The Military-Industrial-Media Complex Comes to Charlotte for the DNC

Jingoistic platitudes were all the rage at the recently-completed Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.

Foreign Policy Magazine’s Uri Friedman reported that Democratic Party apparatchiks used Osama Bin Laden’s name, in bragging about slaughtering him, some 21 times during the DNC. By way of contrast, according to Friedman’s count, there was only one mention of Bin Laden at the Republican National Convention, which took place the week before in Tampa.

One of the more memorable lines, in making the case for another four years in office for the 2009 Nobel Prize Peace Prize winning Laureate-in-Chief, came from U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). He stated (emphasis mine),

And after more than — after more than 10 years without justice for thousands of Americans murdered on 9/11, after Mitt Romney said it would be naive to go into Pakistan to pursue the terrorists, it took President Obama, against the advice of many, to give that order and finally rid this earth of Osama bin Laden.

Ask Osama bin Laden is he is better off now than he was four years ago.

Vice President Joe Biden went so far to boast triumphantly, “Osama Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.”

This bellicose rhetoric on the part of Kerry, Biden and others moved investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill to compare the language to “jingoism that belonged in a sports bar” in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Up With Chris Hayes.” Now billing itself as the “Lean Forward” network (a hilarious premise in of itself, given that it’s owned by General Electric, a weapons manufacturer), Scahill said MSNBC’s DNC coverage might as well have been an Obama for America salon.

“Many of the media discussions, including here on MSNBC, about foreign policy during the convention felt like we were watching an Obama for America meet-up, not an actual serious critique of this president’s most egregious aspects of his foreign policy, where you do see that of the Republicans,” he said on “Up With Chris Hayes.”

General Electric has given Democratic Party candidates at a federal level $510,400 so far in the 2012 election cycle, according to Open Secrets.

Antiwar.com readers won’t be surprised by any of this. What was surprising, though, was one of the more shameless displays by the Military-Industrial-Media Complex at the “Nightly Lounge” festive gatherings hosted by the Beltway media outlet, Politico.

One of the co-sponsors of the nightly ritual was none other than BAE Systems, another weapons manufacturer and war contractor, which has given $233,000 to Democrats so far in the run up to the 2012 elections, according to Open Secrets.

The nightly fiesta also included a delicious BAE Systems-sponsored specialty drink, the “BAE Systems Countermeasure,” which I ordered while having the pleasure to attend one of the soirees.

Why will November feature an election between Liberal Hawks and Neoconservatives? Just follow the money.

As Smedley Butler wrote long ago,

War is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

Whoever resides in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue after November 6, 2012, at least one major thing is already settled: the war racket has no end in sight.