Quote (NetflixAdaptationWidow @ Aug 17 2021 03:17pm)
Then we're in agreement. Both that defense contractors have a massive influence which manipulated the government into giving them massive amounts of money and that you can always take it too far, like thinking they have so much control they engineered a whole war from scratch.
Pretty much nobody thinks the latter though, so I'm not sure who you're actually railing against.
"Bush started the Iraq war to fund the MIC" was such a common trope in the early-mid 2000s that I can't believe you don't remember it.
Quote (fender @ Aug 17 2021 03:08pm)
the fact that you have to strawman "manipulating the government" as outright "engineering wars" illustrates how dishonest you are, in order to downplay the influence (not outright "control" - another strawman of yours) of defence contractors on american foreign policy.
the underlying conflicts existed (massive credit to the british empire btw, who never seem to get the credit they deserve for the mess), 9/11 did happen (as a "retaliation" for previous american meddling and nation building efforts in the middle east), the will to retaliate by a significant part of the american people (amplified by mass media ofc)... of course those things weren't created out of whole cloth by lockheed martin / raytheon... but literally no one is claiming that. it is, however, extremely gullible to pretend that what eisenhower already warned about, and what has become a FACT of american politics, was just your average "currying of favours", as if that made it acceptable or even inevitable. it's not, and someone who genuinely opposes war would not try to normalise it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEGpTu8sVKI
The situation Eisenhower was warning about does not exist today. The role of the military in the 1950s to 1960s, post-WWII and in the grips of the Cold War is so far removed from where we are today as to be irrelevant.