Military Industrial Complex

I found myself on the road this morning, with Kate by my side, driving toward Kathleen, Georgia, a small community just north of Perry, just south of Warner Robins. Kathleen was once a small hamlet, a farming community, a few wooden farmhouses interspersed between the peach trees and the pecans.

Now it is a series of residential communities, as Houston County is transformed into one of the more vibrant residential communities in Georgia. I have found that military bases do have a tendency to create economic zones in Georgia, which thrive, despite the economic downturn in Georgia, generally.

This certainly points to something that Dwight Eisenhower, West Point educated military man and President, said toward the end of his final year in office in 1959. In a speech before congress, President Eisenhower warned against thebed growth of what he referred to as the "military-industrial complex." President Eisenhower apparently found a threat to the stability and health of this country in the combination of military might and its needs. As long as our military was allowed to be the reason for our economic growth, we ran the risk of relying on the military for strengths which are dangerous to the rest of our interests.

This, of course, was ironic since President Eisenhower was a military man, who would ordinarily be assumed to desire a strong military. Apparently, President Eisenhower had the ability to understand that strength in some ways made us weak in others.

A strong military is important to the safety of our country from threats from other countries. However, a strong military cannot provide the impetus for our economy in a general sense. Our economy must be broad and cover many needs of the country. Agricultural strength, monetary strength, housing strength, strength in utilizing and conserving our natural resources are all important to the relative strength of our country. None of these assets are necessarily tied to the military. President Eisenhower understood that a strong country required a balanced economy.

Northern Houston County used to be a very strong agricultural area. Peaches and pecans, chickens, pigs and cattle all vied for the acreage of the area. Now those agricultural uses are gone. Those farms are covered with little VA houses to house the members of our military and their families.

Today, we visited a young couple who grew up in Gwinnett County, in an area which was very rural when I was a child. Now the couple live in a nice house in Kathleen, Georgia, and their yard has two or three pecan trees as future shade for their house. Of course, they may be reassigned by the time that happens. And no farmer will cultivate those pecans and sell them on the market. Pecans are a strong source of antioxidants and provide a source of agricultural strength in Central Georgia. However, none of that is happening. Instead, the pecan farms and peach trees are replaced with houses, streets, shopping centers, etc. which are the ultimate result of the combination of Robbins Air Force Base and a large expanse of cheap land, formerly used for agricultural purposes.

The question is this: what is the better use of this land? No one has asked that question. No one has answered that question. But you can't eat houses. On the other hand, Warner Robins and Columbus (which has Fort Benning as a major component of its economy) are both thriving in comparison to other communities in Georgia which don't have the advantage of a military base nearby. And there are fewer and fewer military bases in Georgia.

Perhaps President Eisenhower knew something we still don't know.