In a dream I tell my brother the story of Buddy Holly.  His father ran a refrigeration repair company.   I have a hard time not tearing up when I tell him the story how he was tired of freezing in the long bus rides on his tour in the deep of Wisconsin winter.   So he rented a plane, to get to the next gig. Unlike Buddy Holly with his music, the kid flying the plane didn't know what he was doing.   The plane did not get far, crashing down into a frozen cornfield.  They found Buddy Holly's glasses in the field, years later.



I cannot help but think of the war profiteers as I lay awake at night.  Dick Cheney would be a good example.  Long a fan of unfettered executive powers and secret dealings, favoring, guess who, oil companions and defense contractors, he put into play the privatization of the nation's defense functions.  The revolving door, from the big oil/defense corporations, to the corridors of the nation's power, became the pattern.   All of which facilitates the selling of arms, profit, profiteering, favoring the share holder's bottom line.  And guess what, behind all this, not even an attempt to pursue the best thing for people and countries far and foreign, no desire to do well, to do the right thing, to actually help people in far-off countries beset with problems, no attempt to understand and then act in a beneficial way.  Nope, just start a war, preferably one that will go on forever.  Sell munitions at $6 million a round, Lockheed Martin, and send in Halliburton to do whatever it is that Halliburton does, energy related.

But it didn't use to be that way.  The nation had to be convinced, to do that right thing, even in World War Two, and not all were convinced that fighting Hitler's war machine was a good idea.  A great vaguely distantly volunteer effort to fight arose, to protect the free world.  It was the right thing to do, morally, a good argument could be made, was made, and men, and women, signed up to fight, and possibly to die.

And toward the end of it all, the reconstruction effort in Europe, Eisenhower, a general himself, warned America and Americans, to be wary of the Military Industrial Complex, the mighty power grab of the mighty.  Famous enough, the retiring President, old Ike, a good man of good will to the world, a thoughtful man, his speech before Congress.

So, what is foreign policy now?  How is it not tainted by the profiteers, by the Cheney, the Rumsfeld, the misled W. Bush, all a matter of good economics, growth charts, as Robert F. Kennedy once warned us of what the great GNP also included, weapons hired for murder.  What do we have as a common crime, a legacy, arrogance?   And Saddam, he would have died of prostate cancer anyway, something like that...  Foreign policy for the share holder and his cronies.

And what did our friends, as once they might have been, from that other part of the world, but grasp that the war, the upsetting of old balances and borders and old tensions, this war imposed upon them by the foreign power was not about people, but about money, a simple matter of bigger profits.  And as the general attack against their way of life, they would attack in like matter, economically, as 9/11 was a strike at the American economy, soon to be felt in every airport, etc., etc.

Truth is simpler than it's made out to be in grasping.

Yes, jobs, the argument can always be made, defense contracting equals jobs, but still..


Later in the day, recovering from the paranoia of the workweek and its conscientious labors, I call my mom, mentioning the nice visit from my defense contractor buddy who comes to town now and then. Always clear on things, a good check, she offers, "someone's gotta protect us."  And this, yes, is true.