Groucho Marx - Donald Rumsfeld - Oliver Stone TV - Ronald Reagan - John F Kennedy - The New American Century - William Clark - Ian R Crane - Thomas Jefferson - William Karp - Dispatches TV - Leonard Matlovich - R H Tawney - America’s Book of Secrets TV - Martin Luther King - David Graeber - Bletchley Park: Code-Breaking’s Forgotten Genius TV - Noam Chomsky - Subconscious War - Why We Fight 2005 - Private Armies 2007 - America’s War Games 2008 - America on Fire TV - Empires Special TV - Ronald Reagan -
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. Groucho Marx
Senator Levin, you and other Democrats in the Congress have voiced fears that you simply don’t have enough for the large increases in defense that the Pentagon is seeking, especially for missile defense. Does this sort of thing convince you that an emergency exists in this country to increase defense spending? Donald Rumsfeld berating Senator Carl Levin, then Chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee, on evening of 9/11
Military spending would cover more than 50% of the US budget for the rest of the 1950s. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States V: The 50s: Eisenhower, The Bomb & The Third World, Showtime 2012
The United States had been blaming social and political upheaval on the Soviet Union for the previous forty-six years ... The bloated Military Budget v Peace Dividend. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States IX: Bush and Clinton – American Triumphalism – New World Order
It is time for us to start a build-up, a rebuilding of the military might of America. Ronald Reagan
There is sin and evil in the world, and we’re enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might. Our nation, too, has a legacy of evil with which it must deal. The glory of this land has been its capacity for transcending the moral evils of our past. For example, the long struggle of minority citizens for equal rights, once a source of disunity and civil war, is now a point of pride for all Americans …
A freeze would reward the Soviet Union for its enormous and unparalleled military buildup. It would prevent the essential and long overdue modernization of United States and allied defenses and would leave our ageing forces increasingly vulnerable. And an honest freeze would require extensive prior negotiations on the systems and numbers to be limited and on the measures to ensure effective verification and compliance. And the kind of a freeze that has been suggested would be virtually impossible to verify. Such a major effort would divert us completely from our current negotiations on achieving substantial reductions. Ronald Reagan, speech 8th March 1983
For no amount of arms and armies can help stabilize those governments which are unable or unwilling to achieve social and economic reform and development. Military pacts cannot help nations whose social injustice and economic chaos invite insurgency and penetration and subversion. John F Kennedy, speech joint session of Congress May 1961
The arms industry is enjoying one of the most rewarding times thanks to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the meantime the Pentagon’s budget has risen to over $400 billion per year. That’s more than four times the amount the Neo-Conservatives ever dreamed in the year 2000. The New American Century
If we had to play by the normal economic rules, we would have a normal sized military, not a massive global military which is larger than the next twenty nations combined, which is what we have right now. So if the dollar loses its status as the world reserve currency, that is the pillar that underpins American supremacy, then the military pillar, which is the other pillar of American supremacy, will fall away as well. William Clark, author Petrodollar Warfare
And the US needs a high price in oil because oil is still currently just about traded in US dollars. And they need other countries to have US dollars so that they can buy US goods – arms. The US only has one product that it manufactures today in any volume – arms. Military equipment. That’s why the US needs war. It needs war because that’s the only industry that it’s got. Ian R Crane, lecture Liverpool 2008, ‘New World Order’
The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force. Thomas Jefferson
Military budget is simply an enormous pork barrel of special privilege, the privileges taking the form of windfall profits, of no-risk profits and, most importantly, of enormous outlays of capital supplied by the Pentagon to arms contractors. William Karp
What chiefly governs the military budget is the need to spend enormous sums of money in a useless way. The allegedly powerful Pentagon is simply a receptacle for wasteful expenditure, just as a city dump is the receptacle for the refuse of a city. Walter Karp
Can our shrinking military keep Britain safe? We ask if defence cuts have allowed Russia to move its forces ever closer to our coast. A former head of special forces dismisses the government’s key plan to replace regular soldiers with part-timers. Dispatches: Britain's Defence Squeeze, Channel 4 2015
The Royal Navy seem to be a little short of ships. ibid.
Almost as many admirals as there are warships. ibid.
This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor ... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them! Albert Einstein, essay, ‘The World As I See It
When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one. Leonard Matlovich, attributed
Militarism ... is fetish worship. It is the prostration of men’s souls and the laceration of their bodies to appease an idol. R H Tawney, The Acquisitive Society, 1921
It’s one of the most prestigious military academies in the world where cutting-edge technology converges with battle-proven tradition. America’s Book of Secrets s1e9: West Point, History 2012
Where did Richard Cox go on the night he disappeared? ... Westpoint’s only missing cadet. ibid.
What becomes of the other 60%? ibid.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom. Martin Luther King junior
The US military, unlike any other, maintains a doctrine of global power projection: that it should have the ability, through roughly 800 overseas military bases, to intervene with deadly force absolutely anywhere on the planet. In a way, though, land forces are secondary; at least since World War II, the key to US military doctrine has always been a reliance on air power. The United States has fought no war in which it did not control the skies, and it has relied on aerial bombardment far more systematically than any other military – in its recent occupation of Iraq, for instance, even going so far as to bomb residential neighborhoods of cities ostensibly under its own control. The essence of US military predominance in the world is, ultimately, the fact that it can, at will, drop bombs, with only a few hours’ notice, at absolutely any point on the surface of the planet. No other government has ever had anything remotely like this sort of capability. In fact, a case could well be made that it is this very power that holds the entire world monetary system, organized around the dollar, together. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years, 2011
Welchman was given the highest [US] security clearance. It meant becoming a US citizen ... The vital task of ensuring US military communications were capable of withstanding attack. Bletchley Park: Code-Breaking’s Forgotten Genius, BBC 2015
The military system is to a substantial extent … a mechanism by which the general population is compelled to make a subsidy to high technology industry … There are many truths like that and we don’t face them. Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, Youtube 1992
In the mid-1970s Soviet military spending began to level off, as later conceded, while the US lead in strategic bombs and warheads widened through the decade. President Carter proposed a substantial increase in military spending and a cutback on social programs. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy p26
800 military bases around the world. And the Obama administration is very much committed to those. Noam Chomsky, New York Peace Action Benefit lecture, ‘Obama’s Imperialist Policies’, Youtube 56.24
‘US military is desperately trying to close in on the sources behind the biggest leak in its history.’ Subconscious War, RT news 2011
Call of Duty Modern Warfare II … ‘against ultra-Russian nationalists and Middle Eastern terrorists.’ ibid.
‘Look at all those motherfucking kills!’ ibid. drone assassin
‘C’mon, let’s shoot!’ ibid.
‘The interests of power are served not by the needs of the suffering people.’ ibid. Chomsky
Journalist: What are we fighting for?
Boy: Freedom. Why We Fight, 2005
Our government did not want the forensic question asked, What were their motives? ibid. commentator, of 9/11