EDITORIAL: Democats and Republicans And The Military-Intelligence Complex

Ne News
17 March 2018

Many people may not know that the US Midterm Elections are coming up, and both Democrats and Republicans are fighting for seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. But while there are planned to be protests against Donald Trump's military parade on Veterans' Day on 11 November 2018 (the one hundredth anniversary of the Armistice Treaty that was signed on 11 November 1918, and is known in the rest of the world as either Armistice Day or, here in Australia, Remembrance Day) (https://www.globalresearch.ca/mass-mobilization-against-trump-military-parade/5631008), there are concerns that the Democrats are hiring former members of the military and - even worse- former members of the Central Intelligence Agency. Yes, that same entity that overthrew democratically-elected governments throughout the world during the Cold War, including the overthrow of the democratically-elected Salvador Allende on 11 September 1973.

The World Socialist Web Site has a three-part series on the CIA Democrats, which can be viewed at the following links:

• Part 1: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/07/dems-m07.html
• Part 2: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/08/dems-m08.html
• Part 3: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/09/dems-m09.html

The World Socialist Web Site reported that candidates from a military background are seeking the nomination for the Democrats in forty percent of the congressional districts that are being targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2018 elections. They make up the largest single occupational group running in the Democratic primaries. If they (the Democrats nominee from a military-intelligence background) win in all forty-four districts that they are running in, then they would constitute (as a bloc) ten percent of the members of the US House of Representatives (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/09/dems-m09.html).

Below is some of the candidates from the US State Department that is running for the Democrats in the 2018 Midterms:

• Tom Malinowski, a former congressional aide and Clinton administration official, headed the Washington office of Human Rights Watch for 13 years before joining the Obama administration under Secretary of State John Kerry as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. He is seeking the Democratic nomination in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Leonard Lance.
  
• Lauren Baer was a legal adviser to both Secretaries Clinton and Kerry, as well as US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. She is now seeking the Democratic nomination in the 18th District of Florida, where her principal opponent is Pam Keith, a former judge advocate general in the US Navy and now general counsel to Florida Power & Light. Both women push additional buttons for identity politics, as Baer is openly gay and Keith is African-American.
  
• Nancy Soderberg is a longtime US foreign policy figure going back to the Clinton administration, first at the National Security Council, then as deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, then as an alternate US representative at the UN Security Council with the rank of ambassador. She has spent much of her time since then heading private overseas operations like the International Crisis Group, while playing a prominent role in the Florida Democratic Party. She is effectively unchallenged for the Democratic nomination in Florida’s 6th Congressional District (Daytona Beach), where the incumbent Republican Ron DeSantis is running for governor.
  
• Edward Meier was a senior adviser to the State Department. According to his campaign website, he “was responsible for coordinating the military-to-civilian transition in Iraq—ensuring our diplomats and aid workers would be safe and secure after the withdrawal of US troops. In this role, he traveled to Iraq on multiple official trips working closely with the US military and the Iraqi government. …” He went on to be director of policy outreach for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Meier fell short Tuesday in his bid for the Democratic nomination in the 32nd District of Texas, finishing fourth out of five Democrats running against incumbent Republican Pete Sessions in a suburban Dallas district Clinton carried over Donald Trump, even though he spent the most money.
  
• Sara Jacobs is another State Department official turned Clinton campaign aide, working on “conflict zones in East and West Africa,” particularly the campaign against Boko Haram in Nigeria, and helping to “spearhead President Obama’s efforts to improve governance in the security sector of our counterterrorism partners,” according to her campaign website. She was a foreign policy adviser to the Clinton campaign and is now seeking the Democratic nomination in California’s 49th District, where incumbent Darrell Issa is retiring.
  
  Jacobs is the best-financed Democrat in the race, as befits the granddaughter of Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, but at age 29 she would be the youngest congresswoman ever, and she has been snubbed in favor of several more experienced rivals by recent Democratic Party caucuses. One of her opponents is Douglas Applegate, a career Marine Corps judge advocate general with combat tours in Fallujah, Baghdad and Ramadi, who narrowly lost the 2016 race to Issa.
  
• Talley Sergent, yet another State Department official turned Clinton campaign aide, is running in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Charleston, against two-term incumbent Republican Alex Mooney. A former aide to Senator Jay Rockefeller, Sergent worked on slavery and sex trafficking at the State Department, then managed Clinton’s disastrous campaign in West Virginia before becoming a public relations executive for The Coca-Cola Co.

However, the mainstream media will downplay the backgrounds of these nominees, often highlighting identity (such as African-American for Pam Keith; gay in the case Lauren Baer), or a large number of women allegedly opposed to Trump's misogyny as opposed to substance. While Ne News is not opposed to having African-Americans, gays and women running for positions in politics, it is worth noting that some of these candidates, apart from serving in the military-intelligence complex, some has also worked for corporations (such as Talley Sergent, who worked as a public relations executive for The Coca-Cola Company after managing Hillary Clinton's disastrous campaign in West Virginia; and Sara Jacobs is the granddaughter of Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs).

But these candidates will not be agents for change in the United States of America, as only five of the 221 Democratic candidates reviewed in this study had links to Sanders or billed themselves as “progressive.” And when the dust settles, there will be more former CIA agents in the Democrats caucus than Sanders activists.

Of course, it is worth noting that the increasing role of the military-intelligence complex in politics and culture is not limited to the United States of America (where Donald Trump is cutting funding for the Arts, Culture and Education, and increasing funding for the military), it is happening around the world as well. Here in Australia, the political class are cutting funding for the Arts, Culture and Education and increasing funding for the military-intelligence complex (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/02/22/arts-f22.html).

Take this quote from the World Socialist Web Site in regards to the situation in Australia:

George Brandis, then arts minister in the Abbott government, made this abundantly clear in 2014 when he ordered that the Australia Council establish new grant guidelines. Any artist who rejected corporate sponsorship for political reasons should not be given Australia Council funds, he declared.

Brandis’ diktat was in response to a decision by nine visual artists who withdrew their work from the Sydney Biennale because the event was sponsored by Transfield, one of the companies running Australia’s repressive offshore asylum seeker facilities. The arts minister’s demands were echoed by various right-wing columnists and radio shock jock commentators.

Tim Blair at the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph supported Brandis and denounced the Australia Council as a “multi-million-dollar tax playpen.”

The Council, Blair said, had perpetrated a “spineless movement of grant-dependent tax sucklings” and “should be shut down, along with just about all arts funding. This would save close to $700 million per year—absolutely guaranteed—and would result in better art.”

What sort of society is being created by these demands? How distant is this from the direct censorship of anything that fails to conform to the political status quo? Or from the measures introduced in Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s fascist Italy to suppress oppositional art?

Those demanding that artists remain silent about Australia’s concentration camp-style refugee detention centres and other anti-democratic violations will soon be calling for direct censorship against anyone daring to speak out against militarism and war.

That's right, the Federal Government won't fund grants to people who reject corporate sponsorship for political reasons (such as Transfield or Serco who run concentration camps for people who flee from persecution). And this policy is supported by the extreme-right wing "journalists" who work at "news"papers such as the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun (which are owned by American media mogul Rupert Murdoch). But it is worth noting that in states such as Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania, Murdoch has a virtual monopoly when it comes to newspapers, while there is some competition in New South Wales and Victoria, but that too could become Murdoch-controlled in the future.

And while we have seen cuts to the Arts in Australia, the Federal Government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars promoting militarism (100 years of World War I), and if you watch television, you will be more likely to see advertisements promoting the Army than you would promoting community media (which is being destroyed by the Federal Government under the pretext that the future of broadcasting is online) or the latest at an arts gallery.

And on top of cutting funding to universities, postgraduate students are forced onto unemployment benefits (for studying less than 20 hours of class time a week, despite undergraduates being eligible for assistance for 8-9 hours of class time a week), forced to attend appointments with "employment agencies" (which are run by private companies) and forced to jump through hoops to get money. And if you are doing a thesis, it's Work for the Dole (for 5 DOLLARS A DAY), which has claimed the life of Josh Park-Fing two years ago, and there is a possibility that a second person had died at a Work for the Dole site in Sydney. And yet, the rich gets tax cuts and the military gets more funding to kill people in other countries. But hey, Kim Kardashian had eggs for breakfast today.

However, with the rise of alternative media outlets (such as Global Research or World Socialist Web Site), people are becoming more aware of what is happening, and the two-party system around the world is falling apart (http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/02/25/553607/US-Kasich-Republicans-Democrats-two-party-system-collapse-Trump).

So no matter what happens in the Midterms in the US (whether it is the Democrats or Republicans that controls the House of Representatives), the military-intelligence-industrial complex will win...unless we vote for progressives who will listen to the people and not look after the interests of the military-intelligence-industrial complex. The military-intelligence-industrial complex is losing, and it is time for us to make the final blow and win.