Some time ago—well, thirty years ago, more or less—I read a reminiscence on the journalism biz by Michael Kinsley, recalling the words of journalistic wisdom he received as a tyro from a legendary pundit whose name I have forgotten: “Always sell the same piece at least three times.” By that standard, I’m a motherfucking journalistic genius, because this is at least my 26th posting on the subject of military spending. Well, consider yourself warned, because this is yet another ululation from this particular voice crying in the wilderness.
Donald Trump wants to boost defense spending, currently at around $700 billion, to a more Trump-like $750 billion, compared to a measly $650 billion under Barak “Pantywaist” Obama. Of course, we don’t have a war to fight, but we will soon, with John “Bomb ‘em” Bolton with his hand on the throttle. Donald says we (or rather, “he”) have averted the danger of nuclear war with North Korea? Not with Big John handling the “negotiations”, aka “non-negotiable demands”, requiring that North Korea comply with every item on the U.S. wish list (elimination of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as well as the country’s missile program) before the U.S. will think about removing any of our numerous sanctions. Of course, there’s no way that Kim Jong-un, whose regime’s very raison d' être (and raison d’ inhuman oppression) is to defend North Korea’s socialist paradise against the American imperialists, is going to agree to that, so, hey, we don’t want to fight, but if we have to, we will!
Excuse me, but how do you tell the difference between Little Kim and Big John, except for the moustache? Both tell lies to stay in power. Both waste their nation’s treasure on useless and highly dangerous penis substitutes of every manner and hue. If media darlings Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez want to talk sense instead of trash (a pretty big if, I admit), why don’t they go seriously after defense spending, which wastes hundreds of billions of dollars a year on weapons, troop exercises, etc., which increase the chance of war instead of decreasing it, dollars that could be spent on all those domestic goodies their little hearts so fervently desire. As I’ve frequently complained, Democrats traditionally treat defense spending as “good” in its own right as high-quality pork, and equally useful as a tool for forcing Republicans to agree to higher domestic spending. This is a tradition that needs upending.
Afterwords (extensive)
Newsweek runs an article citing data compiled by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University that puts the bill for the U.S. war on terror at close to $6 trillion in cash, along with almost 500,000 human lives. Almost all of this money, and almost all of those lives, were wasted. The Taliban government in Afghanistan deserved to be punished, and was punished, by the U.S. assault that was accomplished within a few months of the fall of the towers in New York. Most of the rest of it was spent on an entirely unnecessary, entirely duplicitous, and entirely counterproductive attempt by the U.S. to make itself the dominant power in the Middle East, to seize direct control of the world’s oil supply and to end Muslim nations’ terrorist harassment and attacks on Israel.
President Trump talks fitfully of withdrawing from the Middle East, with the massive exception of Iran, where he and Bolton seem to be longing for a punch-out. The military never wants to withdraw from anything—it’s so unmanly—but what they’re really hankering for is another Cold War—because actual shooting wars are so low-tech, plus if you get too many body bags coming back to the U.S. people start getting upset. Fortunately, the Pentagon has allies, like Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky, to sell the American people on the ever-burgeoning threat from the steppes. Leonid devotes a recent column to earnestly parsing recent speeches by both Russian and American generals, hoping to find some sort of evidence that, you know, this shit could get hairy in a hurry—though, stunningly, he fails to convince me. Leonid comes through with one speculative whopper after another, informing us with a straight face that “[i]t’s probably fair to say [Russian Chief of General Staff Valery] Gerasimov and his colleagues at the Russian defense ministry feel they have the U.S. military threat more or less under control. He said in his speech that he believes Russia is ahead of the rest of the world in weapons development, referring to the hypersonic missiles Russia has recently unveiled.”
Uh, Leonid, Russia no more has our military threat under control than we have their military threat under control. We have no missile defense system that could work against Russia’s slowest and oldest missiles. A hypersonic missile, should one such even exist, which I doubt, would not increase the risk. Furthermore, we’re spending ten times (literally) as much as the Russians on defense. Furthermore furthermore, if George W. Bush hadn’t taken the U.S. out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed back in 1972, it’s quite possible that Putin wouldn’t be bothering with all this muscle-flexing in the first place, which, as Marc. C. Johnson, writing in that damn hippie rag The National Review, explained, is only cover for a corrupt and decrepit military machine. In the case of both Russia and China (and everyone else), the U.S. constantly seeks to hold a position of complete dominance, and then sees any efforts by our “adversaries” to counter our efforts as an “existential threat”.
I’ve covered this ground before, here and here, for example, and now, as I said, for the 26th time. It makes me angry to see the same lies trotted out, over and over again, this deliberate deception by people who do know better but believe that they can’t trust the American people to make the “right” decisions, people who don’t care how much money, and how much blood, is spent, as long as they can get that sweet corner office and that sweet, sweet summer home.
