endless war profiteering

"[T]he insidious increase in power, and the influence over foreign policy that the military has, is very dangerous.  And maybe in the long run it's even more dangerous than a coup.  Because what happens is, the power shifts gradually, and gradually, and incrementally, over to the war-making side, to where you wake up one morning and all you're doing is making war.  And you have so many people, from Lockheed Martin to the Congress of the United States, to the Armed Forces, to you name it, who are making so much money off that war-making, that you can't stop it.  That's not a coup, but it is something worse in my view.  It is ultimately the destruction of our Republic."  
-- Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (U.S Army, retired) 2012 interview