Schizo America

These are the talking heads on TV, retired military officers working as network analysts, according to the New York Times.

Notice something?

All ‘white men of a certain age’.  If they are ‘retired military’, then they’ve spent their careers in uniform but have now crossed the aisle, so to speak, and are paid analysts.  But they don’t represent the diversity of the United States, let alone the diversity of the parts of the world we are militarily micro-managing.

Its a global world.  We need our military, like our government, to reflect all Americans. The power elites cannot just be white men of a certain age…

Why not?

Because, if you read the rest of the article, your skin will crawl.  Retired General Barry McAffrey was hired by a small defense contractor, then went out hawking their wares, for a hefty consulting fee:

He sent a personal note and 15-page briefing packet to David H. Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, strongly recommending Defense Solutions and its offer to supply Iraq with 5,000 armored vehicles from Eastern Europe. “No other proposal is quicker, less costly, or more certain to succeed,” he said.

Thus, within days of hiring General McCaffrey, the Defense Solutions sales pitch was in the hands of the American commander with the greatest influence over Iraq’s expanding military.

“That’s what I pay him for,” Timothy D. Ringgold, chief executive of Defense Solutions, said in an interview.

General McCaffrey did not mention his new contract with Defense Solutions in his letter to General Petraeus.

Nor did he disclose it when he went on CNBC that same week and praised the commander Defense Solutions was now counting on for help — “He’s got the heart of a lion” —

or when he told Congress the next month that it should immediately supply Iraq with large numbers of armored vehicles and other equipment.

The New York Times article points out that: Through seven years of war an exclusive club has quietly flourished at the intersection of network news and wartime commerce. Its members, mostly retired generals, have had a foot in both camps as influential network military analysts and defense industry rainmakers. It is a deeply opaque world, a place of privileged access to senior government officials, where war commentary can fit hand in glove with undisclosed commercial interests and network executives are sometimes oblivious to possible conflicts of interest.

Read between the lines:

White generals retire from their ‘world cop’ position, to become talking heads and give advice on military spending, hawking their own clients’ wares without telling ANYONE, General Petraeus, Congress or media outlets like CNBC, that they are banking millions of dollars from military equipment manufacturers precisely for speaking up for them and advocating for more, more, more military spending and more, more, more war escalation.

They are sending non-white kids to their deaths in non-white countries, but their integrity-challenged careers continue unabated, these white men of privilege, collecting large paychecks to keep each other in business, at the expense of a generation of young men and women of diverse backgrounds all around the globe.

Perhaps our retired military should work for the Peace Corps or UNICEF for five years before they are allowed to take incomes as talking heads for military contractors.  They should be ‘on the ground’ holding hands of dying innocent civilian collateral damage, or should dig wells to provide water in tribal towns, or teach computer skills to kids in refugee camps, before they can make millions selling weapons.

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