Weapons \u2018R\u2019 Us
\nMaking Warbirds Instead of Thunderbirds
\nBy William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF)<\/p>\n
Perhaps you\u2019ve heard of \u201cMakin\u2019 Thunderbirds,\u201d a hard-bitten rock & roll song by Bob Seger that I listened to 30 years ago while in college. It\u2019s about auto workers back in 1955 who were \u201cyoung and proud\u201d to be making Ford Thunderbirds. But in the early 1980s, Seger sings, \u201cthe plants have changed and you\u2019re lucky if you work.\u201d Seger caught the reality of an American manufacturing infrastructure that was seriously eroding as skilled and good-paying union jobs were cut or sent overseas, rarely to be seen again in these parts.<\/p>\n
If the U.S. auto industry has recently shown sparks of new life (though we\u2019re not making T-Birds or Mercuries or Oldsmobiles or Pontiacs or Saturns anymore), there is one form of manufacturing in which America is still dominant. When it comes to weaponry, to paraphrase Seger, we\u2019re still young and proud and makin\u2019 Predators and Reapers (as in unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones) and Eagles and Fighting Falcons (as in F-15 and F-16 combat jets), and outfitting them with the deadliest of weapons. In this market niche, we\u2019re still the envy of the world.<\/p>\n
Yes, we\u2019re the world\u2019s foremost \u201cmerchants of death,\u201d the title of a best-selling expos\u00e9 of the international arms trade published to acclaim in the U.S. in 1934. Back then, most Americans saw themselves as war-avoiders rather than as war-profiteers. The evil war-profiteers were mainly European arms makers like Germany\u2019s Krupp, France\u2019s Schneider, or Britain\u2019s Vickers. <\/p>\n
Not that America didn\u2019t have its own arms merchants. As the authors of Merchants of Death noted, early on our country demonstrated a \u201cYankee propensity for extracting novel death-dealing knickknacks from [our] peddler\u2019s pack.\u201d Amazingly, the Nye Committee in the U.S. Senate devoted 93 hearings from 1934 to 1936 to exposing America\u2019s own \u201cgreedy munitions interests.\u201d Even in those desperate depression days, a desire for profit and jobs was balanced by a strong sense of unease at this deadly trade, an unease reinforced by the horrors of and hecatombs of dead from the First World War. …more<\/a><\/p>\n