by Tony Seed (News & Analysis, Crescent International Vol. 42, No. 10, Muharram, 1435)
At a time when the US economy is struggling, President Barack Obama has embarked on another massive spending spree indicating who he ultimately answers to. By launching a new generation of aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford, at a price of $14 billion a piece, the three aircraft carriers will set the US economy into more debt.
At a time of massive cuts in social spending, a record debt of $17 trillion, a decaying economy, and mass poverty throughout the world, the Obama presidency has launched its lead ship in the US Navy’s next class of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers at an estimated cost of some $14 billion.
Described by the Associated Press as “the most technologically advanced aircraft carrier the United States has built” and in the same breath called “truly a technological marvel,” by US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the USS Gerald Ford was inaugurated on November 11 at Norfolk, Virginia. The widely-publicized ceremony was attended by 20,000 spectators at the Newport News Shipbuilding yard. Norfolk is the headquarters of the US Atlantic Second Fleet, whose commander also heads the NATO fleet.
The modular built, nuclear aircraft carrier — also dubbed the “deadliest” ever built — is a lethal, offensive creation. Capable of long deployments thousands of miles from the American continent, the super-carrier constitutes a virtual seaborne military base that can lie like a fortified island just outside the territorial sea of the target country.
The US has already designated the countries which the USS Ford will menace. The “New $13 Billion Aircraft Carrier Is Part of Nation’s Strategic Shift Toward Asia,” proclaimed the Wall Street Journal in a headline. “The Ford will be one of the leading US warships to be part of the continuing efforts to shift political and military power to Asia, where China and North Korea are viewed as growing challengers to American power around the world.” China, incidentally, has just one used aircraft carrier, bought second-hand from the Ukraine and now undergoing sea trials. Until the Ford comes online, the US Navy boasts a 10-carrier fleet following the USS Enterprise’s deactivation last year.
“She will carry unmanned aircraft, joint strike fighters, and she will deploy lasers,” the American admiral boasted. It is designed to get more fighter planes in the sky in less time and to be ready to incorporate unmanned aircraft into its air wing, AP reports. With electromagnetic catapults and an enhanced 5-acre flight deck, it has two runways that can handle significantly more flights than current aircraft carriers. It will be equipped with stealth technology to help cloak its movements. It is designed to carry 75 aircraft, including the F-35s when the advanced jet fighters are ready. It will be manned by 4,660 sailors.
The imperial project is the first carrier redesign in four decades and is scheduled to join the Pacific Fleet in 2016. It will be followed by the John F. Kennedy and new Enterprise carriers. In contrast, the USS Gridley was launched in the port of Miami in February, 2007 at a cost of a mere $1 billion. That warship was also deployed to the Pacific Fleet.
The new vessel was baptized with high ideals bearing the name of the former Republican president — the only resident and vice president of the United States who was not elected to either office — by his daughter Bales Ford. In a stunning rewrite of history, she declared without contradiction by any media, “You healed the nation (referring to the self-serving title of Ford’s memoirs – TS). You gave the American people a president that was a shining beacon of integrity at the helm,” she said.
“Integrity at the helm”
The ship’s motto is thus of course “integrity at the helm.” Ford, who was appointed by Richard Nixon to take his place, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, ascended the presidency and proclaimed that, “Our long national nightmare is over.” Ford gave Nixon a “blanket” pardon for his dealings in the Watergate scandal — which also forgave anything else Nixon might have ever done. When Nixon’s crimes are mentioned, what people are led to think of was the wiretapping of the Democrats before the election. What is usually omitted from the official record are Nixon’s war crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. This is what was meant when they say Ford “healed the nation,” a slogan being revived in the present climate of deepening factional warfare in the US ruling class. Ford served as president until Jimmy Carter took the oval office in January of 1977. Ford died on December 26, 2006, at the age of 93, followed by weeks of self-serving eulogies in the media.
According to an article published a day later by mediamouse.org, an independent website in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Ford’s home base, “Ford supported the repressive government in the Philippines in its counterinsurgency war against rebels. During the coup in Argentina in 1976, Ford supported the generals who took power and slaughtered thousands of dissidents. Under Ford, the US provided millions of dollars in military aid to the right-wing movement UNITA in Angola. He negotiated military bases in Spain with the fascist dictator Franco. Ford maintained the illegal terror war and embargo against Cuba and was president during the final days of the US occupation of South Vietnam.”
Ford is an apt name for a warship to be deployed against the peoples of East Asia. “Probably the foreign policy that best defines Ford was his support of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor [in 1975],” the article continued.
In December 2001, the National Security Archives finally obtained declassified documentation of what took place at a meeting between Ford, Henry Kissinger, and Indonesian President Suharto on December 5 and 6 in 1975. The documents reveal that Ford and Kissinger not only knew of the Indonesian plans to invade East Timor, but that they offered explicit diplomatic and military support for the invasion, which became a multi-year bloody genocidal campaign. Word of the invasion got out quickly. According to Noam Chomsky’s The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, Ford and Kissinger were confronted by reporters when they landed in Hawaii later that day. Ford said “we’ll talk about that later,” but his press secretary Ron Nessen later gave a statement that read, “The United States is always concerned about the use of violence. The President hopes it can be resolved peacefully” (p.156). Ford’s concern quickly led to more military support as the Indonesian Army massacred East Timorese peasants. Details of the slaughter were discussed on Democracy Now at the time of Ford’s death, the mediamouse.org reports.
Cheney and Rumsfeld again
On hand at the commissioning were former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, architects of the “War on Terror” and of the “transformation” program of the Pentagon and the NATO bloc, who also spoke honouring Ford. According to this 2011 Brown University’s “Costs of war” project, that war has now cost up to $4 trillion and 225,000 people “by a very conservative estimate” in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, including men and women in uniform, contractors, and civilians. (The study does not include Homeland Security, the NSA, or planned modernization for the US military.) The bulk of these fantastic sums is gravy for the financial oligarchy and devastation in terms of the production of real goods and services for the economy, “Because the war has been financed almost entirely by borrowing, $185 billion in interest has already been paid on war spending, and another $1 trillion could accrue in interest alone through 2020.”
Northrop Grumman and class privilege
What is not being reported so widely by the Pentagon info machine is the fact that the USS Ford (as with the Canadian warship shipbuilding program) has run into serious cost overruns of over $2 billion. Further, the warship is only 70% complete. The Ford will not actually be able to get underway on sea trials until 2015 or 2016.
The militarization of the economy takes funds out of the economy and concentrates them in the hands of a few. Newport News Shipbuilding is a subsidiary of Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., a division of Northrop Grumman (which reported revenues of $25.2 billion in 2012). The USS Ford also is the first of three new aircraft carriers being built by Huntington Ingalls that together are expected to cost more than $43 billion. Northrop Grumman, the arms monopoly and well-known drone manufacturer being enriched by the record expenditure, is and has been under investigation for everything from allegedly giving the US Navy faulty aircraft, to one of its subsidiaries turning over source code for Air Force One to the Russians. How US militarization of the economy is dominated by class privilege is illustrated by the fact that fully one-tenth of the $10 million in US campaign fund contributions made by military monopolies comes from Northrop, not to mention the corrupt list of Bush administration officials who have been stakeholders in that corporation and used their positions for self-serving benefit. In July, 2013 CNBC reported that Northrop Grumman shares were up, “that surpassed analysts’ expectations” and even exceeded 2003 earnings at the onset of the war against Iraq.
In contrast, the people demand an anti-war government and a pro-social policy whereby money should be mobilized for the development of the economy and for investments in public services and social programs to guarantee the well-being of all and their rights, and to humanize the social and natural environment.
Tony Seed is a journalist, publisher and international relations expert.
