George W. Bush was the apex of caring-conservative ideology. His care for the USA meant pursuing Al-Qaeda post 9/11, and as key players from his administration resurface again, it looks like America’s yearning for that bygone caring attitude.
But did Bush—and other similarly-branded politicians—truly care? Because twenty-two years later, it’s embarrassing to even think about Afghanistan.
After four administrations worth of fighting, spanning twenty years, the loose ends are still untied. Behind half a million Middle Eastern corpses, civil war, and widespread poverty stood a weakened but nevertheless operating Al-Qaeda. There’s also thousands of widowed Americans and kids whose family members came back in a box. And the bigger problem was that Bush let the conflict drag on for so long. The “War on Terror” didn’t end within his term, passing down to Obama, Trump, and Biden one after the other.
Though it’d be unfair to scapegoat Bush for Afghanistan.
Because he couldn’t have not done it, not when the Pentagon’s doors have been turning both ways for seventy years. The same people who worked in arms companies now work in the government’s defence and vice versa, cycling in and out intermittently. Once an administration retires and their defence officials need jobs, arms companies offer enthusiastic private-sector welcomes. Cushy, expensive careers are endowed as a thank-you for supporting pro-arms causes while in office (that is, bombing innocents across the sea). Likewise, when the next administration needs defence officials, they’ll take employees from those very companies for their experience and connections. So despite being called the “Department of Defence”, when interviewing at Raytheon or Lockheed Martin, government officials show off having served during a period of war.
But there’s a catch. For this revolving door to turn smoothly, the arms sector has to grow vibrantly and stay there. For several decades, defence officials creatively conjured up increasing ways to make weapons attractive. Military interventions and deposing leaders in South America were one solution. Another was selling arms to countries fighting civil wars. Out of everything 9/11 was the best selling point for the Bush administration’s future careers when catching Bin Laden meant lots of guns and tanks.
And even the Secretaries of Defense have a foot in this revolving door. Lloyd Austin (Biden administration) and William Lynn (Obama administration) were formerly at Raytheon, one serving as a board member, the other a lobbyist. Unsurprisingly, James Mattis (Trump administration) is a former General Dynamics board member. All three get a warm reunion with the private sector after leaving office, so of course America’s foreign policy and its military-industrial complex became insanely aggressive. Their secretaries are practically tangled in Raytheon’s bedsheets.
Finally, and most troublingly, the Middle Eastern conflict wasn’t unique. If America’s recent profit-driven wars or interventions were a family, Afghanistan and Iraq have many siblings. They’ve got Korea, Vietnam, and Guatemala (the disposal of Árbenz) in the ‘50s. They’ve got Cambodia in the ‘70s. They’ve got Libya in the early ‘2010s. They’ve got Indonesia’s Suharto in the ‘60s, who wiped out a million suspected communists with American weapons.
But since Eisenhower’s warning in 1961, the revolving door’s been turning so smoothly that Raytheon and General Dynamics are now too important to kill. With hundreds of thousands of factory jobs depending on how well arms are selling, reduced military spending is economic suicide.
So the US defence will keep operating weirdly, as they have been for the past seventy years—with the help of charismatic spokespeople like Bush. They’ll keep finding places to hold military interventions like Vietnam, Libya, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. They’ll keep selling weapons to dictators like Suharto. And they’ll keep blowing up random innocents, all for prolonging their unnatural love affair with the arms industry.
Anita Pan (Author)
July 12th, 2024
Behbod Negahban (Editor)
Yale University