Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com
Let’s skip the obvious. Leave aside, for instance, the way Donald Trump’s decision to launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles against a Syrian airbase is but another example of what we already know: that acts of war are now the prerogative, and only the prerogative, of the president (or of military commanders whom Trump has given greater authority to act on their own). Checks, balances? I doubt either of them applies anymore when it comes to war, American-style. These days, the only checks written are to the Pentagon and “balance” isn’t a concept outside of gymnastics.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has learned that every wild defeat at home, every swirling palace intrigue that would make a tsar blush, can be... well, trumped by dumping 59 cruise missiles or their equivalent in some distant land to save the “beautiful babies.” (Forget the babies “his” generals have been killing.) Launch the missiles, send in the raiders, dispatch the planes, and you’ll get everyone you ever tweet-smashed ― including Hillary, John, Nancy, Marco, and Chuck to applaud you and praise your acts. They’ll be joined by the official right wing (though not the unofficial one), while the neocons and their pals will hail you as the Churchill of the twenty-first century. Or at least, all of this will be true until ― consult George W. Bush and Barack Obama on this ― it isn’t; until the day after; until, you know, the moment we’ve experienced over and over during the last 15 years of American war-making, the one where it suddenly becomes clear (yet again) that things are going really, really wrong.
“The only checks written are to the Pentagon and “balance” isn’t a concept outside of gymnastics.”
While we wait, here’s a suggestion that came to mind as I read “What Does an ‘America-First’ Foreign Policy Really Mean?” ― the latest thoughts of retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Astore on the military-industrial complex in the age of Trump: Isn’t it time to give the corporate sponsorship of war its just due? After all, there’s hardly an object, building, museum, stadium, or event in civilian life these days that doesn’t have corporate sponsorship plastered all over it and built into it. In my hometown, for instance, baseball’s New York Mets play at Citi Field, while football’s Giants and Jets spend their seasons at MetLife Stadium. Given the role that America’s giant weapons makers play in our wars, and the stunningly successful way they spread their wares around the planet, isn’t it time for the growing war powers of the commander-in-chief to be translated into a militarized version of sponsorship?
Shouldn’t Raytheon, the maker of those 59 cruise missiles that Donald Trump used recently, be given full credit so that media coverage of the event would refer to the Raytheon Syrian Tomahawk Chop? Shouldn’t the next set of drone attacks in Yemen be called the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper Harvesting? Shouldn’t any future strikes by the most expensive weapons system on this or any other planet be labeled the Lockheed F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter Storm? We’re in a new age of corporate enhancement. Isn’t it time for war to adjust and for the military-industrial complex to get the credit it so richly deserves?
