By Dr. Norman D. Livergood

     We usually think of a nation being controlled by a military dictatorship when a military leader seizes control through a putsch, as in the case of General Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan or Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The previous government is overthrown and a military strong man places himself in power with few if any constraints from judicial or legislative oversight.

      But we must look for the essence of a military dictatorship, those features which are present whenever this form of oppression occurs. In essence, a military dictatorship is a form of government in which absolute power is concentrated in a repressive ruler or a small clique who use military and police power to dominate the people mentally and physically.

     Taking this definition as our touchstone, we know we're living under a military dictatorship when we see:

• a leader put into power through a coup d'etat, not through democratic elections

• the military used to control the civilian population in violation of the U.S. Constitution

• government informants spying on fellow citizens

• the highest amount of government funds going to military initiatives:

  

  • taxpayer money being used to subsidize and fund domestic and foreign "defense" corporations

  • taxpayer money being used to subsidize and fund domestic and foreign military operations: wars, embargoes, training, etc.

• a dictatorial ruling clique creating unnecessary, homocidal wars as a way of remaining in power

  

• a dictatorial ruling clique committing crimes and assuming illegal powers and not being brought to justice because of manipulated, powerless legislative and judicial branches

• the spread of militaristic values and the increasing power of the military in our society

All these conditions are now present in the United States.

"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, IT IS THE LEADERS of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY." Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag, Nazi Party, and Luftwaffe Commander in Chief

      Americans have been led to assume that war, as an institution, is merely a means that a society uses to achieve its ends when forced to by emergency or crisis. In actuality, the basic social structure of the United States consists of the production of armaments by the "defense industry" and the destruction of armaments in fabricated wars.

     Wars are not "caused" by a crisis such as Pearl Harbor or 9/11; wars are contrived for political-economic purposes by those in power.

"Although war is 'used' as an instrument of national and social policy, the fact that a society is organized for any degree of readiness for war supersedes its political and economic structure. War itself is the basic social system, within which other secondary modes of social organization conflict or conspire. It is the system which has governed most human societies of record, as it is today." [emphasis added] Leonard Lewin. (1967). Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace

     The current political-economic rulers in the U.S. and Europe have duped the people into thinking that war is a last resort which "we" must adopt when our national or bloc sovereignty is threatened or when a ruthless leader engages in "ethnic cleansing" or some other unspeakable act.

      The "National Defense State" scam works this way in the U.S.:

• Congress sinks huge sums into the "defense" budget.

• Congress transfers the money to the Pentagon and the Pentagon distributes our tax money to the various defense industries.

• Corporate executives "buy" congresspersons and presidents.

      This process gives controlling-interest owners of corporations outrageous profits and control over the government.

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." Julius Caesar

From the chart on the left, it's easy to see that war--the making and destroying of armaments--is the primary business of the U.S. under the present regime of the "High Cabal."       Certainly, there is no need to spend the obscene amounts of money on armaments when other nations are spending much less in comparison.

     The Bush-led military dictatorship is carrying out a policy of militaristic imperialism. The puppet Bush regime is now building the biggest-ever war machine:

• military spending will rise to $379billion, of which $50 billion will pay for its "war on terrorism"

• Israel's right-wing mlitaristic government will receive $2.04 billion in US military aid

  • US aid to the terrorist state of Israel will likely grow to $2.4 billlion by 2008

  • during the past half century US aid to Israel has totaled a whoppng $81.3 billion (November 2001 Congressional Research Service report)
  • for 2003, the Bush administration is proposing that Israel receive $2.76 billion in foreign aid, mostly in the form of military hardware.

    

  • an additional $28 million will go to Israel for the purchase U.S.-manufactured counter-terrorism equipment.

  • in the past decade alone, the United States has sold Israel $7.2 billion in weaponry and military equipment--everything from fighter planes and attack helicopters to machine guns and grenade launchers

• Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are among the next largest recipients of US military weaponry

  • from 1999 to 2000, Egypt received $1.3 billion in US military aid and Jordan got $123 million

  • while Saudi Arabia receives no outright US military assistance, it has bought over $33.5 billion of the most sophisticated US weapons systems (AWACS, F-15's and more) over the past ten years; that's more than US military assistance given to Israel and Egypt combined

• poor, developing nations bought 68 percent of US weapons output in 2000 (Congressional Research Service study)

  

• American weapons producers signed contracts for some $18.6 billion dollars in 2000, up from around $12.9 billion dollars the previous year

• US contracts accounted for 49.7 percent of global sales in 2000 and the US controlled half of the developing world's arms market with $12.6 billion in sales

• the US routinely sells weapons to undemocratic regimes and gross human rights abusers (Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Turkmenistan and Turkey), which the Bush junta views as "trustworthy allies"

• because the U.S. military budget is about 10 times as large as the next military budget, the United States has been able to out-compete all other countries in producing and selling weapons on the global market, running other countries out of business

• in addition to controlling military technology, the United States gives an enormous amount of military aid

  • in foreign aide

  • in the form of subsidized purchases of weapons

    

  • in guaranteed loans to countries to buy weapons

  • to train the military in other countries (e.g. Indonesia) in dealing with civil conflict, civil unrest, insurgency, and emergencies

• the US power elite not only recruits and solicits and consolidates and solidifies a monopoly relationship with the military elites in countries around the world, but also with the foreign policy elites, the people who work at institutes for strategic studies and in the Foreign Service, the people who develop concepts of the world and of international relations which then drive and determine the kind of choice points that governments will make along the way on a wide variety of issues

The Military Dictatorship Budget

The "High Cabal" lies to the American people about how much it spends on military expenses. As indicated in the image on the right, the Bush puppet regime tells the American taxpayers that only about 17% of the federal budget goes to the military expenditures.

However, at least 58% of our tax dollars are going to the military!

World Militarism

     In a correlative article on oil imperialism, we saw that a major part of the overall world dominance strategy is:

• First, they sell armaments to a regime (for example, Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia/Kosovo, Afghan/Pakistan/Taliban Mujaheddin, Saudi Arabia).

• Then, they demonize the regime to which they sold the armaments and declare war on it (e.g. Panama Invasion, Gulf War, UN Kosovo war, Afghanistan war, earlier and planned war with Iraq).

• After the war, they station permanent military bases in the country and use the military bases to control the energy resources in the surrounding countries.

• They impose the current U.S. foreign policy doctrine called "full-spectrum dominance": the U.S. must control military, economic and political developments everywhere.

     In this and other articles on this Web site, we use such terms as:

• fascism
• imperialism
• "High Cabal"
• militarism
• police state
• world dominance
• dictatorship
• millitary dictatorship

     In each instance, we provide an immediate linkout which defines these terms. Such terms as these cited sometimes possess connotations that connect them with older ideological concepts.

     For example, the term "imperialism" was used extensively in Marxist and socialist writings. We encourage our readers to avoid being put off by these irrelevant connotations and concentrating on the precise meanings and relevant context. In the case of the term "imperialism," for instance, we define it as "the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas."

     Our use of these terms should in no way be construed as our agreement with doctrinaire Marxist or socialist ideologies. As our Web site makes clear, we work within the American democratic tradition that issued from the Enlightenment and Illuminist traditions.

     Such concepts as referred to above are essential terms of discourse in these times when the "High Cabal" and its Bush puppet regime engage in fearsome actions which can only be explained through concepts such as "fascism" and "dictatorship."

     We do not enjoy having to use such extreme terms as "police state" and "military dictatorship," but in such extreme times as these it's necessary to speak the plain truth to help the American people wake up to what's happening.

     In a recent television program, Phil Donahue spoke with swindled employees of Enron, World,com, and other criminal corporations. Many of the workers who had been fired, without severance pay, by these companies days after the senior executives had stolen millions, were still dazed. These were well-intentioned, hard-working people who had been completely savaged by corporate fat-cats. "What can we do?" they asked.

     Well, certainly the first thing American workers must do is wake up to what the Bush regime is doing: fostering and allowing corporate crime to run rampant.

     We must be aware that the Bush regine is actually a military dictatorship which will inevitably lead to the total destruction of our civil liberties unless we make sure that doesn't happen. We must recognize that the old forms of military dictatorship--with jack-boot storm troopers--have been replaced with new "war on terrorism" military control of civilians.

     9/11 was an unconscionable act of terror and whether the Bush regime planned and carried out that operation is still an open question. I would not be surprised if the "High Cabal" perpetrates a second terrorist act within the next year--to create a pretext for suspending all Constitutional liberties in the hysteria that would inevitably ensue.

     One of Dubya's appointees to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission told a Detroit crowd in July 2002 that America could "forget about civil rights" if there was another terrorist attack on the United States by "the same ethnic group that attacked the World Trade Center."

      What the Bush regime is doing is so tyrannical that we must begin immediately to act as a people to stop its deliberate destruction of our nation.

"If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied." Rudyard Kipling

Related Sites

• Friends Committee on National Legislation

• Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

• Global Action to Prevent War

• Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies

• Washington Peace Center

• School of the Americas Watch

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