That's what one
military expert who has never served in a military is suggesting. On
Twitter, the armchair warrior who goes by the name “The War Nerd”
posted
that he keeps “having this feeling that a big
part of the drone outrage is funded by Lockheed Martin.” It was a
bold claim, backed by the argument that “Defense [sic] is all about
$” and a fighter jet costs a lot more than a drone. The post was
subsequently shared by a number of left-wing journalists, primarily
his colleagues at the Not Safe for Work (NSFW) Corporation, an outlet
that is essentially Playboy without the pictures.
But is it true? Well,
if Lockheed Martin is fueling outrage over drones, as some on the
left are now suggesting, it is going about it in a most curious way.
Indeed, it almost appears as if the the world's largest military
contractor is funding support for drones, aware that while
they might sell for less than a jet, that only means the government
can buy more of them.
For instance, consider:
The chairman of the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus, which
exists to “[s]upport
policies and budgets” that promote the
increased use of drones, is California Republican Buck McKeon, who
also chairs the House Armed Services Committee. McKeon's top campaign
contributor? Yeah,
it's Lockheed Martin. Henry Cuellar, a Texas
Democrat who co-chairs the caucus – stacked with dozens of the best
friends the military-industrial complex ever had – also gets cash
from
Lockheed Martin. In fact, the Bethesda,
Maryland-based company gives more money to congressional drone
advocates from border states (that is, the politically more important
ones) than any
of its competitors.
Another way Lockheed
Martin is financing opposition to President Barack Obama's drone wars
in perplexingly bizarre ways is by funding a favorable PBS
documentary on the “Rise
of Drones.” And by ramping up its own
production of unmanned aircraft and buying
out its drone-manufacturing competitors. And
by building planes that
carry drones. And by building the
“video-game-like interface” that helps drone operators pilot
Lockheed Martin's drones.
It is all very strange,
isn't it? Why would a firm that manufactures drones and
drone-supporting congressmen and drone-carrying planes and
drone-flying computers be funding opposition to its products? It just
doesn't make sense. It's kind of stupid, really. It's really stupid.
Say what you will about
America's merchants of death, the folks running Lockheed Martin have
been pretty adept at making money. Last year, the company had
revenues of over
$47 billion, more than 80 percent of which came
from the US government. They would not, it seems, be dumb enough to
bankroll a campaign against a technology they tell their investors is
one of their key “growth
opportunities.” The simple answer to why Lockheed Martin would
be funding outrage over drones is: Um, it wouldn't be. It's not.
Wait, do I smell booze on your breath?
And that raises its own
question: If Lockheed Martin is clearly not behind drone outrage, who
is funding the shoot-from-the-gut conspiracy that said outrage over
drones is being driven by something other than dead
bodies? Corporate America, actually. Mr. Nerd, as a staff writer
for NSFW, is paid
for by way of a generous grant from executives
at the online shoe store Zappos, a subsidiary of sweatshop
titan Amazon.com. And his colleagues are just
as divisively conspiratorial, it turns out, with one positing that
the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” was a
CIA plot to turn Americans against Muslims, a
theory that similarly furthered the right-wing agenda by dividing the
left – or at least seeking to – and furthered the gross,
right-wing-approved narrative that there was something inherently
fishy about Muslims building a place of worship in Manhattan.
Conspiracy theories have been
crafted out of less.
