CHRISTIAN SORENSEN; [email protected]
Sorensen is the associate director of the Eisenhower Media Network. He is an author and military affairs analyst covering the business of war.
Sorensen told the Institute for Public Accuracy: The U.S. missile strikes in Iran are a “great example of the military-industrial complex in action. The aircraft and the bomb that was reportedly used in Iran are all corporate products. The bomb was a GBU-57. That bomb was made by Boeing in St. Charles, Missouri. Forges in Lima, Ohio and Irvine, Pennsylvania helped build the casing for the bomb’s warhead. The bombs typically find their target using GPS satellites, a Lockheed Martin product. GPS ground control software is made by RTX, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies.
“In order to stop U.S. military aggression when you reach this level of corporate capture, it’s not just about mobilizing political will––which itself would entail halting lobbying, corporate campaign finance––but would also entail a grassroots effort to convert the aforementioned industrial capacity from war to peace. Industrial conversion, also known as economic conversion, is more or less nonexistent right now in the U.S. when it comes to the business of war. The corporate executives at the top of these large corporations––in coordination with asset management firms like BlackRock and Vanguard and State Street, which hold a sizable portion of corporate stock––basically run the show. They make all the consequential decisions, including who to lobby, whose campaigns to fund, what sorts of think tanks to establish and fund to maintain a pro-war narrative, and what trade groups to fund… The significant decisions are not made initially by politicians. They are made by big business executives in coordination with Wall Street… From a business perspective, war is the perfect racket, because the richest of the rich are never the ones deploying. They suffer no immediate consequences.
“Industrial conversion involves changing the output of existing facilities. If you have a facility that makes bombs or missiles, they have good knowledge of chemistry, metallurgy, lathes, and tooling machines. They could very easily be producing parts for U.S. infrastructure, which as we know is crumbling. They have the capacity. The U.S. war industry already produces plenty of goods and services that have a civilian parallel: everything from satellites, rockets, avionics, aircraft, cameras, imaging systems, land vehicles, communications equipment. It all has a civilian parallel and doesn’t need to be used in war. We’re not in a bind here. We know how to do it. It just requires a mobilized and organized 99 percent.
“Our country is the greatest global purveyor of violence by far… If these corporations were really concerned about war fighters, then they wouldn’t hire lobbyists to craft the National Defense Authorization Act to include stipulation after stipulation guaranteeing conflict. If they cared about the troops, they would be lobbying to bring the troops home and take care of them. But that would be self-defeating in terms of the profit. You can’t have immense profits in the business of war if you don’t have a global military presence. Military bases themselves are locations of profit, because they’re run by corporations. Back in the day, the private and corporal and sergeant would run the base. But these days, corporations pitch themselves to U.S. politicians in the Pentagon and then invariably charge an arm and a leg.”
In light of Iran’s response to U.S. strikes on nuclear sites, Sorensen added: “We need to emphasize Iran’s restraint. The U.S. government has multiple ways to hurt a country when that country deviates from or refuses U.S. foreign policy: sanctions, armed force or the threat of armed force, and intelligence activity including covert action, coups, and propaganda. Iran has been the victim of all three of these things. The restraint Iran demonstrates, despite that, is remarkable. It doesn’t lash out.”