There are those who fear for Obama’s safety, particularly in light of his approach to defence appropriations, Pentagon planning, and strategic weapons procurement. The American Defence/Weapons/Miltary establishment is an immensely powerful element in U.S. society. (Those same people fear for the future of Obama’s only holdover from the Bush years…Defence Secretary William Gates…Traitor Numero Uno to the MIC).

The United States spends more on “Defence” than all other nations in the world combined.

Much of what is spent can be classified as pure waste.

The U.S. Defence Department is still funding the production of specific weapons systems for use against enemies which no longer exist. Obama and Gates intend to change that.

The bizarre arrangement of useless weapons production has been allowed to exist because of the intense and highly successful lobbying efforts of the very “military-industrial-complex” (MIC), that the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against.

Eisenhower learned first hand – the consequences of bucking that extraordinarily powerful “complex”.

When he mused that the so-called “Cold War Missile Gap” between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. was a myth, the former General, who led the Allies through WW2, was labeled by the Lobby as a “commie sympathizer”.

The Lobby failed initially, but succeeded eventually.

It made a sucker out of the Canadian Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, who ordered up the ridiculous “Bomarc Missile System”…and caused the construction of the infamous “Diefenbunker”. The bunker was an underground centre near Ottawa, where the Canadian government might continue to operate in the event that the world was annihilated by nuclear war. (A ridiculous idea in and of itself). Both the Bomarcs and the Bunker were laughable concepts at the time and now they are tragic reminders of an age of idiocy.

Billions of dollars were spent on completely pointless projects that drained the economies of both the U.S. and Canada, and which no doubt contributed to our present economic and fiscal hardship.

When Liberal Party leader,  Lester B. Pearson criticized the Bomarcs and the Bunker, he…like Eisenhower was labeled by the Lobby as a leftist sympathizer.

It later became a popular Canadian myth that Liberals were leftist and Conservatives were the true defenders-of-the-military-faith. In the U.S. the opposite was the case until the weapons guys elected Richard Nixon.

(American legend has it that the young John Kennedy paid attention to the Eisenhower warning and accepted his contention that the real enemy of American Democracy was the community of American weapons makers).

Now, almost a half century later, we have a new young American President challenging the weapons men…cancelling expensive and useless programmes, challenging the status quo and favoring rapprochement with Iran.

Those who fear that the forces of America’s dark side may be planning a “big event”…disguised as a “terrorist act”, may not be barking up the wrong tree.