Posted by William Astore at 7:04am, August 11, 2016.
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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: TD is taking this
weekend off. Next post: Tuesday, August 16th. Tom]
How, I’ve often wondered, can people who have spent their lives working
in an institution, particularly in the military or some other part of the
national security state, retire and suddenly see that same institution in a
different and far more negative light? Once outside, they become, in
essence, critics of their former selves. I’ve long had a private term for
this curious phenomenon: retirement syndrome.
Perhaps the most striking example of (edge-of-)retirement syndrome in
modern American history was former five-star general Dwight D.
Eisenhower. As president, he presided over a vast expansion of the
national security state and the military, including its nuclear arsenal, while
a growing set of weapons makers and other defense-related outfits were embedding
themselves in Washington in a big way. On January 17, 1961, just before
he was to end his second term in office and leave public life forever, he gave
a “farewell address” to the nation warning -- out of
the blue -- of a potential loss of American liberties in part because
“we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast
proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly
engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security
more than the net income of all United States corporations. This
conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is
new in the American experience... In the councils of government, we must guard
against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,
by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Few could have said it better, then or now.
