Editor’s note: This commentary is by Ron Jacobs of Burlington.
The recent Pentagon decision to proceed with its plan to base the F-35 death planes at Burlington’s airport was met with surprise by many Vermonters. After years of fighting the basing, these Vermonters believed that the democratic process that Vermont prides itself on would win over the military and a political system bought and sold by the industry that beds down with that military.
Despite the predictions of doom pronounced by those in favor of the planes’ basing, the fate of businesses around the Vermont National Guard base was never in danger. Neither were those employed by those businesses. Furthermore, the basing will not provide a massive influx of jobs. Despite the projections of pro-basing advocates (who claimed over a thousand jobs might be at risk), the number of jobs in play was never more than a couple hundred. Of those jobs, several were military and would probably not have been filled by Vermont residents but by military members temporarily stationed in Vermont. As for the fate of the Air Guard unit, its fate is related to realities much less local than the basing of F-35s.
The amount of money spent to design and build the F-35 is incredible. Each plane costs millions of dollars. Literally. Tens of millions. In an economy whose primary attribute is the exponentially expanding difference between the wealth of a few versus the growing poverty of the many, its continued funding is inexcusable. To support its construction is inexcusable in itself; to demand that it be based in the state you represent in Congress is telling the people of your state that you do not care about their heating costs, their children’s schools, or the fact that their dollar buys less every paycheck. To support that basing when many people voted for you precisely because you ran against military boondoggles, war, and the ever expanding corporate state is just plain insulting. Questions about this contradiction are something Sen. Bernie Sanders must answer in is next election campaign.
Instead of accepting the status quo that bleeds taxpayers dry in the name of national security, we can demand our politicians work towards creating genuine security that is not based on a constant threat of war.
The support of Vermont’s other senator, Patrick Leahy, should come as no surprise. After all, among his top campaign contributors one can find at least two of the world’s largest war profiteers: General Dynamics and General Electric. Furthermore, his former top Senate staffer, Daniel Ginsberg, is an assistant secretary of the Air Force. In addition, Leahy’s seat on the Senate’s Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Defense — and its power in determining how much money the Pentagon gets every year — may well have influenced the Pentagon’s decision.
According to a Boston Globe story, however, even Leahy has something of a problem with the overall cost of the plane. In what can only be described as a cynical decision that illustrates the nature of a political system dominated by an unholy bond between Wall Street and the Pentagon, that same story reported that Leahy’s office said that, since the development of this plane was going to happen, then Vermonters should get their fraction of the war machine’s silver. Like the majority of Burlington City Council’s support of war criminal Lockheed Martin’s “green plan” a few years ago, it seems that almost every Vermont politician has their price.
There is an alternative to the cynical attitude that rationalizes taking blood money since, after all, somebody will and it might as well be Vermont. Instead of accepting the status quo that bleeds taxpayers dry in the name of national security, we can demand our politicians work towards creating genuine security that is not based on a constant threat of war. Monies demanded by corporations whose interest lies in the creation and maintenance of fear could be used to rebuild communities, beginning with those ravaged here by the corporate search for greater and greater profit. The transference of taxpayer monies to profiteering arms manufacturers and their cohorts in the Pentagon should end. Despite the overwhelming mainstream media message telling us otherwise, such a scenario is possible.
The nature of our political system does not even require politicians to be corrupt in any legal sense of the term. The domination of that system by what Dwight Eisenhower termed the military-industrial complex is so complete even supposedly anti-war representatives can occasionally rationalize their acceptance of the status quo. Consequently, we saw Bernie Sanders supporting the funding of Washington’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, and his vocal and insistent support for Bill Clinton’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
While both Sanders and Leahy decry elements of the National Security Agency’s surveillance of hundreds of millions of people around the world, they lend their support and signature to a plan to base elements of the armed wing of the warfare state in Burlington.
The surveillance and the F-35s are part of the same machine. They are all included in the umbrella known as national security and they are all part of a system that manipulates the public with fear and nationalism into giving up their tax dollars, their privacy, and their children’s health and safety. To make it worse, this is all done in the name of freedom; a freedom that is chipped away each and every time a phone call is recorded, an email logged, a plane overflight, and a dollar given to the Pentagon. There is a reason big business supports the basing of the F-35s in Vermont. They hope to get a piece of the supposed bounty those planes will bring. The health of their lesser customers is irrelevant. The Pentagon and its corporate buddies are moving in and they want your house (if it’s in their flight path), your tax money, and someday, maybe even your child.
