Jul 15 2008
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“ Once upon a time, a company like ATK would have been classified as one of the world’s “Merchants of Death.” Then again, once upon a time – we’re talking about the 1930s here – the Senate was a place where America’s representatives were willing to launch probing inquiries into the ways in which arms manufacturers and their huge profits as well as their influences on international conflicts were linked to the dead of various lands. Back then, simple partisanship was set aside as the Senate’s Democratic majority appointed North Dakota’s Republican Senator Gerald P. Nye to head the “Senate Munitions Committee.” While today’s fawning House members can barely get aging baseball heroes to talk to them, the 1930s inquiry hauled some of the most powerful men in the world like J.P. Morgan, Jr. and Pierre du Pont before the committee. Even back in the 1930s, however, the nascent military-industrial complex was just too powerful and so the Senate Munitions Committee was eventually thwarted in its investigations. As a result, the committee’s goal of nationalizing the American arms industry went down in flames. Today, the very idea of such a committee even attempting such an investigation is simply beyond the pale.
