[Infowarrior] - Defense Industry Shill: Give Lockheed Credit for Bin Laden Kill

[Richard Forno]

Danger Room (Wired.com)
June 25, 2012

Defense Industry Shill: Give Lockheed Credit for Bin Laden Kill

By Spencer Ackerman

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/lexington-seals-corporations/

Shed a tear for the executives at Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman
and the rest of the sprawling defense industry. Yes, they benefit from
billions in taxpayer dollars while millions of Americans struggle to make
ends meet. But they’re not getting the praise they deserve for killing Osama
bin Laden. Wait, what?

That is an actual argument made by Loren Thompson of the Lexington
Institute, a Beltway research group that reliably represents the interests
of defense contractors. Thompson wants President Obama to tip his cap to the
defense companies whose hardware and software SEAL Team Six and the CIA used
to kill Osama bin Laden. “[I]s it really asking too much for some sort of
official acknowledgement of the role that private enterprise played in the
Bin Laden raid?” Thompson asks in a Monday op-ed.

Boeing’s Chinook helos, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman’s sensors, Lockheed
Martin’s stealth drone — all these things the SEALs carried, Thompson
writes, so it’s time the defense industry got its due.

Yes, the SEALs had impressive gear for the raid, from stealth helicopters to
powerful satellites. But if you gave, say, me every piece of equipment that
the SEALs had, I regret to inform you that bin Laden would still be alive.
Louisville Slugger did not win last year’s World Series. Mario Manningham’s
cleats did not keep him in bounds for one of the greatest receptions in
Super Bowl history. Even the haters must recognize that LeBron James’ NBA
Finals performance is not attributable to Nike or Gatorade.

In truth, defense corporations receive a different form of acknowledgement
for their services: giant Defense Department contracts. Unlike SEALs, the
defense industry’s reward isn’t always based on performance.

And if Thompson wants to give “some sort of official acknowledgement” to
defense corporations, why stop there? Why not honor the welders who
assembled the helicopters; the designers of the algorithms that underlay the
sensor processors; or the laborers who mined the metals from the earth
contained in the stuff the SEALs used on the raid? Alternatively, why not
credit the defense industry’s gear for the success of routine patrols in
Afghanistan?

Thompson is a defense consultant for profit as well as a military analyst,
an inherent conflict of interest. His writing, like that of Lexington’s,
more broadly, consistently cheerleads for the defense industry. And it’s
especially conspicuous that Thompson’s op-ed is published on the same day
that Politico reports Lockheed Martin is threatening to throw thousands of
people out of work before a presidential election unless Congress rolls back
hundreds of billions of dollars in defense cuts that its failed
deficit-reduction gambit teed up.

The defense industry makes valuable things for troops, and it makes dubious
things. It offers the promise of future US military supremacy and
overpriced, lucrative boondoggles, sometimes all at once. It acts selflessly
and it acts shabbily. If the industry feels slighted for a lack of public
recognition in any military operation, they’ll just have to console
themselves with giant stacks of taxpayer money.

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