We No Longer Live in a Functioning Democracy- the Industrial Military Complex Controls

Neoliberalism K

1NC Shell

We no longer live in a functioning democracy- the industrial military complex controls educational models and produces a cycle of endless warfare that the aff can never resolve. Their attempt at a simulation of the USFG only hides the insidiousness of a political system that no longer serves its citizenry.

Hedges 15

(Chris, American journalist, activist, & author, best-selling author of several books including War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002)- a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009), Death of the Liberal Class (2010), “Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt,” pg. 1-2)/Dhruv

We live in a revolutionary moment. The disastrous economic and political experiment that attempted to organize human behavior around the dictates of the global marketplace has failed. The promised prosperity that was to have raised the living standards of workers through trickle-down economics has been exposed as a lie. A tiny global oligarchy has amassed obscene wealth, while the engine of unfettered corporate capitalism plunders resources; exploits cheap, unorganized labor; and creates pliable, corrupt governments that abandon the common good to serve corporate profit. The relentless drive by the fossil fuel industry for profits is destroying the ecosystem, threatening the viability of the human species. And no mechanisms to institute genuine reform or halt the corporate assault are left within the structures of power, which have surrendered to corporate control.The citizen has become irrelevant.He or she can participate in heavily choreographed elections, but the demands of corporations and banks are paramount.History has amply demonstrated that the seizure of power by a tiny cabal, whether a political party of a clique of oligarchs, leads to despotism. Governments that cater exclusively to a narrow interest group and redirect the machinery of state to furthering the interests of that interest group are no longer capable of responding rationally in times of crisis. Blindly serving their masters, they acquiesce to the looting of state treasuries to bail out corrupt financial houses and banks while ignoring chronice unemployment and underemployment, along with stagnant or declining wages, crippling debt peonage, a collapsing infrastructure, and the millions left destitute and often homeless by deceptive mortgages and foreclosures.A bankrupt liberal class, holding up values it does nothing to defend, discredits itself as well as the purported liberal values. In this moment, a political, economic, or natural disaster-in short a crisis will ignite unrest, lead to instability, and see the state carry out draconian forms of repression to maintain “order.” This is what lies ahead.

The aff’s reduction in military presence only masks the insidiousness of the the industrial military complex which thrives on perpetual war. Reduction in ______, only escalates violence and conflict in other places meaning the aff does not solve

Turley 14

(Jonathan, Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and has testified before Congress on the dangerous expansion of presidential powers, “Big Money behind war: the military-industrial complex,” Al-Jazeera

In January 1961, US President Dwight D Eisenhower used his farewell address to warn the nation of what he viewed as one of its greatest threats: the military-industrial complex composed of military contractors and lobbyists perpetuating war. Eisenhower warned that "an immense military establishment and a large arms industry" had emerged as a hidden force in US politics and that Americans "must not fail to comprehend its grave implications". The speech may have been Eisenhower's most courageous and prophetic moment. Fifty years and some later, Americans find themselves in what seems like perpetual war. No sooner do we draw down on operations in Iraq than leaders demand an intervention in Libya or Syria or Iran. While perpetual warconstitutes perpetual losses for families, and ever expanding budgets, it also represents perpetual profits for a new and larger complex of business and government interests. The new military-industrial complex is fuelled by a conveniently ambiguous and unseen enemy: the terrorist. Former President George W Bush and his aides insisted on calling counter-terrorism efforts a "war". This concerted effort by leaders like former Vice President Dick Cheney (himself the former CEO of defence-contractor Halliburton) was not some empty rhetorical exercise. Not only would a war maximise the inherent powers of the president, but it would maximise the budgets for military and homeland agencies. This new coalition of companies, agencies, and lobbyists dwarfs the system known by Eisenhower when he warned Americans to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial complex". Ironically, it has had some of its best days under President Barack Obama who has radically expanded drone attacks and claimed that he alone determines what a war is for the purposes of consulting Congress.

<Insert Topic Specific/Relevant Link (s)

Their political simulation is NOT “real world” and does not influence public policy—which is controlled by defense contractors intent on permanent war. Making up pretend scenarios and pretending as though a war is going to wipe us out only makes ANY sense is because you as a judge give it legitimacy. Refusing your paradigm as a policymaker and instead embracing anrevolutionary ethic in this round is key to liberation.

Hedges 15

The realization that our expectations for a better future have been obliterated not only for ourselves but more importantly for our children, starts the chain reaction. There is a loss of faith in established systems of power. There is a weakening among the elites of the will to rule. Government becomes despised. Rage looks for outlets. The nation goes into crisis. Vladimir Lenin identified the components that came together to foster a successful revolt: The fundamental law of revolution, which has been confirmed by all revolutions, and particulary by all three Russian revolutions in the twentieth century, is as follows: it is not enough for revolution that the exploited and oppressed masses and demand changes, what is required for revolution is that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. Only when the “lower classes” do not want the old way, and when the upper classes” cannot carry on in the old way—only then can revolution win. I have covered, as a foreign correspondent, revolts, insurgencies, and revolutions, including a guerilla conflict in the 1980s in Central America; the civil wars in Algeria, the Sudan, and Yemen; the two Palestinian uprisings (or intifadas); the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Romania; and the war in the former Yugoslavia. I have seen that despotic regimes in the final stages of collapse internally. Once the foot soldiers of elite—the police, the courts, the civil servants, the press, the intellectual class, and finally the army—no longer have the will to defend the regime is finished. When these state organs are ordered to carry out acts of repression-such as clearing people from parks and arresting or even shooting demonstrators—and refuse their orders, the old regime crumbles. The veneer of power appears untouched before a revolution, but the internal rot, unseen by the outside world, steadily hollows out the edifice state. And when dying regimes collapse, they do so with dizzying speed. When the aging East German dictator Erich Honecker, who had been in power for thirteen years, was unable to get paratroopers to fire on protesting crowds in Leipzig in the fall of 1989, the regime was finished. He lasted another week in power. The same refusal to employ violence doomed the Communist governments in Prague and Bucharest. In Romania the army general on whom the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had depended to crush protests was the general who condemned him to death in a hasty show trial on Christmas Day. Tinisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak also lost power once they could no longer count on the security forces and the military to fire into crowds. Historians and political philosophers have often described these episodic revolutionary moments in human history, which are not confined by national borders, as waves. Walter Benjamin, in his essay about Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities, makes the same point. The novel is about the decay of institutions, and most importantly the ideas and rituals that sustain them, lost their hold over the imagination. In these moments, Benjamin argues, the mythic and the ideas of visionary cause people to abandon established mores and traditions to revolt. Benjamin noted that the role of the critic, like that of the rebel, is to steer the reader or the population, toward the mysterious forces embodied ingreat art, or in revolutionary visions.Language restricts both art and the possibilities of re-creating human society. In these movements, it matters more what is felt, Benjamin understood, than what is said.Immanuel Kant made much the same distinction between transcendental and critical forces in human existence. Once the transcendental is liberated through the decay of institutions, it harnesses a mythical power or vision that can inspire people to tear down the decayed structures that confine them.Revolt by the populace in one nation, inspired by these transcendental forces, inspires revolt in another nation. The important point that Benjamin and Kant make is that revolutions, whether in art of in society, are about emotion. These moments engender not simply new ideas but new feelings about established power and human possibilities.

Topic Specific Links

L – Persian Gulf/Middle East

Reduction of troops in the Persian Gulf plays right into the hands of the U.S industrial-military-complex – which will direct its effort elsewhere and ramp up military expenditures fueling more wars and violence in places like South America

McAteer 11

(Michael, instructional specialist, BridgeValley Community & Technical College, “We (Heart) Afghanistan, For Now,”

I have a great deal of sympathy for the people of Afghanistan. While I have never visited the country, whatever footage I have seen in the news, in documentaries, like Restrepo and other clips, it just looks miserable. Desperately poor people, living in nearly uninhabitable terrain with housing and infrastructure that looks about as desperate as can be. On top of not having anything that anyone would want, they have been (nearly) constantly invaded or imposed upon by outside forces since Biblical times, but most recently (recently being the past 30 years) it has been Russia and now us. That has to suck! Imagine being a young afghan boy or girl who has never known their country to not be engaged in full-on war by foreign “occupiers” in the United States and “invaders’ by the Russians, and it isn’t over yet. That means that there is another generation of Afghan children being born into war. I realize that this predicament is not singular to Afghanistan, that children in Iraq, Congo, Bosnia and Sudan are also born into warfare and it appears that some of their eventual children will grow up in future wars, given the way things are looking so far this century.But, while Afghanistan is technically our first bout of war overseas this century, it is merely our latest “military crush” on a foreign soil since the 1950’s. President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously and frankly spoke to the American people in his final speech in office, January 16, 1961, that…we (American people) have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.What president Eisenhower was afraid of was the creation of the “industrial-military complex” and thecreation of building, staff and administration whose sole purpose is to plan for future military conflict. It looks like President Eisenhower’s nightmare has risen off of the table of Dr. Frankenstein and has gone down to the global village to menace the townspeople. The towns people in this analogy are not really that far from the Afghani, Iraqi and Vietnamese populations which we have “occupied” since the time of this address in 1961. As a country, we have failed to adhere to Eisenhower’s message and our now beholden to a industrial-military complex which can barely refuse to cut back on spending of any sort, because it would cost American jobs. Case in point, the state of Wisconsin has gone from 48th to 16th in defense contracts in 2011. Why Wisconsin, why now? The short answer is the U.S. Army. The Army has bought $10 billion dollars worth of contracts from Department of Defense in 2010, (Journal Sentinel). From beef to “hot-weather boots”, millions of dollars were awarded for Wisconsin companies. If you are a Wisconsin or Arkansas or Georgia congressman, you are a big winner in your district for bringing home those much needed jobs, and no one once to see them go away once they are in place. So, not unlike Tiger Beat magazine, searching the horizon for the next teen heart throb, the Pentagon has to keep their proverbial heart-shaped eyes peeled looking for the next military sweetheart to direct our industrial-military assets toward. Like, a long time ago…like, the U.S. was so into Viet Nam…like hardcore…Okay, I will drop the teeny bop tone in explaining what I am attempting to say. In the 1960’s, during the cold war, and being “so over” South Korea, we just had to have Vietnam - OMG! We got embroiled in a very murky land war which was quite costly in lives and treasure and a war that we have nothing to show for. Once the newness of our military love affair with that armed conflict wore off, we had to move on. Unfortunately, Russia was not into us at all, which didn’t make them a likely target for our military love machine. We played the field in South America in the 1980s with Panama and Equidor but never really found a home for our forces, until stars again filled our Pentagon’s eyes in 1990. Our once and future love, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. It was like being asked to the prom by the boy that all of the girls want - our military complex could eat off of that conflict for a long time! We did, for a while, but Saddam shrank away and we were left holding our military hats in hand with nowhere to go. Finally, September 11th came and by 2002, our military was back in the game. Afghanistan won our hearts, minds, federal budget (billions of dollars a week to fund) and all of the rest…and we are still in love! Afghanistan also has the added benefit of dysfunctional partners in Iraq and Pakistan who are also very sexy to our military planners. Those two countries are so militarily co-dependent that it looks like we will never be breaking up with them…ever. We never really left the dessert the first time from the Kuwaiti conflict and we are building permanent bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. I left my heart in Kabul…I can here Tony Bennett croon. But, if history is any indicator, our industrial-military complex is fickle. Here today, gone tomorrow. Call it, flavor of the decade. “Oh yeah baby…I am into you. I will be with you forever Afghanistan…” But talk is cheap. Just ask Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq (soon) and Russia.So, who is next on the U.S. heart throb list? If you ask me, we aren’t done with South America. We love those exotic middle-eastern contracts, but I suspect that we will be looking for something south of the border. Somewhere with lots of exploitable resources like ethanol, coffee, sugar and cocaine and a nice strip of mountaintop real estate to build a couple of first class bases. Teens are notoriously impulsive when it comes to love, they lack the maturity to appreciate what it takes to make responsible decisions which might affect them long term - like not wanting to go to college to pursue their career as a rock star. President Eisenhower was loosely speaking about this in his final address, you don’t have to take my word for it, listen to him… Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.