MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX CONDUCT INVITES NON-VIOLENT DIRECT ACTION
By Sherwood Ross
Why
is there no non-violent outcry against America's military-industrial
complex?(MIC) A Congress that is complicit in its wars, surely will not
reign it in.
While
the MIC contractors during the U.S. invasions of the Middle East and
Africa have reaped billions in profit, the fact is probably a majority
of Americans are war-weary and want out of President Obama's ongoing
foreign entanglements, replete with drone warfare and other crimes
against humanity.
Yet their elected
representatives in Congress continue voting $700 billion annual budgets
to wage wars and to create hideous new weapons of mass destruction
ranging from more lethal (if that is possible) atomic bombs to germ
warfare, both illegal by treaty.This is being done while the nation
slides into decay.
Americans have
been gulled into believing that the 2,000 military bases they operate
around the world are "defensive", and can prevent a terrorist
attack---the folly of which was proved on 9/11. In fact, they are
springboards for military control in every part of the globe. The
Pentagon, says The Washington Post, also has a Special Operations
Command that operates in at least 65 nations that is largely unknown to
Americans.
During the civil rights movement of the Sixties,
marches, boycotts and other forms of protest were frequent. The public
could see, and grasp, the evils of segregation and poverty that were
crippling the nation. They could also see how non-violent protest
brought about change for the better.
That movement is largely gone. Yet, if resurrected to
bolster anti-war sentiment might it not prove a powerful tool? Those who
honor the spirit of Rev. Martin Luther King, a man who opposed
vociferously the Viet Nam war, would do well to consider this approach.
As Gandhi wrote in
his book, "Non-Violent Resistance"(Dover) or Satyagraha, "is a force
which, if it became universal, would revolutionize social ideals and do
away with despotisms and the ever-growing militarism under which the
nations of the West are groaning and are being almost crushed to death,
and which fairly promises to overwhelm even the nations of the East.
Civil Disobedience, Gandhi writes, "is civil breach of
unmoral statutory enactments," and the term was "coined by (Henry David)
Thoreau to signify his own resistance to the laws of a slave State."
One
of the tactics Gandhi advocates, and which could be easily duplicated
in America, for example, is the general strike, a tool familiar to the
American labor movement. This could be used to close down companies that
churn out the illegal and criminal instruments of aggressive war, such
as radioactive shells, poison gas, and nuclear bombs. Isn't this also a
course of action that could also inspire considerable church support?
The 10 leading MIC
companies in order of size, according to a March 10, 2013, report in
USA Today, are (1)Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, Md; (2)Boeing, of
Chicago; (3)Northrop Grumman, of Falls Church, Va.; (4)General
Dynamics, also of Falls Church, Va.; (5) Ratheon, of Waltham, Mass.;
(6)L-3, of New York City; (7)United Technologies, of Hartford, Conn.;
(8)SAIC, of McLean, Va., (9)Oshkosh, of Oshkosh, Wi.; and (10) Computer
Sciences Corp., also of Falls Church, Va.
And just what,
exactly, do the MIC employees in those lovely suburbs around Washington
think they are making---Fourth of July firecrackers? Are they unaware
that people all over the globe, from Gaza to Colombia, are being blasted
to pieces by their handiwork?
"The business of
war is profitable," "USA Today" reported. "In 2011, the 100 largest
contractors sold $410 billion in arms and military services. Just 10 of
those companies sold over $208 billion. Based on a list of the top 100
arms-producing and military services companies in 2011 compiled by the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The
newspaper goes on to say, "These companies have benefited tremendously
from the growth in military spending in the U.S., which by far has the
largest military budget in the world. In 2000, the U.S. defense budget
was approximately $312 billion. By 2011, the figure had grown to $712
billion. Arm sales grew alongside general defense spending growth. SIPRI
noted that between 2002 and 2011, arms sales among the top 100
companies grew by 51%."
(Why? For example, the U.S. Navy is approximately as large as the combined navies of the next dozen countries!)
Gandhi
once testified, "I would certainly make Government impossible if I
found it had taken leave of its senses," and, "A lunatic cannot be kept
in a position from which he can do harm to his neighbors," a designation
to which President Obama comes closer as he daily wages more wars and
calls for funds to modernize nuclear bombs instead of scrapping them as
President Reagan attempted to do.
Where is the
countervailing force to the MIC and its gross, multi-billion dollar
budgets? It does not appear to exist and must come from mass movements
of the people, lest they be destroyed by their own indifference. As
Gandhi wrote, "I wish I could persuade everybody that civil disobedience
is the inherent right of the citizen."
International
law authority Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois, Champaign,
noted, "The terrible irony of today’s situation is that over six decades
ago at Nuremberg the U.S. government participated in the prosecution,
punishment and execution of Nazi government officials for committing
some of the same types of heinous international crimes that the members
of the Bush and Obama administrations have inflicted upon people all
over the world."
"As
a consequence," Boyle continues, "American citizens possess the basic
right under international law and United States domestic law, including
the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance designed to
prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities
perpetrated by the United States government officials in their conduct
of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate
to defense and counter-terrorism."
Boyle's
conclusion is that, "Today’s civil resisters are the sheriffs! The
U.S. government officials are the outlaws! Civil resistance is the way
to go!"
(Professor
Francis A. Boyle, is the author of Defending Civil Resistance under
International Law (Transnational Publishers Inc.) Sherwood Ross is a
Miami-based public relations consultant who was active in the civil
rights movement in the Sixties. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com).
sherwood ross
