Taking steps to fill the void that has plagued the American military-industrial complex since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced Tuesday that the U.S. will hold enemy tryouts next week. …<\/p>\n
The decision to hold enemy auditions was made during an Oct. 16 meeting at the Pentagon attended by a number of top military-industrial-complex officials, including Albright, Defense Secretary William Cohen, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Strom Thurmond (R-SC) and Lockheed Martin CEO Thomas Reuthven.<\/p>\n
“Everyone was of the opinion that an enemy was needed\u2013and fast,” said Reuthven, whose company has laid off 14,000 employees since the end of the Cold War. “Nobody wins when there’s peace.”<\/strong><\/p>\nGeneral Electric CEO Jack Welch, who was also at the meeting, agreed. “Our profits are down 43 percent from 10 years ago. We sold more tritium hydrogen-bomb ICBM\/MIRV triggers in 1988 than in the last six years combined,” he said. “Something had to be done.” …<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters, McDonnell Douglas CEO Richard Klingbell said the State Department should have foreseen the possibility of peace and taken steps to avoid it years ago.<\/strong><\/p>\n“For decades, we took Soviet aggression and the arms race for granted,” Klingbell said. “We failed to realize that one day it might all come to an end. We failed to sow the seeds of future foreign discord, for our children’s sake. Thankfully, though, we’re finally setting things straight. We’re finally remembering that to make it in this world, you’ve got to have enemies.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For those befuddled about the “Global War on Terror” and the attacks on US embassies\/consulates in Libya and Egypt, perhaps this bit of fun from The Onion in 1998 might help: State Department To Hold Enemy Tryouts Next Week (excerpts below; go to link for full piece)(emphasis added) Taking steps to fill the void that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4606,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1338,66888],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corporations","category-corporatism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tokyotom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tokyotom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tokyotom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tokyotom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4606"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tokyotom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tokyotom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tokyotom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tokyotom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tokyotom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tokyotom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}