"The Domestic Roots of Perpetual War"

 Eisenhower warned of a "military industrial complex".  Shortly thereafter a "missile gap" with the Soviet Union was discovered and the Kennedy administration poured money into resolving that gap which it was discovered later never existed.  That series of coincidental events has repeated itself for the past seven decades.  Whenever the increase in military spending falls to just 5% some external threat will be discovered that requires an immediate spending increase in order to maintain our national security. Alexander Cockburn in his article, "The Military Industrial Virus"** documents the virtual sine wave of military spending increase as a result of some imagine external threat every time spending reaches the magic floor of 5% annual increases. 

We have become immune to military excess. Remember the kerfuffle over the $640 toilet seat?  It cause quite a stir at the time, yet in 2018 it was revealed that the Air Force was now paying $10,000 for a toilet seat cover and there was nary a ripple of protest.  When asked to explain, an Air Force official justified the cost  because it was required to save "the manufacturer from 'losing revenue and profit.'"

So now we have really expensive weapons and the evidence is accumulating they don't work very well and the money spent comes at the expense of training and maintenance. Mines are an inexpensive yet devastating threat to American warships but the Navy has only 11 dilapidated minesweepers of which only three are allocated to the Middle East where Iran has thousands that could be laid in the Straits of Hormuz through which a large portion of the world's oil supply must travel.  The Navy is said to rely on the MH-53E mine search and destroy helicopter that has proven to be the most dangerous machine for those who fly them, killing 132 crewmen in some 58 crashes since their introduction in 1980.  They are the most dangerous aircraft in the military's arsenal, just not for the enemy.  The Osprey follows close behind. The new multi-billion dollar Littoral ships, nicknamed "little crappy ships" by the crew that was supposed to be able to sweep for mines has yet to get that equipment working.  New helmets worn by soldiers in Afghanistan and Ira have been shown to cause more damage to solder's brains from explosions rather than less. And the F-35 that saw its first combat operations 17 years after the program was initiated could make only one sortie per plane every three days because of maintenance and cost issues. The Pentagon's former chief testing official said they would not have survived combat without protection from other planes. They are so expensive only a small portion of the original order could be purchased.

Has it helped? Indeed, we have become a fearful nation, a bunkered nation, bogged
down in never-ending wars abroad accompanied by shrinking civil liberties at home. We now spend almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, yet the sinews of our supporting economy, particularly the all-important manufacturing sector, are weakening
at an alarming rate, threatening the existence of the high-income, middle-class consumer society we built after World War II.

 

That quote is from an essay by Franklin Spinney*** that he wrote after he retired entitled "The Domestic Roots of Perpetual War"* in which he argues that the current war-centric foreign policy has placed Congress and the White in a straitjacket with regard to military funding which has made the control much less safe. The end of the Cold War, rather than producing a "peace dividend" had precisely the opposite effect.  The military bureaucracy, politicians, and business interests had become so intermingled and dependent on one another that cutting back on defense expenditures would ha e caused massive disruptions to the economy. Even Bernie Sanders, for example, who fought against the F-35, was more than happy to approve their purchase when assured some would be based in Vermont. 

 

The corruption of the system affects the military as well. While Seventh Fleet ships were colliding with civilian tankers and freighters, killing several seamen, the admirals, many of them senior, were being bought off with prostitutes and money to have the ships serviced by "Fat" Leonard's shipyards.  So far, sixteen admirals have been found guilty of bribery and fraud.  Twelve more await trial.  Politicians of both parties will do anything to get parts for new weapons manufactured in their districts, so contracts are spread around the country to make sure of political support.  

 

 The beauty of the system lies in its self-reinforcing nature. Huge cost overruns on these contracts not only secure a handsome profit for the contractor, but also guarantee that the number of weapons acquired always falls short of the number originally requested... These bureaucratic belief systems  slowly  insinuated  themselves  deeply  and  almost  invisibly into a domestic political economy that nurtures financial-political  factions  of  the  Military-Industrial-Congressional  Complex  (MICC). The result is a voracious appetite for money that is sustained by a self-serving flood of ideological propaganda, cloaked by a stifling climate of  excessive  secrecy.  President  Dwight  D.  Eisenhower  warned  us  to guard against the corrosive danger of exactly this in his 1961 farewell address.2  He  was  ignored,  and  today,  fifty  years  later,  the  domestic political imperative to steadily increase the money flowing into the MICC reaches into every corner of our society. It distorts and debases our economy, our politics, our universities and schools, our media, our think tanks, and our research labs, just as Eisenhower predicted it  would. [p.57]

Continuous small wars (or the threat of them) are essential to the MICC. Those companies are usually not in a position to convert their business to civilian use. Having been tied to the military procurement system that virtually guarantees them a profit, moving into the civilian realm would require expertise in marketing and dealing with competition they're simply not prepared for.  It's much easier and rewarding to simply have a Congressman in the pocket and a system that feels constantly under threat. Congressional and bureaucratic staff who deal with procurement of weapons systems are virtually guaranteed a job at one of the big military conglomerates at substantial salaries when they decide to leave government. 

We have fallen into the trap of believing that ever-increasing complexity and complicated technology is the answer to military success, yet we have failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam and Afghanistan nor the Soviet experience there that showed how simple local forces can beat better technology. It does not appear we have learned the lessons of the Millenium 2002 War Games in which a vastly inferior force in Iran destroyed an American naval battle group. "“The impact of the [opposing force’s] ability to render a U.S. carrier battle group — the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy — militarily worthless stunned most of the MC ’02 participants.”  It was all over in ten minutes.**** "The dogmatic belief that greater weapons-system complexity and, even worse, greater organizational complexity enhance combat effectiveness is at the epicenter of the belief system sustaining the MICC." After a seventy-nine day bombing campaign in Kosovo (a tiny country with an economy smaller than Fairfax County, Virginia) the Serbs left. Sophisticated radar of the US planes was defeated by microwave ovens used to decoy expensive homing missiles.

Fans of Reagan continue to brag how he caused the decline of the USSR, mostly by forcing them into an unsustainable weapons development and purchase cycle that corrupted and  bankrupted them.  Should we fail to rein in the MICC, I fear we will follow them down the same path? 

*https://www3.nd.edu/~druccio/Spinney.pdf

**https://archive.harpers.org/2019/06/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2019-06-0087519.pdf

***In 1983, Franklin Spinney, was "a thirty-seven-year-old analyst in the Pentagon’s Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation, who testified to Congress that the cost of the ever-more complex weapons that the military insisted on buying always grew many times faster than the overall defense budget. In consequence, planes, ships, and tanks were never replaced on a one-to-one basis, which in turn ensured that the armed forces got smaller and older. Planes, for instance, were kept in service for longer periods of time and were maintained in poor states of repair owing to their increasing complexity. As to be expected, the high command did not react favorably to these home truths. They allowed Spinney to keep his job, but stopped assigning him anything of importance. He spent the rest of his career ensconced in a Pentagon office at the heart of the military-industrial machine, pondering and probing its institutional personality."

****https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/millennium-challenge-iran-destroyed-america-war-game-197261  and https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-real-story-of-a-corrupted-military-exercise-and-its-legacy/

Review: Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil by Mark Graber

 We tend to place the Constitution on a pedestal, although if you asked the average person which Constitution (Articles of Confederation, 1789, or post-Civil War) he revered, his eyes would glaze over.  J.P. Morgan famously said, "I don't hire a lawyer to tell me what I can't do... I hire him to do what I want to do."  So it is. We want lawyers to be advocates, to find the "right" legal interpretation that will best serve our interests. So it is with the Constitution. Political theorists of all political persuasions display less interest in determining what is constitutional than making arguments that will advance their own social agenda within a constitutional framework.

Graber makes the startling claim that the Dred Scott decision may have been constitutionally correct given its emphasis and protection for property rights, (I have made similar arguments in the past to gasps from my listeners) but he does so in the context that the Constitution that existed before the post-Civil War amendments --13th-15th - the third Constitution I call them -- was essentially evil in that it supported the institution of slavery and how Taney's decision influenced judicial interpretation ever since.

 

People can hold diametrically opposed positions on many subjects: abortion is murder, capital punishment is barbaric, etc.  For each there is an opposing view that may be just as strongly held.  Constitutionalism is the theory that these divisive disagreements can be adjudicated through interpretive means using the Constitution's various interpretations to "prove" one side or another is correct. It's the "challenge of creating and preserving political relationships among people who hold conflicting conceptions of justice [that] requires that compromises be forged in every dimension of political life." But, compromises (like that in 1850 and those in writing the Constitution) he argues merely dilute the arguments and postpone resolution. Social groups in power are unlikely to accept any policy or opinion they view as constitutionally incorrect.

 

The book consists of three sections followed by a coda. The first essay criticizes constitutional theorists who misuse the case. The second defends Chief Justice Roger Taney's ruling as consistent with the vision of the framers. The third criticizes Abraham Lincoln's constitutionalism as inconsistent with the vision of the framers. 

 

The 1857 decision in Dred Scott v Sandford said that blacks could not be citizens regardless of where they had been or come from and more secondly that the Missouri Compromise which had banned slavery in northern territories was unconstitutional.  Nor could they delegate that power to territorial legislatures. African Americans could not be citizens because there was a consensus among the founders that "they had no rights which the white man is bound to respect." Congress could not ban slavery in the territories because slaves were "property" and therefore protected by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment ("an act of Congress which deprives a citizen ... of his ... property, merely because he ... brought his property into a particular Territory of the United States ... could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law").

 

The first essay argues that Taney's judgement was not the "bad judging" fostered by current scholars both on the right and left. He argues they are wrong and that to suggest the decision was anti-majoritarian, simply the result of pro-slavery judges, or a misinterpretation of the founders' wishes is just wrong. The original intent of the framers was much more pro- than antislavery, despite the Northwest Ordinance, which had banned slavery in one territory but "acquired a strong antislavery gloss" only later (p. 72). "If the persons responsible for the Constitution intended that Congress have the power to ban slavery in every territory, then this was the best-kept secret in American politics during the late 1780s" .

 

The second section discusses the compromises and predictions for the future made by the authors of the Constitution. The theory, he argues, was that the southern slave holding states would hold power in the House and presidency (with the 3/5ths rule) while the smaller but more numerous northern states would hold sway in the Senate where, by design, they would also control nominations to the Supreme Courte. That way a balance of power was achieved giving both slave states and free states a virtual veto on national policy.  All this would lead to bi-sectional coalitions.  

 

By 1857, northern growth foresaw domination of both houses by the north and Graber says the logical result was Taney's decision in Dred Scott was favorable to the wishes of the Framers. It effectively removed abolition from national policy.  But at what cost!

 

The third section of the book deals with Lincoln and his abandonment of bi-sectional coalitions.

 

The last section is the most troublingly problematic, and I hate to indulge in any spoilers here.  Let's just say it involves an argument for why the candidate of choice in 1860 should have been John Bell.

Blind Injustice

As many as 100,000 wrongfully convicted people sit in jail for crimes they did not commit.  That means, of course, that there are 100,000 guilty folks wandering around. Estimates of wrongful convictions range between 2 and 5 percent. Death row exonerations have, at last count, reached 162. Since 1989, when what’s known today as the innocence movement started gaining momentum, over 2,737 convicted people have been exonerated in the United States, according to the 2021 Annual Report of the National Registry of Exonerations.**  129 were exonerated in 2020 alone.  Of those, 87 were convicted because of official misconduct. Those 129 lost a total of 1,737 years, or an average of 13.4 years per defendant, off their lives.  87 of the convictions were due to official misconduct.  80% of the murder convictions were marred by official misconduct.

Mark Godsey, a former prosecutor, now the co-founder of the Ohio Innocence Project explains how this can happen in his book Blind Injustice: A Former Prosecutor Exposes the Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Convictions. He writes:

From my perch as a prosecutor turned innocence advocate, I have witnessed bizarre human behavior that has left me both fascinated and shaken. I have seen how witnesses get it wrong but adamantly believe they are right. How witnesses have their stories twisted and rearranged by the police and prosecutors, without even realizing they have been manipulated and without the police and prosecutors realizing they have altered witnesses’ statements to fit their theory of the case. How prosecutors, police, judges, and defense attorneys develop tunnel vision and make irrational case-decisions because they refuse—no matter the evidence—to question their initial instincts. How politics and internal pressures have caused people in the system to act unjustly and unfairly, all the while in denial about their true motivations. How they have become stubborn and arrogant about their ability to divine the truth, while they are in denial about their human limitations. And I have seen how these human flaws have resulted in tragic, gut-wrenching injustices.

For example, detectives tend to believe witnesses who tell them stories that confirm their own beliefs about a case. Witnesses who give contradictory information are seen as lying or mistaken and are often pushed to the wayside. 

The Supreme Court has played an increasingly remote role in overlooking state courts, making appeals from inmates more and more difficult.  Their current view is that SCOTUS has only a very narrow responsibility in supervising the quality of justice in state courts. In 1993 Justice O'Connor made what can only be considered a most naive statement in Herrera v Collins that denied intervening in a Texas death penalty case.

It's not only naïveté and federalistic myopia that can deny hope to death row inmates. Rigid adherence to paperwork timelines can also be a hindrance, as Justice Thomas recognized in a 2007 opinion:

 "Just a few months ago, the Clerk, pursuant to this Court's Rule 13.2, refused to accept a petition for certiorari submitted by Ryan Heath Dickson because it had been filed one day late ... Dickson was executed on April 26, 2007, without any Member of this Court having even seen his petition for certiorari. The rejected certiorari petition was Dickson's first in this Court, and one can only speculate as to whether denial of that petition would have been a foregone conclusion."

For a review of Bryan Stevenson's work in getting wrongful convictions overturned, see my review in these pages at https://rarebits.blogspot.com/search?q=bryan+stevenson.

 

**https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/2021AnnualReport.pdf

Wills on Bradlee and Safire

As I'm wont to do, I was wandering around some old New York Review of Books reviews, and stumbled on this dissection of Ben Bradlee's and William Safire's memoirs of their time at the Kennedy and Nixon White House respectively. (Conversations with Kennedy by Benjamin C. Bradlee and Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House by William Safire. *

 

Some rather startling and sad insights were revealed.  Remember the horror of the gossip that Trump probably paid someone to take an SAT exam for him?  Well, Ted Kennedy hired a proxy to take one for him at Harvard. When asked how he felt about his brother cheating, Jack said:

“It won’t go over with the WASPs. They take a very dim view of looking over your shoulder at someone else’s exam paper. They go in more for stealing from stockholders and banks.” (Ted Kennedy did not casually look over his shoulder, like any commoner; he paid money out of his own father’s banked and stock-inflated money to have a commoner take the test for him.)

 

Wills has little nice to say of either author, regarding them as courtiers, who groveled at the feet of their boss. It was imperative for both to remain in the good graces of the chief as to say anything negative would lose them access. He finds Safire's book the more trivial, yet perhaps also more honorable in this wonderful passage:

 

Asked to sculpt a new face on Mount Rushmore, he found that his assigned area of cliff was made of mud; and got swept down with it when it crumbled—yet here he is, hip-deep, still trying to sculpt noble features out of the ooze and slime.

 

That's almost as good as George Will's characterization of VP Pence: "an oleaginous sycophant" -- a phrase I will never forget.

 

American politics is not kind to those engaged in it and Wills proposes it turns out similar survivors:

 

It is the likeness between the princes that is most noticeable. American politics is a rigorous process, and it does certain kinds of damage to those who survive the hard struggle to its pinnacle. They are not likely to remain nice people—as all our recent examples prove. The same process leads to similar products, however much we try to glamorize them with separate virtues after their anointment. Nixon and Kennedy may look very different at first glance—but only because it was difficult to invent virtues for Nixon (though Safire is still trying) and unfortunately easy to invent them for Kennedy (Bradlee barely needs to try).

 

Both Nixon and Kenedy were known for their profanity (Bradlee excuses Kennedy's as a product of his military service) but Kennedy whined as well.  Each could be vindictive and cruel

 

Basically, both authors were self described purveyors of chit-chat and gossip -- I admit to a fondness for reading such drivel, so perhaps I will have to get copies of each -- but neither do their subjects.

* https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1975/05/15/backstairs-at-court/