Trump Insists ‘We’re Getting Out of the Endless Wars,’ Leaving Pentagon Bigwigs Disgruntled
Sept. 8, 2020 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump made pointed remarks yesterday opposing “endless wars,” calling for bringing “our soldiers home,” and blasting the military-industrial complex for wanting to prolong wars. He spoke at a Labor Day press conference. The further, unspoken background to his charges, includes elements in military and civilian networks backing actual insurrection. This was addressed directly, and denounced, Sept. 5, by Col. Richard Black (ret.), at the Schiller Institute international conference (see separate slug).
Trump said to the reporters,
“Biden ... sent our youth off to fight in these crazy endless wars. It’s one of the reasons the military—I’m not saying the military is in love with me; the soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy. But we’re getting out of the endless wars.... And I said, ‘That’s good. Let’s bring our soldiers back home. Some people don’t like to come home. Some people like to continue to spend money.’ One cold-hearted globalist betrayal after another, and that’s what it was.”
Trump’s comments sparked outrage from across the political spectrum from neo-conservative Bill Kristol to California Democrat Ted Lieu. CNN’s Ryan Brown called Trump’s remarks “an unprecedented public attack by a sitting U.S. president on the leadership of the U.S. military.” At the very least, Brown and the others glaringly ignored the most obvious facts of life: the well-known revolving door between the military and defense establishment on one side and the defense industry, through which retired officers and former senior defense officials take jobs with defense contractors for salaries several times their retired pay. Between 2008 and 2018, at least 380 high-ranking Pentagon officials were hired by top defense contractors after leaving public office, including 25 generals, 9 admirals, 43 lieutenant generals and 23 vice admirals, according to a report by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), reported recently by RT.
These howling critics were in turn reminded by journalist Glenn Greenwald and conservative journalist Mollie Hemingway of President Gen. (ret.) Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex in his farewell speech to the nation in 1961. These reporters tweeted about this. Trump then re-tweeted their information. Hemingway wrote in one of her tweets. “Trump’s words today about the military industrial complex’s power in the Pentagon evoke Eisenhower’s warning of same in his 1961 farewell address. Worth rereading today as that complex runs its information op.” Hemingway included a link to the text of Eisenhower’s address hosted by Yale Law School.
