Collapse, Financial markets, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, War

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Perpetual War: A Racket For Politicians, Bankers And War Profiteers, by Chuck Baldwin

Posted on May 25, 2018 | 1 comment

There is one easily idenfiable element that is common to all the wars the US wages: somebody makes a lot of money off of them. From Chuck Balkwin at lewrockwell.com;

After the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003, I said, “Put up the yellow ribbons, folks, because Johnny ain’t ever marchin’ home again.” And that was before I knew about the Pentagon’s plan to launch seven wars against seven Middle Eastern nations.

In 2007, General Wesley Clark said that after the attacks on 9/11, the U.S. planned to launch seven wars against seven Middle Eastern countries: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. I suppose Afghanistan was already assumed to be the eternal home of the U.S. military, and I guess the country of Niger in Northern Africa was thrown in for good measure. And I suppose, too, that the Pentagon doesn’t count U.S. military assistance of the Saudi Arabian war against Yemen.

Writing for ZeroHedge.com, Tyler Durden reports:

The fact is that all of these countries, with the exception of Iran, have been the subject of direct or indirect aggression and political pressure from the US and its satellites. There are US military forces that remain stationed in some of them still to this day.

Back in 2008, the RAND Corporation released a lengthy study on America’s “long war.” The study was called, “Unfolding the Future of the Long War: Motivations, Prospects, and Implications for the U.S. Army.” The report began:

The United States is currently engaged in a military effort that has been characterized as the “long war.” The long war has been described by some as an epic struggle against adversaries bent on forming a unified Islamic world to supplant western dominance, while others describe it more narrowly as an extension of the war on terror. But while policymakers, military leaders, and scholars have offered numerous definitions of the long war, no consensus has been reached about this term or its implications for the United States. To understand the impacts that this long war will have on the U.S. Army and on U.S. forces in general, it is necessary to understand more precisely what the long war is and how it might unfold over the coming years.

To continue reading: Perpetual War: A Racket For Politicians, Bankers And War Profiteers

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Imperialism, Military, War

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