In His Opinion

Birds Of Terror: Ospreys And Hawks

Paul Cummins
Mirror contributing writer

   —Los Angeles Times, January 1, 2002, page 3: “GLOBAL HAWK CRASHES IN AFGHANISTAN IN A SETBACK FOR HIGH-TECH DRONES”
   —Los Angeles Times, January 1, 2002, page 4: “VALUE OF GROUNDED OSPREY AIRCRAFT EXPECTED TO WARRANT POSTWAR LOOK”
   Was anyone else struck by these back-to-back articles on New Year’s Day in the Los Angeles Times? Both articles were about multi-billion dollar airplanes, each of which has had major failings, each of which the military tells us we “need,” each of which will put millions in the pockets of a small number of military-industrial entrepreneurs, and each of which helps to justify the need for an “on-going war” — never mind who the enemy is, enemies come and go, but the lovely money needs to keep flowing.
   Yes, each of these birds “needs” to be built, we will be told by the Defense Department and members of Congress in whose districts these birds are built. The rest of Congress will dutifully toe the line, and we tax payers will dutifully foot the bill so that the private military industry can profit. And what is this process of government subsidies to private enterprise called? Why, it’s called “rugged individualism,” “the free market at work.” And, of course, it’s called “protecting our shores,” “safeguarding democracy,” “keeping America strong,” etc., etc.
   So what are these birds? Well, the Osprey is a tilt-rotor, V-22 aircraft designed to land and take off like a helicopter but fly like a fixed-wing airplane. According to the Times, “The Osprey was grounded a year ago after two crashes killed twenty-three Marines...before the Ospreys were grounded...the Marine Corps had taken delivery of 20. The initial goal had been for the Corps to buy 360, the Air Force 50, and the Navy 48 under a $40-billion acquisition program.” Now surely we need 458 of these goodies to protect our corpo...I mean, our shores. Surely we need 458 to wage war against terrorists in caves.
   The RQ-4A Global Hawk is a bird of a different feather. It is an unmanned spy aircraft. The problem with it is that it has this nasty tendency to crash. Again, according to the Times: “About one-third of the sixty Predators [the older version of the Global Hawk] that have been built have crashed, analysts say.” Pay no mind, profits dictate a “build first, figure out what to do later” approach. To quote the Times: “Deputy Defense Secretary Paul I. Wolfowitz acknowledged last month that the Pentagon needs to buy more drones and figure out how best to use them.” Don’t you admire his candor? Need precedes the knowledge of what to do with them. Candor doesn’t, however, go all the way to full disclosure. Because the need is really not just the military’s desire to have toys to determine how to play around with; the need is for the defense industry to have new contracts every year. As William Greider writes in Fortress America, war creates a “mixed marriage of government and private enterprise...a huge and diverse manufacturing sector dedicated to serving one customer—the Department of Defense.” This political power has been referred to as the Iron Triangle—Congress, the defense companies, and the military leadership — “Three power centers,” as Greider explains, “that interact to reinforce their mutual interests: jobs, contracts, and new weaponry.”
   Peace is inimical to this triangle. And now we have the President and others explaining to us that we are, in effect, in a war for the foreseeable future. We drop out of the ABM treaty agreement, and we  hear tell of new “needs” almost every day. Yes, folks, the defense budget is still larger today, in constant dollars, than it was in the mid-1970s when the Soviet Union, “the evil empire,” was our foe, rather than the rag-tag bunch of terrorists we’re battling today.
   The sadness is that all these “needs” sap our own nation’s infrastructure. Schools, hospitals, affordable housing, bridges and highways need to be built and repaired. And schools and hospitals are desperately needed all over the globe. But our military-industrial folks “need” these birds of war. Guess who gets their “needs” met first and foremost?
   Paul Cummins is the President of Crossroads School, a founder of New Roads School, and the Executive Director of the New Visions Foundation.