Hell’s Angel On A Trojan Horse?

‘Don’t Shoot’

“The flight is 50 miles out…30 miles…10 miles, do you still want us to uphold the ‘don’t shoot’ order?” The young man dutifully reporting to Vice President Dick Cheney, asked him that question, as the plane that took off from Boston, heading west bound for L. A., returned, flew east past the Pentagon, did a sharp u-turn, and, slammed into the Pentagon building from the East, unchallenged, in what should have been the most secure, most heavily defended airspace on the face of this planet!

A Pretext for War

The end of the Vietnam War and the end of the Cold War saw a major shake-up of American war-related industries. That shakeup forced some to close their doors, or, to revamp—meaning others could survive only through mergers or acquisitions—or, by finding other uses and markets for their livelihoods. Aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas is a prime example. Douglas’s insistence and focus on building and selling into a war-driven economy, left it with no market for its primarily military-oriented planes, in an era of perceived ‘peace’. Rival Boeing, whose emphasis for many years had been commercial, enhanced its survival by its acquisition of Douglas. A representative from Rockwell International appeared once in a news interview, in which he discussed how his company would survive in part by making an otherwise strictly military technology available to the private sector. Out of that decision grew our current gps tracking systems, including the satellite units commonly used today by heavy trucking companies (and other industries, including law enforcement) to communicate with, dispatch and control their drivers. Rockwell provided much needed information and technology that contributed in one way or the other to our current information age and cell phone viability. Thus, Rockwell was one of those well-known, top-tier players (you might say) who found a way to survive. These were several of the lucky ones.

Long story short, lucrative sources of income—inclusive of fuels, weapons, vehicles of all types and, living accommodations—that produced many an American wealthy ‘fat-cat,’ the overwhelming majority of them white, was drying up. With military downsizing and base closings worldwide (mid ‘80s through the early ‘90s), the war industry was hemorrhaging money, while Uncle Sam, ostensibly, was saving. There had to be a remedy. The only real solution was…gulp!…war! War, however, needs a stimulus, or a pretext—somebody to fight, and, a fighting reason (somebody to blame, in order to induce the general public to bend willingly to the demand for the sacrifice and the blood of their sons and daughters upon the altars of greed!). With the Korean War not officially over, but, somewhere on the backburner out of sight (tensions high; threats looming during the early ‘80s), the Vietnam war books closed, and the Cold War chapter ended (as of ’91, or so), the war plate from which the industry feasted was empty, the military’s war menu shredded. The war industry faced certain starvation. With nothing on the plate, you don’t build, therefore, you have nothing to sell. No selling means no income.