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The Latest News
on Power and Evil
in Washington
(and Elsewhere)
PUBLISHED
ON AUGUST 28
COUNTERPUNCH
GOES TO LA
A FIELD DAY
FOR THE HEAT:
Cops Riot As Planned,
Bravely Trample Trapped
Crowd With Horses,
Fire Point Blank
At Unarmed Kids,
Amid Huzzas of Press
GORE/LIEBERMAN TICKET:
Sprayed With Cash
In Tinseltown;
Judeo-Christian
God Hailed At
Every Turn
EDWARD SAID
ON RALPH NADER:
What Nader's Campaign
Means for America
and the World
OUR LITTLE SECRETS
The Getty Museum vs.
The Watts Towers
BASIC INSTINCT:
Tipper's Secret
Love Diaries
PUBLISHED
ON AUGUST 1
THE TRUTH ABOUT
DICK CHENEY:
He's Dumb
SPECIAL PRE-LA
REPORT ON AL GORE:
° Soul Brother to Newt
° Betrayer the Environment
° Friend of Nuclear Power
° Hated by Senate Colleagues
° New Deal Sabotuer
° Reinventing Government
on the Backs of the Poor
PUBLISHED
ON JULY 10
GORE'S PLATFORM:
More Cops, More Prisons,
More Breaks for Big Oil
THE PENTAGON ON
INTERNET PATROL:
Meet ACERT
FUNGUS ON COLOMBIA:
New York Times Takes a Dive
MEAT IN AMERICA:
Veggies Blitz Batgirl
Search CounterPunch
Whiteout:
the CIA, drugs & the Press
by Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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August 30, 2000
The Pentagon's
Presidential Auction
The Other Kiss
Gore's famous embrace of Tipper
before his speech at the Democratic convention may pale beside
his prospective ecstasies with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In
AD 193 the Roman Praetorian Guard murdered the Emperor Pertinax
and proceeded to auction off the imperial throne to the highest
bidder. Until this year the most strenuous emulation of this
feat by the US military came in 1980, when the Joint Chiefs of
Staff took bids on the White House from the ramparts of the Pentagon.
Despite fierce bidding by Jimmy Carter, the Chiefs had no hesitation
in accepting Republican pledges and in proclaiming that only
Ronald Reagan would keep the Empire strong.
We are in the climactic moments
of the 2000 auction. By now the ritual is well established. Stage
One: senior Praetorians and associated intellectual prostitutes
repine the pitiful condition of America's fighting folk and the
decrepitude of the US military arsenal. Frank Gaffney Jr., a
Defense Department official in the Reagan years, set the tone
in an article in the Washington Times in early August: "Future
defense capabilities may be seriously inadequate. History suggests
that the consequence of such a practice is a vacuum of power
that hostile nations often feel invited to fill." Then Gaffney
relayed the Praetorians' reserve price on the imperial throne:
"A nation with a projected $1.9 trillion budget surplus
can afford consistently to allocate a minimum of 4 percent of
its gross domestic product to ensure its security."
Already on July 21, Adm. Jay Johnson
had said, as he stepped down from his post as the Navy's top
officer, that national security requires a defense expenditure
of 4 percent of GDP. On August 16 Gen. James Jones, Commandant
of the Marine Corps, used the occasion of an interview with Defense
Daily to call for a "gradual ramp up" in defense spending
"to about 44.5 percent of the US gross domestic product."
Two days after Jones's comments, Gen. Gordon Sullivan, formerly
Army Chief of Staff and now president of the 100,000-strong Association
of the US Army, confirmed the Praetorians' floor demand: "We
must prepare for the future of the security of our nation. We
should set the marker at 4 percent."
The Praetorians have avoided spelling
out what 4 percent actually means in dollar terms. The latest
figures from the Office of Management and Budget project GDP
at $10.9 trillion in 2002, rising to $13.9 trillion in 2007.
So a military budget set at 4 percent of GDP in 2002 would amount
to $438 billion, and in 2007 $558 billion. This year's budgetary
tribute to the Praetorians is just on $300 billion. The combined
spending of all putative foes of the United States-Russia, China
and our old friends the rogue states, including Iran, Syria,
Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Serbia, Cuba and Sudan-amounts to a
little over $100 billion.
It is not well understood that
though the number of ships, planes and troops available to guard
the nation has declined sharply, the actual flow of dollars into
the pockets of the Praetorians and their commercial partners
has remained at cold war levels. It is true that in the immediate
aftermath of the cold war, US military spending under George
Bush I diminished slightly. Clinton reversed this trend with
enough brio to allow Gore, speaking to the Veterans of Foreign
Wars in the 1996 campaign, to declare that the Democratic bid
to the Praetorians that year was far superior to that of the
Republicans.
In his offer to the Praetorians
this year, George W. Bush has offered Star Wars plus a pay raise
for the armed forces. This is scarcely enough. An August 23 Washington
Post editorial relayed the Praetorians' contempt: "It is
Mr. Bush who, despite some muscular rhetoric, is sounding weak
on defense." In other words, "George, it's your bid."
The Praetorians know well that the missile defense scheme endorsed
by Bush is a fantasy and that missile defense spending has been
more or less constant since the early sixties.
The appeal of a pay raise from
a Republican emperor is undercut by lavish disbursements such
as the recent 10 percent raise enacted by Emperor Clinton, who
further solidified the loyalty of the senior officer class by
smoothing out wrinkles in the practice of double dipping. These
days, an officer can retire on full pension and then return to
work at the Pentagon in civilian capacity at a hefty salary,
with pension unimpaired. "There are retired colonels in
this building," a Pentagon number cruncher remarked recently,
"who are taking home $200,000 a year." "I'm proud,"
Gore told the VFW five days after he kissed Tipper, "that
we won the largest military pay increase in twenty years."
Gore's commitment to the Praetorians
was well advertised by his choice of running mate. Senator Joe
Lieberman has been the faithful errand boy of Connecticut's arms
firms. The Praetorians are licking their lips at the prospect
of a delightful bidding war stretching over the presidential
debates. We can look forward to Lieberman chastising Dick Cheney
for his temerity, as President Bush's Defense Secretary, in cutting
the military budget and even canceling such egregious boondoggles
as the A-12 Stealth fighter.
There may be a deeper reason for
the 4 percent solution. The military share of the economy has
been going down. There are no convincing external enemies, and
it's been getting harder to claim a prime role for military R&D
in setting the agenda for technological innovation. Thanks to
Hollywood and our militarist heritage, the Pentagon still has
a powerful cultural hold. The Democrats had Tom Hanks, the rescuer
of Private Ryan, in camera view in the Staples Center, when Lieberman
extolled the most powerful military force on earth. But as the
Pentagon's weight in the overall economy diminishes, so too does
the clout of the Praetorians, and there may come a day when their
bluff is called.
For now, let us await the next
bid, probably against a backdrop of October surprises-saving
Montenegro from Slobo, or settling accounts one more time with
Saddam. Oh, and by the way, if the Praetorians get their 4 percent
out of a bidding war between Gore and Bush, Pentagon analyst
Franklin Spinney accurately remarks, "The 4 percent defense
solutionwould be tantamount to a declaration of total war on
Social Security and Medicare in the following decade. Such a
war could be justified only if our nation's survival were at
stake." CP
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