A recent series in The Washington Post, “Top Secret America,” attacked the growth, overlap and redundancies of intelligence agencies, operations and projects in the wake of 9/11, describing it as “a hidden world, growing beyond control.”
The story had some merit, but was characteristically flavored with a measure of viewpoint and liberal spin. Whatever the actual degree of bureaucratic overkill, it was the inevitable consequence of the intelligence failures that contributed to the 9/11 attack on America, for which the intelligence community was blasted for its passivity and lack of inter-agency cooperation.
The Washington Post series inspired one letter-writer to condemn the “military-industrial complex (as) a cancer.” That expression, “military-industrial complex,” was of course introduced into the language of politics by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell radio address to the nation in January 1961. Ironically, it’s since become a favorite rallying cry of leftists and anti-military types.
I say “ironically” because Ike, the commanding general of the allied forces that defeated Nazi Germany, was obviously no pacifist. The part of his speech that contains the oft-quoted phrase reads as follows: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” But there was much more to his message, conveniently ignored by those who selectively borrow his words for their own purposes.
In no way did he propose that we dismantle what FDR had earlier called the “arsenal of democracy.” Ike identified the existential threat of his era, “We face a hostile ideology — global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily, the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration.” That enemy was, of course, Soviet (and Chinese) communism. Except for the atheism part, his description ominously fits Islamist fanaticism today. Communist atheism, at least, was rational.
Ike went on to declare that, “A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.” Ronald Reagan, two decades later, would describe this as “peace through strength.” Later in that speech, Ike observed, “Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions . . . . We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.”
And that’s what preceded his famous caution about the “military-industrial complex.” Ike’s message was sound advice from a man who understood both the virtues and potential vices of the military machine and its industrial suppliers. But his message deserves better than to be manipulated by those who resent the military because it offends their utopian vision of the world they wish they lived in. The military-industrial complex may indeed warrant prudent oversight, but it’s nice to have it when you need it.
In 1961, when Ike delivered his farewell address, defense spending consumed more than half the federal budget; today it accounts for less than a fifth. Over the same period, a cornucopia of social programs — so-called “entitlements” — that transfer income and wealth from net taxpayers to net tax-users has moved in the opposite direction, from less than a quarter of the budget to almost two-thirds. In federal budget parlance, most of this spending is labeled “mandatory,” while defense spending — the government’s most essential task — is termed “discretionary.”
There’s another complex today that dwarfs the military-industrial complex. Let’s call it the “welfare- state-recipient-bureaucrat-politician complex.” We ought to be far more wary of the destructive force of that one.
Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.
