Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses Ike Eisenhower’s extraordinary (but too little too late) farewell address; how the overblown Soviet threat and missile gap hoax scared Americans enough to boost the bottom line of defense contractors; how the unlimited supply of government money corrupts otherwise solid businesses that are forced to compete with insiders and cheats; how the perquisites of government/military employment, though relatively harmless in isolation, drive the entire ‘permanent war state;’ revelations that the British mission in Afghanistan was simply to ‘give the Army something to do;’ and the three choices for fighting back against state militarism: abolish government, protest for change, or expatriate.
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