The Pentagon Ain’t What It Used To Be
Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart
As an original baby boomer, it won’t surprise you that most
of what I watched on television growing up in Los Angeles were movies and
weekly shows involving cowboys and World War II.
I was mesmerized by John Wayne and the way he made every soldier
heroic. He created a similar image for the men who built the West in his “B”
westerns.
Approximately 416, 800 members of the U.S. military lost
their lives in the war to defeat fascism. One of the men credited with the “D-day”
victory on June 6, 1944, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was elected to the presidency in
1952 when I was just six years old. When I was 10, I watched a large party of
his second convention and nomination for reelection.
His farewell address in 1961 was a prophecy for what is
happening in our nation today.
Since August of 1945, when WWII came to an end with the
controversial decision to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, incompetent
leaders working inside the Pentagon, have lost every war, and failed to protect
our government when we needed them most on January 6, 2021.
For decades, watchdog groups reported that the Pentagon
wastes about 50 cents of every dollar allocated by Congress each year. In 2025,
that number is nearing one trillion dollars. For the last seven years, the
Pentagon has been unable to justify their expenses. Their records cannot account
for billions of dollars received from the national treasury.
In 1961, one of our nation’s most accomplished generals, who
was the architect for D-Day, warned of the dangers of a growing “military industrial
complex.”
[As far as Eisenhower is concerned, the U.S. is doing a
decent job at keeping this formidable foe in check. But the primary purpose of
his Farewell Address is to issue warnings regarding two groups that might
undermine the democratic values and commitments of the nation in the very
process of protecting it from this foe. The first is the “military-industrial
complex,” a name he uses for “the conjunction of an immense military
establishment and a large arms industry,” something new “in the American experience.”
Given all these connections between military and the defense industry, its
sheer influence “is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the
Federal government.” It is in spite of its sheer necessity, he admonishes us,
that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” This alliance of
captains of industry, military leaders, politicians, and administrators, in all
their might, endangers “liberties or democratic processes.” “Only an alert and
knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial
and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that
security and liberty may prosper together.”]
Any officer ranked “colonel” or above becomes part of the
political system in the 21st century. Today, these mostly old, white
men support Trump although his policies are purely fascist.
How can our nation survive with such levels of treason and
desire for absolute power? Who will fight for you and me?
Op-ed by James Turnage
Follow my blog and be informed
Sources: https://www.taxpayer.net/budget-appropriations-tax/why-cant-the-pentagon-pass-an-audit/
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