When America took a wrong turn...

The question was rather boring (I'm a teacher) timed to today's sad date "September 11", like... "who, in your opinion, committed that terrorist attack with the hijacking of airplanes in 2001". The answer will be short: I don't have a cup of tea in my heart, but I am well aware of who exactly clipped not just some platinum coupons from the tragedy, but trillions of dollars for many decades ahead. He turned out to be so prepared for the events of September 11 that the conspiracy theory about the predominant role of the "shadow state" in this action of intimidation of the American people... seems plausible. Predicted 50 years before that terrible date, by the way.

I'll tell you about it briefly. So, the era of Dwight David "Iron Ike" Eisenhower ended, on January 17, 1961, the 34th President of the United States makes his farewell address to the nation. This speech overtakes President Roosevelt's famous "Pearl Harbor Speech" on December 8, 1941, when America declared war on the Empire of Japan. Straightforward "Ike" (General Eisenhower's nickname during his military service, which went to the people) so dumbfounded the good American people with his speech that three days later the jubilant John F. Kennedy with his inaugural speech did not make the front pages of newspapers.

U.S. journalists were divided into two irreconcilable camps, large and small publications staged "the third world war against Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics", as a contemporary, former chairman of the board of General Motors Charles Wilson, former Secretary of Defense under Ike, who went down in history with the phrase: "Everything that is good for General Motors is good for the United States. So what was so scary about the outgoing president? True, in his speech Eisenhower warned of the monstrous growth of the U.S. military-industrial complex, clearly outlined the risks:

"The extremely dangerous possibility of increasing its unwarranted influence exists and will continue to exist..... The tenfold increase in the U.S. military component after two world wars and the emergence of a military industry of gigantic scale in the country, I declare to you responsibly - a threat on a permanent basis."

"Ike's" speech can be cast in granite as the patience of an honest servant during his entire presidency has run out. He came to the White House on January 23, 1953, on the shoulders of adoring World War II veterans, immediately ended the Korean War, and swatted down the rabidness of Senator McCarthy and his "red witch hunt". But he was forced to "repay" his presidential campaign contributors by creating a government of "eight millionaires and one plumber," as liberal journalists snidely called his management team.

All things being equal, Eisenhower limited the appetites of the military-industrial complex in every possible way, as he knew the U.S. Armed Forces from the inside, he was alarmed by the corrupting pressure of the Army and Navy corrupted by the fatcats who were buying up the entire top command.

It was then that the tradition emerged of placing retiring generals and colonels in the chairs of the boards of military corporations, "giving" them charitable foundations for veterans' affairs and support of the Army, appointing them as advisors to the managers of defense companies, as aides to governors, senators and congressmen.

That is, after World War II, the influence of men in uniform on the economy increased by leaps and bounds, and "influence peddling" began to corrode the very fabric of the Army. Every high-ranking officer involved in military construction demanded "accelerated technical progress" in modernizing old weapons and creating new ones. Defense concerns began to buy up the press and radio stations, the theme of the "red menace" was not just exaggerated, was inflated to monstrous proportions, and confused President Eisenhower with amazement every year rejected draft military budgets with an increase in expenditures ... + 25%, 30% .

You have to hand it to "Ike", in the early months of his presidency he declared that for "peacetime" America such defense spending was provoking the Soviets - one, and two.... "inconceivably enormous for the country." The Truman-era flywheel of militarization slowed down a bit, no more. During eight years of deliberate fight against corruption in the military-industrial complex, the direct spending of the federal government was reduced (from 66% in 1954 to 49% in 1960).

But in absolute numbers the result on the scoreboard was not in favor of the president, through "related programs" of research and development activities in the interests of national security and lobbying for arms exports, the U.S. defense budget grew from forty billion dollars (1953/54) to forty-eight billion in fiscal year 1960/61.

Already in the middle of his second term, Iron Ike began to realize that the drive mechanisms of his policies were working on their own; the military-industrial sector had entangled all government floors of the White House administration with its lobbyists. Any presidential social program (like the construction of a federal road network between the states) had to be "traded" in Congress for new military and near-military projects, which were increasingly going into the shadows under the "secret" cover. Thus, the military-industrial complex began to actively interfere in Washington's domestic politics, and when the CIA set fire to the Middle East and Southeast Asia, in foreign policy as well.

Any attempt by Eisenhower to curb the appetites of the military-industrial complex was immediately met with angry outbursts of indignation in the press, and many leading newspapers, radio stations, and television stations that were gaining influence flooded the airwaves and printed pages with interviews of "ordinary workers" and union leaders about the inadmissibility of cutting defense spending.

Thus was formed an army of nearly thirty million patriotic voters (3.5 million active Americans worked in the military-industrial complex, becoming its core), voting for correct and aggressive governors, congressmen, and municipal governments at all levels. By 1959, national security budgets exceeded the combined income of all U.S. corporations.

"This alliance of a huge military establishment and a large military industry is something new in American life. Its total influence - economic, political, and even spiritual - is felt in every city, in every government agency, in every office of the federal government. .... the military-industrial complex has gained undue influence.

We must not allow this alliance to threaten our freedoms and democratic procedures. We must take nothing for granted. Only a vigilant and informed civil society can make this huge military-industrial machine work in accordance with our peaceful methods and goals to enhance security and freedom." (From Ike's January 17th, 1961 speech)

Another "hydra" that was destroying America, President Eisenhower considered ... the science and technology industry, which had been bought up by defense corporations. The amount of money (budgetary and corporate) pumped there alarmed even quite aggressive "hawks". They simply could not keep up with the frantic race of technical progress, but had to spend huge funds from the state treasury on the most fantastic projects of "crazy inventors".

If earlier Congress could summon such "active" people to hearings personally and wrap up the project of "highway submarine with fossilization capabilities", now arms concerns have made the process of "technological revolution" absolutely non-transparent. Hundreds (!) research centers, laboratories and branches of institutes were created, which the Pentagon financed personally, the results of their work were covered with the most draconian secret codes, and specialists were poached from all other scientific spheres for huge sums of money and weighty social packages.

"Ike" tried to fight this phenomenon, calling such "scientific activity" unfair and dirty competition that kills real research work and "sources of free ideas" for the benefit of the people through "a formalized, complicated and costly process for the federal government, which has become impossible to control and to fairly evaluate the results", end quote. It was then that the independent thinkers who still existed in the public domain said that "defense contracts" were killing the Free University of the United States and inhibiting the scientific curiosity of young people.

And they predicted (having guessed 100%) the notorious "brain buying" all over the world in a generation or two, as the American scientific school stops producing free-thinking product of science, "replacing the classical blackboard in the classroom with hundreds of computers and robots sitting behind them, fulfilling the order of the Pentagon and its sponsors.

The professoriate was particularly sensitive to the invasion of "war money" into the field of medicine and the humanities, when, in the interests of "national security," any free research was no longer funded, being replaced by government, propaganda, or defense-industrial contracts. The dollar invaded the holy of holies, even historical research became subject to the logic of "armed to the teeth American patriotism".

Consequences.

There is no need to tell how President Eisenhower's "voice crying in the wilderness" went unheard; already after Kennedy, defense budgets returned to the tracks of unrestrained growth, as if the U.S. had fought two and a half world wars, if we take absolute figures of expenditures.

The balance of partisan attitudes toward "defense" no longer worked; Democrats and Republicans were always unanimous in the allocation of funds to the military-industrial complex. Nothing has changed since the elimination of the main threat - the Soviet Union - and since then spending on "national security" has only doubled (adjusted for inflation). This is how the "Iron Triangle" works, as Eisenhower himself called the corrupt nexus of the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, and Congress in his retirement.

And in Reagan's time, US intellectuals added a fourth corner to the structure, horrified by the state hysteria about the "Evil Empire" represented by the USSR. When the huge machine of media, pop culture and education began to produce a blind adoration of America's war machine as the only salvation of the world's fragile and vulnerable democracy. The "culture of abolition" then crushed the last vestiges of sanity and moderation; any anti-militarist stance by a politician, official, journalist, public figure or free thinker came to be seen as a betrayal of national interests.

With the emergence of transnational corporations, which became "multinationals" and declared their vital interests in all spheres, from education and medicine - to the production of aircraft carriers and the food industry, appetites, things became even sadder. Now the "deep state" designated threats to national security arbitrarily, allocating budget allocations of any size for their elimination. The classic "defense industry" fell off the pedestal in terms of spending, ceding the palm of primacy (after September 11, 2001) to spending on intelligence agencies and related programs to "promote U.S. national interests" around world.

Could America come to its senses and stop after the unequivocal warning of the old and tired 34th President Eisenhower? Hardly, against the prickly and straightforward general formed a powerful coalition within the boundaries of the "Iron Triangle", and the media were beating in the ecstasy of "rapid change", associating it with the arrival of John F. Kennedy - a symbol of energy, youth and novelty.

But the story here is confusing, because only recently were published personal documents of "Ike", found in the house of his assistant and speechwriter Malcolm Moose. So, the famous speech of January 17, 1960 was to be delivered two years earlier, it was rewritten ... 21 times. And there is a clear message to Eisenhower's successor - his close friend, like-minded friend, associate and vice-president Richard Nixon.

The same one who lost the election to Kennedy because of a dirty "corruption campaign", which then collapsed during the pre-trial hearings. No one can say for sure why "Ike" so delayed his crusade against the military-industrial complex, which was gaining power and actually took over the control of the States, but biographers attribute it to the moral and ethical peculiarities of General Eisenhower's nature.

The Honest Club, the 34th President's inner circle, consisted of a couple dozen senators and high-ranking World War II-era retired military officers. People who were independent, financially well-off, and deeply patriotic. All the edits to Ike's speech revolved around the corrupt role of Congress in the Iron Triangle construct; it's unclear what epithets the outgoing president was going to bestow on the "people's elected representatives." But he was stopped by his longtime friendship with some of them, men of crystal integrity.

Conclusions.

Another thing is clear here: as a professional military man, Dwight Eisenhower saw perfectly well the direct connection between the corruption of the military-industrial complex covering America and the behavior of his Administration on the foreign policy track. The State Department was becoming not a chancery and conductor of the orders of the leader of the state, but a hired lobbyist for the interests of the military-industrial complex around the world. The bribed press hyped the "threats and risks" of the socialist march through the Third World, while pro-Western political regimes demanded more weapons and military presence from the U.S. in various regions.

Public opinion was also in favor of militarization, but the old general knew the reasons for such belligerence. More than once, in a small circle, he had laid siege to the "hawks" with just one phrase: you, Mr. General (Admiral, Senator), have remained a military man, and I am now the president. You need war - I need peace. Often in his speeches he said that it was impossible to be a "peacetime America" if the logic of the mood, the tone of the majority of the media, the behavior of the political elites and the military establishment made the United States a state of war. By the way, until the last days of his life in 1969, President Eisenhower was convinced that they wanted to eliminate him as a result of a military coup before his second term.

One can make various intellectual speculations about what would have happened... had Ike's warning been sounded in 1958 or 1959, had Richard Nixon taken the presidency not in 1969 but nine years earlier. Most likely, nothing would not have changed dramatically, the "Iron Triangle" ended its formation at the end of Truman's presidency, and inexperienced and honest servant Eisenhower was not a politician, he for all the years of his reign and did not understand many issues of the structure of power. He was an idealist for the most part, thoroughly familiar with only one sphere - the army.

But internalized a quote from his idol, George Washington, who also said in his farewell address: "The overgrowth of the military system under any system of government is a menace to liberty." Even then, the arms lobby was already bothering the young democracy, and the media campaign paid by the "hawks" after the conclusion of the Anglo-American peace treaty of 1795 ("Jay's Treaty") almost cost the First President of the United States his chair. They say he was afraid of war.

So... returning to the beginning of the article, inquisitive researchers and supporters of conspiracy theories are advised to independently answer the question of who benefited from "September 11, 2001". I advise you to start your investigations with the indicators of degradation and shrinking of the US military budgets after the end of the Cold War, as the fat sharks of the military-industrial complex began to survive on plankton and small fish. And after the tragedy of September 11, they did not just reimburse the losses of the "hungry 90s", but multiplied the capitalization of their companies and consortiums by multiples, arranging another arms race.

Skillfully disguising it as "ensuring America's global security system and the fight against international terrorism". Further unbalancing the U.S. state budget, which already under Reagan became an anti-economic utopia and surrealism. By the way, "Ike" made his speech in the most blessed year for the budget balance, but he had already seen the warnings of the Ministry of Finance about the inadmissibility of increasing military expenditures through loans, which Congress insisted on.

So, in 50 years America got in 50 years what "Ike" was talking about in a narrow circle: a bomber produced in 1955 for the price of three in 1945, a destroyer for the price of a cruiser, a howitzer worth a tank platoon. Only in much larger proportions. The picture in Congress, when Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and dozens of other "arms manufacturers" fill the campaign budgets of 90% of the American people's elected representatives through charitable foundations, is the norm, legalized corruption under the fig leaf of the epithet "lobbyism".

That is why the U.S. is spending trillions of dollars on Afghanistan and Iraq, "promoting democracy" around the world. When, ten years after September 11, 2001, the Pentagon built up the neighborhoods of Washington with three dozen top-secret facilities with anti-nuclear protection, the area of the world-famous pentagonal building was three times larger. Look who benefits...