(Lang, SOFREP.com)
(Lang, SOFREP.com)
Many are familiar with President Dwight Eisenhower’s famous farewell speech, but few have read the original drafts, which include dire warnings about the future of America and what Eisenhower termed a “military-industrial complex.” One of the original drafts, penned by speechwriter Malcolm Moos, reads:
We must never let power, implicit in this combination, endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert, knowledgeable, and wise citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that both security and liberty may prosper.
In the councils of government, we must jealously guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We can ignore it only at our peril.58
The tone is softened slightly in the speech that Eisenhower delivered, but his message remained intact. Since the Eisenhower presidency, the military-industrial complex has grown and gone through a metamorphosis, the rhetoric changing to match the current threats, real or perceived, to the United States. The Cold War gave way to the War on Terror.
At the forefront of those who shape the rhetoric in modern news media are often the same retired generals and admirals who staff the boards of directors of America’s largest and most powerful defense companies.
When the Pentagon established the military analyst program in 2002, it did so largely to help build public support for the invasion of Iraq. Retired generals were recruited into the program and given exclusive access to classified briefings as well as tours of Guantánamo and bases in Iraq. While these analysts were presented on network news each night as objective experts, they were actually being groomed by the Pentagon and fed talking points. Moreover, many of them had ties to major defense contractors with material interests in the war.
Former Green Beret and member of the military analyst program, Robert Bevelacqua, later said that the Pentagon had been telling them, “We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.” When the New York Times sued the DOD to obtain documents about the program, they found that the talking heads we saw on television were referred to as “message force multipliers” and “surrogates.”
When Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general in the military analyst program, received talking points from the Pentagon, he responded, “good work” and “we will use it.”59 Other retired officers who were briefed by the Pentagon in order to support the war effort on television included, according to the Times, Wayne A. Downing, Paul E. Vallely, Robert H. Scales Jr. and over seventy others.
Misleading Americans with alarmism and hyperbole is deconstructing our political process. An informed public is a necessity for a democracy to function. When retired generals leverage their credibility to deceive the public for political purposes, we are in serious trouble.
When these experts lend their names to conspiracy theories, it contributes to polarizing American politics and driving wedges between the American people. When politicians see that what the talking heads on television are saying does not agree with what our intelligence professionals are telling them, it is then seen as an intelligence failure.
There is a clique of retired generals, admirals, and CIA officers who have created an echo chamber in which they cite each other as sources and stir up the political fringe. They do this intentionally, knowing that their alarmist messages will be diluted by the time they make their way down to more reasonable people. But in the meantime, the damage done to American politics is impossible to calculate.
This is one facet of the modern military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us of—it is part of the problem. The solution is to recognize that this is happening and question elected officials as to how something this Orwellian could happen within the Pentagon.
Before discussing potential unconventional solutions to dealing with ISIS we feel it is important to also look at the current state of U.S. Special Operations. Today, SOCOM is weary after twelve years of war and is also at risk of becoming a large, cumbersome, and ineffective bureaucracy.
Our sources tell us that senior officers roam the halls of SOCOM for hours, supervising janitors who don’t have proper security clearances, and men at the unit level can’t open purchase faulty equipment or uniforms because of large programmatic purchases that prohibit quick acquisition. Civilians out of touch with the SOF community are in charge of big-budget programs of record and careerism and the appearance of work has taken precedence of actual work itself. The risk is there, and we believe that SOCOM leadership should take a hard look in the mirror at the bureaucracy that the command has become.
The community has arguably been drifting toward a conventional bureaucratic force that is slow moving and tied to large programs of record. We risk moving farther away from unconventional thinking of the past that was the spine of the Special Operations community.
Is the U.S. Special Operations community becoming more conventional in nature? It’s a good question to ask.