We need to begin dismantling the MIC as soon as possible. Eisenhower warned us a long time ago

[Billy Love]

and he's been proven right.

It's time to remove MIC and ban Department of Defense (what a joke) and transfer the responsibility to Homeland Security which should be dismantled too but it could be revamped to Homeland Defense with the main purpose of defending the United States enemies, foreign or domestic, and not to go out in the middle of the world and fight other people's battles.

The military industrial complex has gotten way too big for its britches.

[gopiscrap]

1. I fully agree!

[kelliekat44]

30. As soon as you discover a way to employ those in this industry, let us know. Otherwise

it's an uphill battle. I would like to put all those people in the MIC to work on infrastructure, especially building state-of-the- art schools and housing for seniors and the poor and homeless. If we could ever get corporations to actually pay the amount of taxes they complain about having to pay but really don't we would have enough revenue to fund these projects.

[Scuba]

33. Yet we axe teacher, firefighters, snowplow drivers, et al, with nary a thought.

But touch a war worker and it's gonna hurt the economy, right? What total bullshit.

[gopiscrap]

35. I've been saying that for a long time

In 1989 I ran a city initiative (advisory) in Tacoma Washington asking for a 10% reduction in military spending to be applied to social services and deficit reduction. We used a major study by the National Conference of Mayors which stated that the every 1,000,000 dollars you divert from military spending and invest it into mass transportation you have a net gain of 1,200 jobs

[gopiscrap]

39. if our fucking priorities as a nation were straight

we would

[avebury]

41. There is an easy solution to that.

You take a huge chunk of the military defense fund and put it back into improving our infra-structure, improving education, providing the means for helping the less fortunate become contributors to society - all of which will require job opportunities.

Edit to add - We can take back most of the foreign aid that goes to other countries. Why should we sending tax dollars overseas when there are those among us who are starving, homeless, and with no hope?

None of this will ever occur because the MIC, Corporations and 1%ers will never allow it.

[leftstreet]

2. He initially called it Military Industrial CONGRESSIONAL Complex

+1

[gopiscrap]

38. That's interesting, I didn't know that

[orpupilofnature57]

3. I mention it often, here it is .

[George II]

10. Interesting, he spent his first career in the military, and then EIGHT years as President....

....what did HE do about the thing he warned us about?

[LearningCurve]

17. Kept us out of war

Can you think of any 2 term president since who has?

[George II]

32. Kept us out of war? He's the one who sent the first troops to Vietnam

[orpupilofnature57]

45. The new formed NSA did, and that was Truman, a mistake he regretted .

[HumansAndResources]

25. He Did Not Advocate Dismantling It, Unfortunately

He claimed it was both necessary and dangerous. I disagree with him on the former. We COULD have made peace with the Soviets, and certainly with Russia after the fall of the wall. Instead, NATO expanded and moved missiles to the Russian border, just as the old justifiers for the Eastern-Bloc had said they would. It was Truman's nuke-politics that started the Cold War.

Lest I be accused of being a "Soviet apologist" again - to be clear, in my reading of history, in all cases, both the Bolsheviks and the Transnationals have opposed real, grassroots power. Chomsky breaks down Lenin very well here: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=yQsceZ9skQI (BTW, I include a "broken" copy of YT links, because they don't render in some browsers)

[gopiscrap]

37. Welcome to DU

[gopiscrap]

36. Yup I find it ironic that I as a hard core

liberal near socialist use a republican quote so often.

[orpupilofnature57]

44. Lincoln and Roosevelt were Quote worthy, but your right , it is ironic.

[Blanks]

46. Teddy Roosevelt was exceptional as well. eom

[orpupilofnature57]

47. That's who I meant, I believe he was the most Liberal Republican....

in history, that and keeping the 1% in line got him excommunicated, another reason I love him .

[Blanks]

48. Not to mention - national parks and the Panama Canal. eom

[Blanks]

49. Of course Teddy was only made Vice President...

Because Vice President's don't do diddly squat. As the governor of New York - he was very popular and didn't exactly tow the GOP line.

So they put him there so that he wouldn't cause trouble, and then McKinley was shot. I think they called him the 'Accidental President.' Although it was no accident that McKinley was shot - as presidents go he was pretty close to the last president we had. In a word - lousy.

[orpupilofnature57]

51. Like Smedley Butler the 1% tried to first vilify and then

nullify him, often the reward of great men who scare Small minds .

[Blanks]

52. Apparently our leaders now...

Are taking their cue from the military operations back then.

The US military was used extensively to protect American business interests abroad - the only difference is the regions of the world we were bombing.

We still kicked our vets to the curb too.

It's a shame that there isn't more taught in school about that era.

[rhett o rick]

4. How in the hell are you planning on doing that? nm

[Raksha]

18. Just exactly what I was going ask! n/t

[HumansAndResources]

26. Congress Controls The Money

Getting Falsely MSM-labeled "unelectable" candidates in office is the hard part - and enough to ensure that NSA-dirt, small plane accidents and/or "suicide-ing" cannot swing the balance.

And then there is the question of "what they (MIC) might do" to scare people into continuing to support them. They don't exactly have an "aversion" to the taking of millions of lives, and even better if we "demand" more war to "protect us." Ask what would be "off the table" to the mass-murdering MIC-people?

[DeSwiss]

5. K&R

[reformist2]

6. So much money and power is on the line. It will take a heroic group of politicians to pull it off.

[George II]

7. Any idea on how to get that done? We need to put a chicken in every pot, too!

[sabrina 1]

24. We could put a chicken, ten chickens, in every pot if we cut the Pentagon budget in

half.

How we do it is to stop voting for Corporate Funded candidates from now on and put all that energy into real Progressive Democrats and ignore the rhetoric we've been listening to about 'we need to support the candidate who can win'. They can 'win' only because of MONEY. Too often people have held their noses voting AGAINST something rather than for it.

That is going to change from now on. It will take time, it took THEM time to take over both parties but it has to start now and since the country overwhelmingly supports Progressive Democratic issues when issues are polled, it is BS to say Progressives can't win. I for one won't be falling for that nonsense any more.

[La Cucaracha]

8. Won't happen.

Too many politicians feeding at that trough.

[radiclib]

9. um..

"trough"

[La Cucaracha]

11. Fixed.

[radiclib]

29. Welcome to DU

[La Cucaracha]

31. Thank you.

I like reading this forum.

[colsohlibgal]

12. He Was Right As Rain

Right but it's gone pretty much unheeded. Thom Hartmann has played a clip of him also , while first running for president, saying how many schools could be built for the cost of just one bomber. That was when some republicans were, in many areas, more liberal than most democrats in this day and age. We've come a long way baby and not in a good direction.

This was a guy who had seen war close up, as opposed to all the disgusting chickenhawks on Dubya's team including Dubya. War was nothing more than playing with toy soldiers for them because they had done everything possible to avoid service while young. Dubya and Cheney would wet their pants if they were in the middle of a fire fight.

There should be no Homeland Agency or anything, Bush Jr. borrowed that from Adolph Hitler and the Nazis.

Back to Ike's great farewell from Office address, I wish more people were aware of that.

[Recursion]

13. OK. How do you plan to do that? (nt)

[Billy Love]

14. Easy: Cutting off all funds allocated to Department of Defense

and put it in Department of Education, Department of Labor, Department of Health & Human Services, and and a newly established Department of Peace.

In order to do that, we need to remove more Rethuglicans out of the House in '14 and replaced with true progressive Democrats.

[Recursion]

15. Sorry, I wasn't kidding

A defense budget of 0 is a non-starter. Got a serious plan?

[Billy Love]

22. Yes, a defense budget at 0 is a starter.

Every request for funding related to defense and DEFENSE only may be considered and a case for reason needs to be submitted.

Offensive request can be ignored and submitted into the bucket bin, shredded and burned and the originator told to fuck off and turn in their resignation.

[Recursion]

23. It's easy to imagine a clear distinction between "offensive" and "defensive"

Never, ever, ever works in practice, though

[jwirr]

20. Easy, huh? You go first and if you do not end up like John Kennedy the rest of us will follow. Look

they are not going to give up this power easily. In the "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy the only way this ended in other empires was that overstretch finally broke the system and that ended the policeman of the world idea. We are close to going down but I suspect they have a bit more money they can squeeze from the tax payers to continue their wars for a while yet. Unfortunately. I also think that allies such as England and China play a big role in keeping this going. When they get tired of bankrolling the system maybe that will end it.

[Crimson76]

16. I love the military, I am a marine brat and have a ton of friends in the service

I truly believe that this operation is purely political and ideological, I don't the military has the stomach or the will for this operation. I think that Susan Rice and Samantha Power got into the President's ear.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

19. Your post has been said about a billion times on the Internet

In almost precisely the way you said it. Good luck with that.

[wildbilln864]

21. k & r! n/t

[factsarenotfair]

27. He was a coward who warned us on his way out.

That's the conclusion I have reached after many years of pondering what he said. He should have done something about the MIC while he was President!

[unblock]

28. ike was an ass.

seriously, that was some major hypocrisy there.

he lives in, benefits from, rises to power on the shoulders of, and then feeds and nurtures the military industrial complex....

then, this well-respected general as president, with a near perfect background to actually take on the military industrial complex, after 8 years sitting in the white house doing absolutely nothing to address this growing problem, not even offering a single speech about it, finally has the hypocritical balls to warn us about something he cared not enough to do one lousy thing about.

and we humor the memory of this ass by crediting him with giving us a warning that he himself ignored.

gee thanks, ike.

[Bluenorthwest]

42. Some would say that post WW2 the defense complex morphed into the MIC

largely during the Eisenhower Presidency. Some would say Ike was telling us that he could not stop that transformation from war time necessity to peace time excesses. At any rate the nature and size of the war machine was not the same when his career started and when it ended.
So I can't agree with your simplistic view of his life.

[unblock]

43. c'mon. he did not just wake up in the last few days of his presidency.

i might agree that it's hard to blame him for not taking action on day 1, but somewhere between day 1 and day 2922, he might have done something more than just give an already useless warning in a farewell address.

[Zorra]

57. However, the fact remains that we need to dismantle the MIC ASAP. End of Story. nt

[Scuba]

34. If we can't afford to educate our children, to heal our sick or care for our elderly ...

... just what is it the defense budget is defending?

[gopiscrap]

40. BTW: welcome to DU

[fadedrose]

50. Some General yelling this am about not enough money given to military

so we don't have enough money to pay for flights over everyplace. Didn't catch his name, he's po'd with Obama, but no wonder, nobody told him that the Reps in Congress refuse to raise taxes on the rich, only on the poor, and everybody won't play ball....they don't even want to pay for stuff we already ordered before payments came due.

[Egalitarian Thug]

53. As someone else pointed out a day or two ago, George Washington warned us

about the MIC. This has been going on for far too long, and we seem to have reached a critical mass or breaking point.
K&R

[polichick]

54. "Our" gov't IS the mic. Here's a mic issue that I can't get anyone to comment on...

though posting it several times. Most Americans are down wind of these labs - and it's not even necessary to be down wind to be in danger.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023582867

[allprogressnow]

55. Get rid of the production and stockpiling of landmines, cluster bombs, and flamethrowers.

Again I say get rid of the production and stockpiling of landmines, cluster bombs, and flamethrowers. First, flamethrowers often hurt US troops that use them due to winds changing directions; this was the case in previous wars such as World War I, World War II, the War in Korea, and the war in Vietnam; another disadvantage is the weapon's weight, which impairs the mobility of the person carrying it; it's limited to only a few seconds of burn time since it uses fuel very quickly, requiring the operator to be precise and conservative; it was very visible on the battlefield which caused operators to become immediately singled out as prominent targets, especially for snipers; flamethrower operators were rarely taken prisoner, especially when their target survived an attack by the weapon; captured flamethrower users were often summarily executed[citation needed; finally, the flamethrower's effective range was short in comparison with that of other battlefield weapons of similar size. To be effective, flamethrower soldiers must approach their target, risking exposure to enemy fire. Vehicular flamethrowers also have this problem; they may have considerably greater range than a man-portable flamethrower, but their range is still short compared with that of other infantry weapons. Use grenades instead. Second, landmines: they aren't necessary for USA defense; they hinder trade with other countries due to how landmines impede vehicular and foot travel since their hidden positions intimidate traders. Also, many US troops have been killed in previous wars by US landmines. Use artillery instead. Third, cluster bombs: they don't always land on their targets and sometimes land on friendlies and unexploded cluster bombs hinder trade like landmines. Use missiles or guns or lasers or artillery instead.
http://www.icbl.org

[Avalux]

56. HOW Billie Love?

Of course we need to dismantle the monster, but I fear it's too big and has too many tentacles to happen. How do we do it? We have no power, and too many people just don't care.