Dismantling the Empire

commentator calls “hero inflation” and Shakespeare’s Henry V called “remembering with advantages.” He now claims to have been a military hero deserving of the Congressional Medal of Honor (which he didn’t get), even though he acknowledges that his aerial dogfighting had little effect on the course of the war. Cunningham has created a company called Top Gun Enterprises that sells lithographs of himself in his pilot’s outfit and books he has written about his Navy exploits. His company’s website claims that the 1986 film Top Gun starring Tom Cruise was actually about Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

Cunningham’s comments in the Congressional Record dwell heavily on his Vietnam role and the military. For example, on April 22, 2004, he said to the House of Representatives: “Mr. Speaker, I was shot down over North Vietnam. I can remember the anger and the disparaging remarks that John Kerry made about our service. I remember the rage in all of us from his slander. . . . Even today, John Kerry votes against defense, the military, veterans, and intelligence bills that would enforce the safe return of our men and women. We do not need someone that would vote like a Jane Fonda as commander in chief.”

He persisted in such attacks on the patriotism of Kerry, notably in an interview with Rush Limbaugh on August 17, 2004. Here’s an excerpt:

DUKE: It’s not about Vietnam. It’s about what he did in 1971, bad-mouthing all of us, calling us war criminals. It’s his votes since he’s been in the Senate, he ran on cutting defense and intel, after the first Trade Center bombing, he tried to cut intelligence $9 billion. And it’s about who is going to protect my family, my daughters, my son, my wife in the next few years, and to me, it’s not Senator Kerry. Rush, if Senator Kerry was a Republican running, I would oppose him.

RUSH: Congressman, thanks very much for the call. It really is an honor to hear from you. I know your history and I’ve been very impressed with it, and you’re one of the guys still taking a lot of shots because of who you are in Washington. You stand up to ’em and we all appreciate it, we honor your service here. Thanks very much.

DUKE: Life is good, Rush.

RUSH: It is. That’s Duke Cunningham, congressman from California, the first fighter ace in Vietnam, five MiGs shot down.

Cunningham’s most famous naval exploit actually occurred after he left the Navy and was a freshman congressman. In 1991, Cunningham was a member of the board of directors of the Tailhook Association, a private group of active duty, reserve, and retired Navy and Marine Corps aviators, defense contractors, and their supporters. (The name “Tailhook” comes from the device that halts aircraft when they land on aircraft carriers.) The Navy used to provide free office space for the association at San Diego’s Miramar Naval Air Station, and lent out its fleet of passenger aircraft to fly attendees to Tailhook’s yearly meetings in Las Vegas. At the 35th Annual Tailhook Symposium (September 5–7, 1991) at the Las Vegas Hilton, a meeting that Cunningham attended in an official capacity, drunken fliers, joined by the secretary of the Navy, groped, stripped, and mauled some eighty-three women in the hotel, according to the report of the Department of Defense’s Inspector General.

Since that time, Cunningham has devoted massive amounts of time and energy to arguing that what went on was just good clean fun and great male bonding. In congressional hearings, he has gone out of his way to undercut official programs to combat sexual harassment and discrimination in the military. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune of March 11, 1998, he referred to such efforts as “B.S.” and “political correctness.” In 1998, after Cunningham had been operated on for prostate cancer, he commented to the press, “The only person who would enjoy a prostate biopsy is Barney Frank.” His fellow congressman Barney Frank (D- MA), who is openly gay, replied, “Cunningham seems to be more obsessed with homosexuality than most homosexuals.”

Cunningham has only one string to his mandolin: the military-industrial complex and its interests. He has virtually no record at all on such issues as illegal immigration, water resources, ocean pollution, agriculture, mass transit, renewable energy, and unemployment. Whenever he takes up subjects such as environmental conservation and education, it is to reduce or halt federal funds that might make a difference. Citizens of the 50th District are not uninterested in national security, but they have a much broader range of needs and concerns than has ever crossed the mind of their current representative. As one of Cunningham’s constituents, I hope we send to the House of Representatives a person who actually knows something about the communities of northern San Diego County. A Francine Busby victory this November would cause a political realignment in San Diego County comparable to Loretta Sanchez’s 1996 defeat of “B 1” Bob Dornan in Orange County’s 46th District.^*

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* In November 2004, Cunningham soundly defeated Busby with 59 percent of the vote to her 37 percent, but what voters did not do, his own greed did. In 2005, the Republican resigned from Congress after pleading guilty to taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. This “unparalleled corruption,” in the words of federal prosecutors, included his use of a “bribe menu” on congressional letterhead that spelled out the kickbacks required for him to steer contracts to various businesses. In 2006, Cunningham was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for bribery and tax evasion. That June, Republican Brian Bilbray, a former congressman, defeated Busby in a contentious special election race for Cunningham’s seat. In a November rematch, Bilbray bested Busby a second time. In early 2007, Carole Lam, the U.S. attorney in San Diego who prosecuted Cunningham, was forced to resign by the Bush administration. The system of “earmarks” used by Cunningham and others in Congress to fund favorite projects and the powerful lobbying efforts of the military-industrial complex remain in place.

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WE HAVE THE MONEY (IF ONLY WE DIDN’T WASTE IT ON THE DEFENSE BUDGET)

September 28, 2008

There has been much moaning, air sucking, and outrage about the $700 billion that the U.S. government is thinking of throwing away on rich New York bankers who have been ripping us off for the past few years and then letting greed drive their businesses into a variety of ditches. In fact, we dole out similar amounts of money every year in the form of payoffs to the armed services, the military-industrial complex, and powerful senators and representatives allied with the Pentagon.

On Wednesday, September 24, right in the middle of the fight over billions of taxpayer dollars slated to bail out Wall Street, the House of Representatives passed a $612 billion defense authorization bill for 2009 without a murmur of public protest or any meaningful press comment at all. (The New York Times gave the matter only three short paragraphs buried in a story about another appropriations measure.)

The defense bill includes $68.6 billion to pursue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is only a down payment on the full yearly cost of these wars. (The rest will be raised through future supplementary bills.) It also included a 3.9 percent pay raise for military personnel, and $5 billion in pork-barrel projects not even requested by the administration or the secretary of defense. It also fully funds the Pentagon’s request for a radar site in the Czech Republic, a harebrained scheme sure to infuriate the Russians just as much as a Russian missile base in Cuba once infuriated us. The whole bill passed by a vote of 392–39 and will fly through the Senate, where a similar bill has already been approved. And no one will even think to mention it in the same breath with the discussion of bailout funds for dying investment banks and the like.

This is pure waste. Our annual spending on “national security”—meaning the defense budget plus all military expenditures hidden in the budgets for the departments of Energy, State, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, the CIA, and numerous other places in the executive branch—already exceeds a trillion dollars, an amount larger than that of all other national defense budgets combined. Not only was there no significant media coverage of this latest