W.J. Astore

Killing Russians and Palestinians–A Growth Industry for America

To sell the Biden administration’s $95 billion arms package (the big pieces are $60 billion to Ukraine and $14 billion to Israel), Democrats and Republicans alike are celebrating the fact that genocide in Gaza and more war in Ukraine will create jobs for Americans.

The honest (not used) slogan: Wars and genocide create jobs in America!

Of course, they don’t couch it quite this way. The $14 billion to Israel is touted as “defending Israel’s right to exist” and the $60 billion to Ukraine is sold as defending democracy in that country while thwarting evil Putin, a dictator “worse than Hitler.” 

Yet, as an article in Politico put it back in October, as quoted in The Nation: “The White House has been quietly urging lawmakers in both parties to sell the war efforts abroad as a potential economic boom at home. Aides have been distributing talking points to Democrats and Republicans who have been supportive of continued efforts to fund Ukraine’s resistance to make the case that doing so is good for American jobs.”

Talk about a win-win! Creating jobs by killing and wounding Russians and Palestinians in large numbers. I’m finally proud to be an American, where at least I know I can profit prodigiously from other people’s pain and anguish.

Death—it’s a jobs program.

Selling this “jobs program” are diplomats and civilians like Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. I wrote about these two paragons of non-virtue soon after Joe Biden was elected president in November 2020. Here’s what I wrote then (citing some sharp-eyed critics):

At TomDispatch.com, Danny Sjursen gives a sharp-eyed summary of the typical Biden operative in the realm of military and foreign affairs. Here’s what Sjursen has to say:

In fact, the national security bio of the archetypal Biden bro (or sis) would go something like this: she (he) sprang from an Ivy League school, became a congressional staffer, got appointed to a mid-tier role on Barack Obama’s national security council, consulted for WestExec Advisors (an Obama alumni-founded outfit linking tech firms and the Department of Defense), was a fellow at the Center for New American Security (CNAS), had some defense contractor ties, and married someone who’s also in the game.

It helps as well to follow the money. In other words, how did the Biden bunch make it and who pays the outfits that have been paying them in the Trump years? None of this is a secret: their two most common think-tank homes — CNAS and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) — are the second- and sixth-highest recipients, respectively, of U.S. government and defense-contractor funding. The top donors to CNAS are Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and the Department of Defense. Most CSIS largesse comes from Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon. 

With the news that Tony Blinken will be Biden’s Secretary of State, Caitlin Johnstone makes the following salient point:

Blinken is a liberal interventionist who has supported all of the most disgusting acts of US mass military slaughter this millennium, including the Iraq invasion which killed over a million people and ushered in an unprecedented era of military expansionism in the Middle East. So needless to say he will fly through the confirmation process.

Meanwhile, Julia Rock and Andrew Perez note the incestuous nature of this process, or how the national security revolving door keeps spinning:

On Sunday, Bloomberg reported that Biden has chosen his longtime aide, Tony Blinken, to serve as Secretary of State and will name Jake Sullivan, his senior advisor and a former Hillary Clinton aide, national security adviser. Former Obama Defense Department official Michèle Flournoy is considered the favorite to be Secretary of Defense. 

After leaving the Obama administration, Blinken and Flournoy founded WestExec Advisors, a secretive consulting firm whose motto has been: “Bringing the Situation Room to the board room.” Flournoy and Sullivan have both held roles at think tanks raking in money from defense contractors and U.S. government intelligence and defense agencies. 

Biden has been facing calls [Ha! Ha!] from Democratic lawmakers and progressive advocacy groups to end the revolving door between government and the defense industry. One-third of the members of Biden transition’s Depart­ment of Defense agency review team were most recently employed by “orga­ni­za­tions, think tanks or com­pa­nies that either direct­ly receive mon­ey from the weapons indus­try, or are part of this indus­try,” according to reporting from In These Times.

Meanwhile, defense executives have been boasting about their close relationship with Biden and expressing confidence that there will not be much change in Pentagon policy. 

Please forgive the “Ha! Ha!” parenthetical, but all this was predictable based on Biden’s record and his statement that nothing would fundamentally change in his administration …

Progressives have essentially no power in the Democratic Party. Look at who the Speaker of the House is! Nancy Pelosi, once again, the ultimate swamp creature.

Expect no new ideas from this bunch, meaning grim times are ahead… 

My prediction in November 2020 that “grim times are ahead” was hardly a moment of psychic power. Sure, we didn’t know we’d have an ongoing genocide in Gaza and a godawful war of attrition in Ukraine, but we knew some bad decisions were going to be made by the likes of Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan. And so they have been made. 

But at least they’ve created some jobs, right?

Addendum: Just after I posted this, I saw William Hartung’s new piece at TomDispatch, which tackles the same subject but with more detail. Check it out at https://tomdispatch.com/war-is-bad-for-you-and-the-economy/