Streetwise Professor

Yesterday the WaPo reported that the US was planning to sell to Iraq 46,000 HEAT rounds for 120mm M1A1 Abrams tank guns. I was scratching my head at reading this. Although HEAT rounds can be used against buildings, and hence could be of some use in an attack against ISIS in places like Fallujah, it hardly seems that this is a priority for the Iraqi Army. The priority for the Iraqi Army is to get it to stand and fight rather than flee. An attack against a place like Fallujah is a long, long way away. What’s the point of giving Iraq more tank rounds, when its tankers bail out at the first opportunity?

Since this didn’t make sense militarily the only explanation I had is that  this is really  about giving General Dynamics more than half-a-billion dollars under the cover of the (relatively) popular campaign against ISIS. Then @libertylynx pointed out that General Dynamics’ largest shareholder (and once-upon-a-time controlling shareholder) is the Crown family. The Crowns have about 10 percent of GD, and about 50 percent of their $7.5 billion fortune is invested up in the company.

So what? you might say. Who are the Crowns, anyways? Well, they are a Chicago family that has  been a longtime supporter of Obama: they gave $128K for his 2006 senate campaign. According to the WaPo, they are part of the inner circle of Chicago Friends of Barack, and as the paper notes, Chicago ties are the ones that bind. And when Michelle goes skiing at Aspen, she crashes at the Crowns’. (“She likes it there!”)  In 2008, Crown elder Lester (briber of politicians-hey, he is from Chicago, you know-whose security clearance the Pentagon wanted to yank) did Barack a boon service by writing a letter aimed at Jewish voters assuring them of Obama’s “stellar record on Israel” and promising that as president Obama would be a great friend of the Jewish state. (How’s that working out, by the way?)

So the Crowns have been there for Obama, early and often (as the Chicago phrase goes), with money and a kind word to the right constituencies. It’s nothing of a stretch to conclude that the $600 million of love showered on General Dynamics is the least Barry can do in return. So spare me any shrieking about the Kochs or Dick Cheney and Halliburton. Obama is well-versed in Chicago ways, and this has Chicago written all over it, in more ways than one. There is no plausible military case to be made for putting $600 million in HEAT rounds at the top of military aid for Iraq, so there must be something else. Occam’s Razor suggests that this military aid is just (domestic) politics carried out by other means.