3/18/2002
Also at the end of January, Bush unveiled his budget proposal for Congress. Here is the first great big piece of his motivation in generalized saber-rattling; as long as we're at war, he can make the military, intelligence agencies, and his own addendum of "homeland security" the top priorities, and inflate their allowances to staggering proportions. Why? A couple of reasons. One is simply that it perpetuates itself; the bigger the military is, the easier it is for him to make wars with impunity. The more powerful intelligence is, the more he can do in secret to conduct wars or foment them, unmonitored by anyone on earth. And the more powerful Tom Ridge is--well, the more he can muzzle every whiff of dissent (or "lack of patriotism" as it's called these days) at home.
There's another funny little reason for the big budget, though. It's not all to hire more soldiers, by any means. Most of it is for building new toys--very expensive new toys, made by a handful of big corporations who would just love the business and who happen to contribute handsomely to political campaigns. More military aircraft (generally the most expensive toys we've got) means billions of dollars served up to Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas (oh, and Boeing, while we're at it). And more nuclear weapons (wait, haven't we agreed multiple times not to make more?) means big money for the corporations that exist only to research and manufacture nuclear weapons.
Oh, yeah--and we ought not to forget the resurrection of missile defense systems, not only as an idea but as a genuine money hemhorrage. As far as real working products, the system remains science fiction, quite literally. Even with years of work and epic funding, the system doesn't even begin to function.
Remember, though, what all of this is supposedly about. War against terrorism. But terrorists don't live within definable borders, flying helpful flags to identify themselves, and they don't have any fighter jets. They don't meet you on the field of battle. If there is one characteristic that distinguishes a "terrorist" from a soldier, it is precisely that he operates secretly, sidestepping your armed forces entirely to strike at your civilians. A soldier becomes a soldier when he hires on as a soldier. A terrorist only becomes a terrorist at the moment he strikes; until then he looks exactly like everyone else.
Fattening the military like a slaughterhouse pig makes no sense as a practical measure against terrorism. The battle cry of "fight terrorism," however, makes all the sense in the world as a pretext on which to fatten the military. Just as it makes a great excuse for attacking all the nations our military was already quietly planning to attack anyway.
Mind you, the purpose not served by warfare is the ending of terrorism, which has always been--back to our own country's revolution and before--the obvious way for David to fight Goliath.