THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN DIMENSIONS

Gun violence is not only a problem in U.S. schools, and the NRA is not the only culprit. It's also the Pentagon with its advocacy of permanent war and its view of the world as one big battlefield. For the commercial media, the military budget and U.S. military bases scattered throughout the world are non-issues, while for the Republicans supported by Blue Dog Democrats the issue is the need to increase military spending not reducing it. The courageous young students who are protesting gun violence will sooner or later (if they haven't already) see the connection between endless, senseless wars and violence at home. They are interrelated but the media and the politicians will do everything possible to disconnect them.

Indeed, the military-industrial complex of today is on steroids compared to the one that Dwight Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell speech as president in 1961. At the time, the military buildup was justified as a necessity to face the Soviet threat. Then after the fall of the Soviet Union, the justification was the war on terrorism.

With Trump’s appointment of John Bolton as National Security Advisor, U.S. militarism is bound to reach a new threshold. Bolton calls for not a “proportionate” but a “disproportionate” reaction to Russia’s alleged interventionism, which would include cyber warfare. Claiming that China and Russia work in coordination and are ganging up on the U.S., Bolton argues for a hardened response to both nations. Bolton’s appointment will likely be a watershed event, in which the war on terrorism will be downplayed and replaced with a much more dangerous type of confrontation, in some ways even more so than in the days of the Cold War. If there ever was a time for a full-fledged campaign against militarism in all its dimensions and manifestations, it’s now.

I’m not the only one who claims there is a connection between U.S. involvement in wars and domestic violence. Martin Luther King said the same. And what better moment to remember King’s legacy than today, April 4, 2018. Fifty years have gone by and King’s words about violence at home and abroad have proved to be prophetic.