Turning Swords into Plowshares

From beautiful words to political change.

Now that the new year has begun, it’s off to the races - or one singular race, really - to make manifest the world that is struggling to be born.

While the collective problems that confront us are varied, many are bound together by common elements. Primary among these is the soullessness of an economic system which puts short term profits for huge multinational conglomerates before ethical and humanitarian concern for people and planet.

Nowhere is this more obvious, or more dangerous, than in the area of America’s defense spending. Of all the things that could spell doom for the human race - and at this point, I do mean doom - a war machine with no conscience is high on the list. 2021 was the year when a lot more Americans woke up to the severity of the problem; 2022 needs to be a year when we seriously begin to solve it.

Anton Petrus

With a $778 billion annual defense budget, both parties in Congress - plus Republican as well as Democratic presidents - have proven themselves intent on feeding the cash cow of the military industrial complex. How far we have devolved from a time when an American president - the former Commander of all Allied Forces in WW2, no less - uttered these words:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.”

Those were the words of President Dwight Eisenhower, who also coined the phrase “military-industrial-complex” in his Farewell Address to the nation in 1961. As head of all Allied Forces in WW2, victorious over the Nazis and then president of the United States, obviously Eisenhower was no military slouch. No one knew more than he the legitimate military needs of the United States. But he also knew, and warned the country as much, that when making war becomes big business we’re in very serious trouble.

Also in President Eisenhower’s speech:

“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; 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. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

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.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

That speech was given sixty years ago. Now it’s our turn to respond to the demands of history and the challenge of holding America accountable to our ideals. Obviously, we have taken a path in almost direct contradiction to Eisenhower’s warning, and only we the people can correct our country’s path forward.

I’ve spoken and written extensively on the establishment of a United States Department of Peace. The idea of creating such an agency is given short shrift in legislative circles, however, and for obvious reasons. Defense industry donations don’t pour in to the coffers of politicians funding peace; they pour in to the coffers of politicians funding war. War profiteering, supposedly a crime, has become an industry. An industry worth trillions of dollars. An industry that is one of the pillars of the American economy. An industry that exerts so much power in America that our government is little more than its handmaiden, with politicians from both parties among its major stockholders.

Yet this cannot continue. In the words of President John F. Kennedy, “Mankind must put an end to war - or war will put an end to mankind.” It’s time for us to take his words literally, for that is very much how he meant them. There is more to security than the ability to wage war. A sustainable, survivable future will depend on our ability to wage peace.

This video from my campaign has recently gained a listening online. I will be talking a lot more about the issue in the months ahead…

Marianne Williamson @marwilliamson

Yep.

This is a conversation that’s important for us to continue. We need a massive change in this country, and it will only come about if we expand both our hearts and our minds. One without the other will not be enough. We must inform ourselves intellectually, and devote ourselves spiritually to the transformation of the world.

Tomorrow I will send you my podcast interview with author Andrew Cockburn, whose new book is The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine.

Cockburn, the Washington editor of Harper’s, has spent decades covering the Pentagon and defense industry and argues money and power, not safety, is what drives our ballooning military budget. “The US defense complex is best thought of not as an organization, but as a living, insatiable, creature, dedicated only to its own defense and power.”

That’s the problem, folks. And we need to solve it.