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ENDING MILITARISM IN AMERICA  
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William J. Astore
April 3, 2025
TomDispatch [[link removed]]

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_ No other practice, no other societal force is more favorable to the
rise of authoritarianism and the rule of tyrants than pernicious war.
Wage war long and it’s likely you can kiss your democracy, your
rights, and just maybe your ass goodbye. _

, Image Credit: John Singleton Copley

 

I read the news today, oh boy. About a lucky man named Elon Musk. But
he lost out on one thing: he didn’t get
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top secret briefing on Pentagon war plans for China. And the news
people breathed a sigh of relief.

With apologies to John Lennon and The Beatles, a day in the life
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increasingly tough to take here in the land of the free. I’m meant
to be reassured that Musk didn’t get to see America’s top-secret
plans for—yes!—going to war with China, even as I’m meant to
ignore the constant drumbeat of propaganda, the incessant military
marches that form America’s background music, conveying the message
that America must have war plans for China, that indeed war in or
around China is possible, even probable, in the next decade. Maybe in
2027
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My fellow Americans, we should be far more alarmed by such secret U.S.
war plans, along with those “pivots” to Asia
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the Indo-Pacific, and the military base-building efforts in the
Philippines [[link removed]], than
reassured by the “good news” that Comrade Billionaire Musk was
denied access to the war room, meaning (for _Dr. Strangelove _fans)
he didn’t get to see “the big board
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It’s war, war, everywhere in America. We do indeed have a strange
love for it. I’ve been writing for _TomDispatch_ for 18 years
now—this is my 111th essay
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other 110 are in a new book of mine
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of them focusing on militarism in this country, as well as our
disastrous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, the ruinous
weapons systems we continue to fund (including new apocalyptic
nuclear weapons
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song that seems to remain ever the same.

A few recent examples of what I mean: President Trump has already
bombed Yemen more than once. He’s already threatening Iran
[//daniellarison.substack.com/p/an-extreme-ultimatum-for-iran].
He’s sending Israel
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the explosives, all the weaponry it needs to annihilate the
Palestinians in Gaza (so too, of course, did Joe Biden
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He’s boasting of building new weapons systems like the Air Force’s
much-hyped F-47 fighter jet
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the “47” designation being an apparent homage by its builder,
Boeing, to Trump himself, the 47th president. He and his “defense”
secretary, Pete Hegseth, continually boast of “peace through
strength
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an Orwellian construction that differs little from “war is peace.”
And I could, of course, go on
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and on and on
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Buy the Book
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Occasionally, Trump sounds a different note. When Tulsi Gabbard became
the director of national intelligence, he sang a dissonant note about
a “warmongering military-industrial complex
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And however haphazardly, he does seem to be working for some form of
peace
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respect to the Russia-Ukraine War. He also talks about his fear
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a cataclysmic nuclear war. Yet, if you judge him by deeds rather than
words, he’s just another U.S. commander-in-chief enamored of the
military and military force (whatever the cost, human or financial).

Consider here the much-hyped Department of Government Efficiency
(DOGE) led by that lucky man Elon Musk. Even as it dismantles various
government agencies like the Department of Education and USAID, it
has—no surprise here!—barely touched
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Pentagon and its vast, nearly trillion-dollar budget. In fact, if a
Republican-controlled Congress has any say in the matter, the Pentagon
budget will likely be boosted significantly for Fiscal Year 2026
and thereafter
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As inefficient as the Pentagon may be (and we really don’t know just
how inefficient it is, since the bean counters there keep failing
audit after audit, seven years
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targeted DOGE Pentagon cuts have been tiny
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there’s little incentive for the generals to change, streamline
their operations, or even rethink in any significant fashion. It’s
just spend, spend, spend until the money runs out, which I suppose it
will eventually, as the national debt soars toward $37 trillion
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Even grimmer than that, possibly, is America’s state of mind, our
collective zeitgeist, the spirit of this country. That spirit is one
in which a constant state of war (and preparations for more of the
same) is accepted as normal. War, to put it bluntly, is our default
state. It’s been that way since 9/11, if not before then. As a
military historian, I’m well aware that the United States is, in a
sense, a country made by war. It’s just that today we seem even more
accepting of that reality, or resigned to it, than we’ve ever been.
What gives?

Remember when, in 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace said
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“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever”?
Fortunately, after much struggle and bloodshed, he was proven wrong.
So, can we change the essential American refrain of war now, war
tomorrow, and war forever? Can we render that obsolete? Or is that too
much to hope for or ask of America’s “exceptional” democracy?

Taking on the MICIMATT(SH)

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern [[link removed]] did
America a great service when he came up with the acronym MICIMATT, or
the
Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank
complex, an extension of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s
military-industrial complex, or MIC (from his farewell speech
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the military and industry (weapons makers like Boeing and Lockheed
Martin), the MICIMATT adds Congress (which Eisenhower had in his
original draft speech but deleted in the interest of comity), the
intelligence “community” (18 different agencies), the media
(generally highly supportive of wars and weapons spending), academia
(which profits greatly from federal contracts, especially research and
development efforts for yet more destructive weaponry), and think
tanks
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happily lap up Pentagon dollars to tell us the “smart” position is
always to prepare for yet more war).

You’ll note, however, that I’ve added a parenthetical SH to
McGovern’s telling acronym. The S is for America’s sporting world
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eternally gushes about how it supports and honors America’s
military, and Hollywood, which happily sells war as entertainment
(perhaps the best known and most recent film being Tom
Cruise’s _Top Gun: Maverick_
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unnamed country that everyone knows is Iran gets its nuclear ambitions
spanked by a plucky team of U.S. Naval pilots). A macho catchphrase
from the original _Top Gun_ was “I feel the need—the need for
speed [[link removed]]!” It may as well
have been: I feel the need—the need for pro-war propaganda!

Yes, MICIMATT(SH) is an awkward acronym, yet it has the virtue of
capturing some of the still-growing power, reach, and cultural
penetration of Ike’s old MIC. It should remind us that it’s not
just the military and the weapons-makers who are deeply invested in
war and—yes!—militarism. It’s Congress; the CIA; related intel
“community” members; the mainstream media (which often relies
on retired generals and admirals
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“unbiased” pro-war commentary); academia (consider how quickly
institutions like Columbia University
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bent the knee to Trump); and think tanks—in fact, all those “best
and brightest” who advocate for war with China, the never-ending war
on terror, war everywhere.

But perhaps the “soft power” of the sporting world and Hollywood
is even more effective at selling war than the hard power of bombs and
bullets. National Football League coaches patrol the sidelines wearing
camouflage, allegedly to salute the troops. Military flyovers at games
celebrate America’s latest death-dealing machinery. Hollywood
movies are made with U.S. military cooperation and that military often
has veto power [[link removed]] over
scripts. To cite only one example, the war movie _12 Strong_
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turned the disastrous Afghan War that lasted two horrendous decades
into a stunningly quick American victory, all too literally won by
U.S. troops riding horses. (If only the famed cowboy actor John Wayne
had still been alive to star in it!)

The MICIMATT(SH), employing millions of Americans, consuming trillions
of dollars, and churning through tens of thousands of body bags for
U.S. troops over the years, while killing millions of people
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is an almost irresistible force. And right now, it seems like
there’s no unmovable object to blunt it.

Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve written dozens of “Tomgrams
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suggesting steps America could take to reverse militarism
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As I look over those essays, I see what still seem to me sensible
ideas, but they die quick deaths in the face of, if not withering fire
from the MICIMATT(SH), then being completely ignored by those who
matter.

And while this country has a department of war (disguised as a
department of defense), it has no department of peace. There’s no
budget anywhere for making peace, either. We do have a colossal
Pentagon that houses 30,000 workers, feverishly making war plans they
won’t let Elon Musk (or any of us) see.  It’s for their eyes
only, not yours, though they may well ask you or your kids to serve in
the military, because the best-laid plans of those war-men do need
lots of warm bodies, even if those very plans almost invariably
(Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) go astray.

So, to repeat myself, how do you take on the MICIMATT(SH)? The short
answer: It’s not easy, but I know of a few people who had some
inspirational ideas.

On listening to Ike, JFK, MLK, and, yes, Madison, too

Militarism isn’t exactly a new problem in America.
Consider Randolph Bourne’s 1918 critique
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health of the state,” or General Smedley Butler’s confession in
the 1930s that “war is a racket
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run by the “gangsters of capitalism.” In fact, many Americans
have, over the years, spoken out eloquently against war and
militarism. Many beautiful and moving songs have asked us to smile on
your brother and “love one another
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Edwin Starr sang so powerfully once upon a time, is good for
“absolutely nothin’,
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lot of people disagree and indeed are making a living by killing
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of it.

And that is indeed the problem. Too many people are making too much
money off of war. As Smedley Butler wrote so long ago: “Capital
won’t permit the taking of the profit out of war until the
people—those who do the suffering and still pay the price—make up
their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding,
and not that of the profiteers.” Pretty simple, right? Until you
realize that those whom we elect are largely obedient to the moneyed
class because the highest court in our land has declared
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money is speech. Again, I didn’t say it was going to be easy. Nor
did Butler.

As a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, I want to end
my 111th piece at _TomDispatch_ by focusing on the words of Ike,
John F. Kennedy (JFK), Martin Luther King, Jr.
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and James Madison. And I want to redefine what words like duty, honor,
country, and patriotism should mean. Those powerful words and
sentiments should be centered on peace, on the preservation and
enrichment of life, on tapping “the better angels of our nature,”
as Abraham Lincoln wrote so long ago in his First Inaugural Address.

Why do we serve? What does our oath of office really mean? For it’s
not just military members who take that oath but also members of
Congress and indeed the president himself. We raise our right hands
and swear to support and defend the U.S. Constitution against all
enemies, foreign and domestic, to bear true faith and allegiance to
the same.

There’s nothing in that oath about warriors and warfighters, but
there is a compelling call for all of us, as citizens, to be
supporters and defenders of representative democracy, while promoting
the general welfare (not warfare), and all the noble sentiments
contained in that Constitution. If we’re not seeking a better and
more peaceful future, one in which freedom may expand and thrive,
we’re betraying our oath.

If so, we have met the enemy—and he is us.

Ike told us in 1953 that constant warfare is no way of life at all,
that it is (as he put it), humanity crucifying itself on a cross of
iron [//bracingviews.substack.com/p/dwight-eisenhower-on-the-cost-of].
In 1961, he told us democracy was threatened by an emerging
military-industrial complex and that we, as citizens, had to be both
alert and knowledgeable enough to bring it to heel. Two years later,
JFK told us that peace—even at the height of the Cold War—was
possible, not just peace in our time, but peace for all time. However,
it would, he assured us, require sacrifice, wisdom, and commitment.

How, in fact, can I improve on these words that JFK uttered
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1963, just a few months before he was assassinated?

“_What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the
world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the
security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of
peace that makes life on earth worth living…_

_I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no
sense in an age… when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear
exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the
far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn… surely the
acquisition of such idle [nuclear] stockpiles—which can only destroy
and never create—is not the only, much less the most efficient,
means of assuring peace._

_I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of
rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic
as the pursuit of war—and frequently the words of the pursuer fall
on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task._

Are we ready to be urgently rational, America? Are we ready to be
blessed as peacemakers? Or are we going to continue to suffer from
what MLK described in 1967 as our very own “spiritual death
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due to the embrace of militarism, war, empire, and racism?

Of course, MLK wasn’t perfect, nor for that matter was JFK, who was
far too enamored of the Green Berets and too wedded to a new strategy
of “flexible response” to make a clean break in Vietnam before he
was killed. Yet those men bravely and outspokenly promoted peace,
something uncommonly rare in their time—and even more so in ours.

More than 200 years ago, James Madison warned us
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continual warfare is the single most corrosive force to the integrity
of representative democracy. No other practice, no other societal
force is more favorable to the rise of authoritarianism and the rule
of tyrants than pernicious war. Wage war long and it’s likely you
can kiss your democracy, your rights, and just maybe your ass goodbye.

America, from visionaries and prophets like MLK, we have our marching
orders. They are not to invest yet more in preparations for war,
whether with China or any other country. Rather, they are to gather in
the streets and otherwise raise our voices against the scourge of war.
If we are ever to beat our swords
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plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks and make war no more,
something must be done.

Let’s put an end to militarism in America. Let’s be urgently
rational. To cite John Lennon yet again: You may say I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one. Together, let’s imagine and create a
better world.

_William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of
history, blogs at Bracing Views._

_In an era marked by the demise of iconic newspapers and online
outlets, TomDispatch has been a continuing feature of the
independent media ecosphere, outlasting scores of former collaborators
and competitors alike. Devoted to well-crafted, longform writing and
typified by tough-but-measured commentary and hard-hitting reporting,
the site follows in the tradition of old-fashioned American muckraking
journalism and iconic publications like I.F. Stone’s Weekly. The
site relaunched in 2021 with a new design and a more reader-friendly
format, but the same commitment to incisive analysis and hard-hitting
critiques of U.S. national security policy and other pressing issues
of the day. It continues to publish, without fear or favor, in the
public interest, beholden to no editorial constraints, political
party, or ideological orthodoxy. TomDispatch remains and will always
be “a regular antidote to the mainstream media.”_

* military industrial complex
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* U.S. foreign policy
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* Militarism
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