{"id":38151,"date":"2021-10-05T06:56:14","date_gmt":"2021-10-05T14:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=38151"},"modified":"2021-10-05T06:56:50","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T14:56:50","slug":"war-is-a-multi-trillion-dollar-racket-and-the-pentagon-knows-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/05\/war-is-a-multi-trillion-dollar-racket-and-the-pentagon-knows-it\/","title":{"rendered":"War Is a Multi-Trillion-Dollar Racket and the Pentagon Knows It: Robert Scheer interviews Andrew Cockburn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i><a href=\"https:\/\/scheerpost.com\">From ScheerPost<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kcrw.com\/embed-player?api_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kcrw.com%2Fculture%2Fshows%2Fscheer-intelligence%2Fwar-racket-pentago-andrew-cockburn%2Fplayer.json&#038;autoplay=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"140\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless=\"seamless\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Twenty years since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the human and financial cost of the United States\u2019 failed \u201cWar on Terror\u201d is plain to see: as one headline put it, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22654167\/cost-deaths-war-on-terror-afghanistan-iraq-911\">20 years, $6 trillion, 900,000 lives<\/a>.\u201d The estimates of lives lost and trillions spent vary throughout media sources, but even the most conservative estimates speak for themselves. Yet, while the Pentagon billed America\u2019s latest imperial endeavors as an imperative series of operations aimed at protecting U.S. national security, there is a simpler, far more cynical and obscene motivation behind these forever wars, according to the Washington editor of <i>Harper\u2019s Magazine<\/i>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/andrewmcockburn\">Andrew Cockburn<\/a>: money. <\/p>\n<p>On this week\u2019s installment of \u201cScheer Intelligence,\u201d Cockburn joins host Robert Scheer to discuss his most recent book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Spoils-War-Profit-American-Machine\/dp\/1839763655\"><i>Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine<\/i><\/a>, released by Verso Books on September 21. Consolidating years of thorough reporting on the Pentagon, including bombshell interviews with military insiders, Cockburn comes to a scathing conclusion about the U.S. military. At the start of the podcast, Scheer, who has written extensively about the Military Industrial Complex, including in his book on defense spending, <i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Pornography-Power-Defense-Spending-Must\/dp\/0446505269\/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=robert+scheer+the+pornography+of+power&amp;qid=1631785798&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1\">The Pornography of Power<\/a><\/i>, recounts the many military failures that Cockburn documents in \u201cSpoils of War,\u201d including making useless weapons. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs this really the gang that can\u2019t shoot straight?\u201d asks Scheer. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a way yes, but the question is whether they care about shooting straight,\u201d responds Cockburn. \u201cThe American defense system has only a coincidental relationship with actual defense. They don\u2019t really care that much about it. What they care about is the money. Defense spending, developing weapons, and doing what they do, is only a means to that end.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>The <i>Harpers\u2019 Magazine<\/i> editor then points to the trillions of dollars the defense industry made during the Afghanistan War as evidence that, while it may look to the rest of us as a failure, it was a \u201cfailed war\u201d that was wildly successful when measured by dollars made as opposed to lives lost. The two journalists then go on to discuss the crazily dangerous threat America\u2019s drive for increasing its unmatched nuclear weapons arsenal poses to the survival of the human race. <\/p>\n<p>Listen to the full discussion between Cockburn and Scheer as they go on to examine the new high-tech threats Washington is drumming up to justify unconscionable defense spending, as well as the full extent of the U.S. military\u2019s deadly infighting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From ScheerPost Twenty years since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the human and financial cost of the United States\u2019 failed \u201cWar on Terror\u201d is plain to see: as one headline put it, \u201c20 years, $6 trillion, 900,000 lives.\u201d The estimates of lives lost and trillions spent vary throughout media sources, but even the most conservative [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":492,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-38151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/492"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38151"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38154,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38151\/revisions\/38154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38151"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=38151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}