#Drones And Warships Seen As Jobs Programs In The U.S. Economy Of Death

Image: Anthony Freda, used by permission

Launching a warship at Bath Iron Works is always an occasion for Maine's congressional delegates to pledge allegiance to military contracting and the jobs thus created. (Photo: AP, 2014.) The next launch and christening of a warship in Bath is set for October 31. Details of how to join a planned protest may be found here.

Two related news items caught my attention this morning. One is a puff piece on the efforts of my state's freshman representative on behalf of "the HUBZone [which] provides an advantage in acquiring federal government contracts to any qualifying business." Specifically, for businesses at the re-purposed Brunswick Naval Air Station. Maine's two senators are on board, too, all working to amend the National Defense Authorization Act to expand the scope of a favorable climate in which to do the business of weapons development, including drone testing.

A U.S. military drone visiting Brunswick Landing

This is seen as wonderful and desirable because of the holy grail of creating more jobs in my struggling state. Ever since NAFTA and CAFTA passed, jobs are wicked scarce in Maine. Who dares question a scheme to create employment?

The larger news item has been rolling out over the last few days, thanks to a whistleblower who provided U.S. taxpayers and their victims with the cold details of how bureaucrats order assassinations.

Source: "The Kill Chain" by Cora Currier in The Intercept. 
GCC = Geographic Combatant Command;  SECDEF = Secretary of Defense; PDC/PC = Principals’ Deputies Committee/Principals Committee; CoM = Chief of Mission; CoS = Chief of Station 

Ordering strikes in Somalia and Yemen goes through a series of steps, such as compiling a  so-called baseball card with the stats of a desired human target, according to "multiple interviews conducted" with Department of Defense officials.


Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill described for Democracy Now! how a target was selected and evaluated in Afghanistan. Also why kids were bombed for providing context that made an adult male target appear to be especially tall and therefore presumably Arab: "it turned out that he was of average size, and that the people around him were children. They killed them all."

The disconnect between creating jobs on the one hand and killing children to do so on the other runs deep in the U.S. taxpayer psyche. "Kill them over there before we have to kill them over here" is the rationale I've heard blandly repeated for years, despite extensive testimony that drone strikes create far more terrorists than they eliminate according to those in the know. 

But as Upton Sinclair wrote in 1935, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." And in 1944, "Fascism is capitalism plus murder." 

Job creation sounds so much more appealing, doesn't it?