If there’s one thing we’ve learned (or re-learned, again and again) from the Pentagon it’s that all governments lie and that the first casualty of war is truth. From the Pentagon Papers in the Vietnam War to the Afghan War Papers and the lies about WMD in Iraq, the American people have been deliberately and maliciously lied to about America’s wars and their true causes and purposes. And you can go back further to the infamous “Remember the Maine!” cry that touched off the Spanish-American War of 1898. When it comes to war, America’s leaders have always been economical with the truth.
At the Pentagon, Pomade Pete Strikes Again!
But wait, today’s Pentagon is about to outdo that! As usual with nefarious government decisions, it was announced on Friday when people are most distracted. A short summary from NBC News:
Journalists who cover the Defense Department at the Pentagon can no longer gather or report information, even if it is unclassified, unless it’s been authorized for release by the government, defense officials announced Friday. Reporters who don’t sign a statement agreeing to the new rules will have their press credentials revoked, officials said.
Multiple press associations quickly condemned the new rules and said they will fundamentally change journalists’ ability to cover the Pentagon and the U.S. military. They called for the Trump administration to rescind the new requirements, arguing they inhibit transparency to the American people.
The National Press Club denounced the requirement as “a direct assault on independent journalism at the very place where independent scrutiny matters most: the U.S. military.”
Remember that old saw that, “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide” from your friendly government surveillance program? Looks like the Pentagon has decided it’s got plenty to hide, meaning it’s done and is planning to do a lot of wrong, and thus only government-approved information will be allowed to be released.
Any journalist worth her or his salt will never agree to this. Journalists who do agree, who sign the Pentagon statement, should just become paid spokespeople for the U.S. military (as indeed many of them already essentially are).
We’ve created a monstrous military, America, one that believes it should be completely unaccountable to us even as we feed it over a trillion dollars a year.
America, there’s only one way to rein in the military: cut the Pentagon budget in half. Show them who’s boss. Of course, Congress controls the purse strings, and Congress, as Ike noted, is intimately intertwined with the military-industrial complex, so it’s not going to be easy to do it.
But no one ever said it’ll be easy: it’s just necessary for the survival of our country as a quasi-democracy.
My fellow Americans, my critical voice has finally been heard inside the Oval Office. No, not my voice against the $1.7 trillion this country is planning to spend on new nuclear weapons. No, not my call to cut the Pentagon budget in half. No, not my imprecations against militarism in America. It was a quip of mine that the Department of Defense (DoD) should return to its roots as the War Department, since the U.S. hasn’t known a moment’s peace since before the 9/11 attacks, locked as it’s been into a permanent state of global war, whether against “terror” or for its imperial agendas (or both).
A rebranded Department of War, President Trump recently suggested, simply sounds tougher (and more Trumpian) than “defense.” As is his wont, he blurted out a hard truth as he stated that America must have an offensive military. There was, however, no mention of war bonds or war taxes to pay for such a military. And no mention of a wartime draft or any other meaningful sacrifice by most Americans.
Rebranding the DoD as the Department of War is, Trump suggested, a critical step in returning to a time when America was always winning. I suspect he was referring to World War II. Give him credit, though. He was certainly on target about one thing: since World War II, the United States has had a distinctly victoryless military. Quick: Name one clear triumph in a meaningful war for the United States since 1945. Korea? At best, a stalemate. Vietnam? An utter disaster, a total defeat. Iraq and Afghanistan? Quagmires, debacles that were waged dishonestly and lost for that very reason.
Even the Cold War that this country ostensibly won in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union didn’t lead to the victory Americans thought was coming their way. After much hype about a “new world order” where the U.S. would cash in its peace dividends, the military-industrial-congressional complex found new wars to wage, new threats to meet, even as the events of 9/11 enabled a surge — actually, a gusher — of spending that fed militarism within American culture. The upshot of all that warmongering was a soaring national debt driven by profligate spending. After all, the Iraq and Afghan Wars alone are estimated to have cost us some $8 trillion.
Those disasters (and many more) happened, of course, under the Department of Defense. Imagine that! America was “defending” itself in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and elsewhere, even as those wars killed and wounded significant numbers of our troops while doing far more damage to those on the receiving end of massive American firepower. All this will, I assume, go away with a “new” Department of War. Time to win again! Except, as one Vietnam veteran reminded me, you can’t do a wrong thing the right way. You can’t win wars by fighting for unjust causes, especially in situations where military force simply can’t offer a decisive solution.
It’s going to take more than a rebranded Department of War to fix wanton immorality and strategic stupidity.
We Need a Return of the Vietnam Syndrome
Hey, I’m okay with the Pentagon’s rebranding. War, after all, is what America does. This is a country made by war, a country of macho men hitching up their big boy pants on the world stage, led by the latest (greatest?) secretary of war, “Pomade Pete”Hegseth, whose signature move has been to do pushups with the troops while extolling a “warrior ethos.” Such an ethos, of course, is more consistent with a War Department than a Defense Department, so kudos to him. Too bad it’s inconsistent with a citizen-soldier military that’s supposed to be obedient to and protective of the Constitution. But that’s just a minor detail, right?
Here’s the rub. As Trump and Hegseth have now tacitly admitted, the national security state has never been about “security” for Americans. Rather, it’s existed and continues to exist as a war state in a state of constant war (or preparations for the same), now stuffed to the popping point with more than a trillion dollars yearly in taxpayer funds. And the leaders of that war state — an enormous blood-sucking parasite on society — are never going to admit that it’s in any way too large or overfed, let alone so incompetent as to have been victoryless for the last 80 years of regular war-making.
And count on one grim reality: that war state will always find new enemies to attack, new rivals to deter, new weapons to buy, and a new spectrum of warfare to try to dominate. Venezuela appears to be the latest enemy, China the latest peer rival, hypersonic missiles and drone swarms the new weaponry, and artificial intelligence the new spectrum. For America’s parasitic war state, there will always be more to feed on and to attempt (never very successfully) to dominate.
Mind you, this is exactly what President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against in his 1961 Farewell Address. Sixty-plus years ago, Ike could already see that what he was the first to call the military-industrial complex was already too powerful (as the Vietnam War loomed). And of course, it has only grown more powerful since he left office. As Ike also wisely said, only Americans can truly hurt America — notably, I’d add, those Americans who embrace war and the supposed benefits of a warrior ethos instead of democracy and the rule of law.
Again, I’m okay with a War Department. But if we’re reviving older concepts in the name of honesty, what truly needs a new lease on life is the Vietnam Syndrome that, according to President George H.W. Bush, America allegedly got rid of once and for all with a rousing victory against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 (that would prove to be anything but).
That Vietnam Syndrome, you may recall, was an allegedly paralyzing American reluctance to use military force in the aftermath of disastrous interventions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the 1960s and early 1970s. According to that narrative, the U.S. government had become too slow, too reluctant, too scarred (or do I mean scared?) to march speedily to war. As President Richard Nixon once said, America must never resemble a “pitiful, helpless giant.” To do so, he insisted, would threaten not just our country but the entire free world (as it was known then). America had to show that, when the chips were down, our leaders were up for going all-in, no matter how bad our cards were vis-à-vis those of our opponents.
If nothing else, no country had more chips than we did when it came to sheer military firepower and a willingness to use it (or so, at least, it seemed to Nixon and crew). A skilled poker player, Nixon was blinded by the belief that the U.S. couldn’t afford to suffer a humiliating loss on the world stage (especially when he was its leader). But the tumult that resulted from the fall of Saigon to communist forces in 1975 taught Americans something, if only temporarily: that one should hasten very slowly to war, a lesson Sparta, the quintessential warrior city-state of Ancient Greece, knew to be the sign of mature wisdom.
Spartan wannabes like Pete Hegseth, with his ostentatious displays of “manliness,” however, fail to understand the warrior ethos they purport to exhibit. Wise warrior-leaders don’t wage war for war’s sake. Considering the horrific costs of war and its inherent unpredictability, sage leaders weigh their options carefully, knowing that wars are always far easier to get into than out of and that they often mutate in dangerously unpredictable ways, leaving those who have survived them to wonder what it was ever all about — why there was so much killing and dying for so little that was faintly meaningful.
What Will Trump’s “Winning” War Department Look Like?
Perhaps Americans got an initial look at Trump’s new “winning” War Department off the coast of Venezuela with what could be the start of a new “drug war” against that country. A boat carrying 11 people, allegedly with fentanyl supplies on board, was obliterated by a U.S. missile in this country’s first “drug war” strike. It was a case where President Trump decided that he was the only judge and jury around and the U.S. military was his executioner. We may never know who was actually on board that boat or what they were doing, questions that undoubtedly matter not a whit to Trump or Hegseth. What mattered to them was sending an ultimate message of toughness, regardless of its naked illegality or its patent stupidity.
Similarly, Trump has put the National Guard on the streets of Washington, D.C., deployed Marines and the National Guard to Los Angeles, and warned of yet more troop deployments to come in Chicago, New Orleans, and elsewhere. Supposedly looking to enforce “law and order,” the president is instead endangering it, while disregarding the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits a president from deploying active-duty troops as domestic law enforcers.
If America isn’t a nation of laws, what is it? If the president is a lawbreaker instead of an upholder of those laws, what is he?
Recall that every American servicemember takes a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution and bear true faith and allegiance to the same. Warriors are driven by something different. Historically, they often just obeyed their chieftain or warlord, killing without thought or mercy. If they were bound by law, it was most often that of the jungle.
Knowingly or unknowingly, that’s exactly the kind of military Pete Hegseth and the new Department of War (and nothing but war) are clearly seeking to create. A force where might makes right (although in our recent history, it’s almost invariably made wrong).
I must admit that, from the recent attack on that boat in the Caribbean to the sending of troops into Washington, I find I’m not faintly surprised by this developing crisis (that’s almost guaranteed to grow ever worse). Remember, after all, that Donald Trump, a distinctly lawless man, boasted during the Republican debate in the 2016 election campaign that the military would follow his orders irrespective of their legality. I wrote then that, with such a response, he had disqualified himself as a candidate for the presidency:
“Trump’s performance last night [3/3/16] reminded me of Richard Nixon’s infamous answer to David Frost about Watergate: ‘When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.’ No, no, a thousand times no. The president has to obey the law of the land, just as everyone else has to. No person is above the law, an American ideal that Trump seems neither to understand nor to embrace. And that disqualifies him to be president and commander-in-chief.”
If only.
In retrospect, I guess Trump had it right. After all, he’s won the presidency twice, no matter that his kind of “rightness” threatens the very foundations of this country.
So, color me more than worried. In this new (yet surprisingly old) age of a War Department, I see even more possibilities for lawlessness, wanton violence, and summary executions — and, in the end, the defeat of everything that matters, all justified by that eternal cry: “We’re at war.” At which point, I return to war’s miseries and how quickly we humans forget its lessons, no matter how harsh or painful they may be.
Someday, America’s soon-to-be War Department, led by wannabe warrior chieftains Trump and Hegseth, will perhaps seem like the ultimate blowback from this country’s disastrous wars overseas since its name changed to the Defense Department in the wake of World War II. In places like Iraq and Afghanistan, this country allegedly waged war in the name of spreading democracy and freedom. That cause failed and America’s own grip on democracy and freedom only continues to loosen — perhaps fatally so.
In harkening back to a War Department, perhaps Trump is also channeling a nostalgia for the Old West, or at least the myth of it, where justice was served through personal bounties and murderous violence enforced by steely-eyed men wielding steel-blue pistols. Trump’s idea of “justice” does seem to be that of a hanging judge on a “wild” frontier facing hostile “Injuns” of various sorts. For men like Trump, those were the glory days of imperial expansion, never mind all the bodies left in the wake of America’s manifest destiny. If nothing else, that old imperial Department of War certainly knew what it was about.
Whatever else one might expect from America’s “new” Department of War, you can bet your life (or death) on a whole lot of future body bags. Warriors are, of course, okay with this as long as there are more boats to blow up, more people to bomb, and more foreign resources to steal in the pursuit of a “victory” that never actually arrives. So hitch up those big boy pants, grab a rifle or a Hellfire missile, and start killing. After all, in what might be thought of as a distinctly victoryless culture, it seems as if America is destined to be at war forever and a day.
There’s a full slate of NFL football games today, meaning there’ll be a full slate of military flyovers and similar ceremonies to “support” our troops. The militarization of sports in America is something to behold, and a new report that tackles the issue is available from a series on “Consuming War” at Brown University. Here’s the link.
It put me to mind of an article I wrote for Huff Post back in 2011. Fourteen years later, the unholy alliance between sports and the military has only deepened.
Here’s what I wrote in 2011. What do you think, readers? Will we ever learn to play ball again without all the military trappings?
America!
The Militarization of Sports — And the Sportiness of Military Service
The co-joining of corporate-owned sports teams and events with the military strikes me as more than disturbing. We’ve created a dangerous dynamic in this country: one in which sporting events are exploited to sell military service for some while providing cheap grace for all.
Writer, History Professor, Retired Lieutenant Colonel (USAF)
Jul 28, 2011, 01:19 PM EDT
Updated Sep 27, 2011
Connecting sports to military service and vice versa has a venerable history. The Battle of Waterloo (1815) was won on the playing fields of Eton, Wellington allegedly said. Going over the top at the Battle of the Somme (1916), a few British soldiers kicked soccer balls in the general direction of the German lines. American service academies have historically placed a high value on sports (especially football) for their ability to generate and instill leadership, teamwork and toughness under pressure.
But in today’s America, we are witnessing an unprecedented militarization of sports, and a concomitant emphasis on the sportiness of military service. With respect to the latter, take a close look at recent Army recruitment ads (which I happen to see while watching baseball). These ads show soldiers lifting weights, playing volleyball, climbing mountains and similar sporty activities. The voice-over stresses that army service promotes teamwork and toughness (“There’s strong. Then there’s armystrong.”) There are, of course, no shots of soldiers under direct fire, of wounded soldiers crying for help, of disabled veterans. Army service in these ads is celebrated as (and reduced to) an action-filled sequence of sporting events.
Today’s militarization of sports is even more blatant. Consider this excellent article by U.S. Army Colonel (retired) Andrew Bacevich, which highlights the “cheap grace” available to crowds at major sporting events. For-profit sports corporations and the Pentagon join hands to orchestrate pageants that encourage (manipulate?) us to cheer and celebrate our flag, our troops and our sports and military heroes, as the obligatory fighter jets roar overhead.
Now, I’m sure there are well-meaning people who see such pageantry as an uncontroversial celebration of love of country, as well as a gesture of generosity and thanks to our military. And this retired veteran admits to feeling my heart swell when I see our flag flying proudly and our troops marching smartly. But the co-joining of corporate-owned sports teams and events (which are ultimately about entertainment and making a buck) with the military (which is ultimately in the deadly business of winning wars) strikes me as more than disturbing.
To cite only one example: The San Diego Padres baseball team takes “tremendous pride” in being “the first team in professional sports to have a dedicated military affairs department,” according to a team press release quoting Tom Garfinkel, the Padres president and chief operating officer. But is it truly “tremendous” for sports teams to be creating “military affairs” departments? As our sporting “heroes” celebrate our military ones, does not a dangerous blurring take place, especially in the minds of America’s youth?
War is not a sport; it’s not entertainment; it’s not fun. And blurring the lines between sport and war is not in the best interests of our youth, who should not be sold on military service based on stadium pageantry or team marketing, however well-intentioned it may be.
We’ve created a dangerous dynamic in this country: one in which sporting events are exploited to sell military service for some while providing cheap grace for all, even as military service is sold as providing the thrill of (sporting) victory while elevating our troops to the status of “heroes” (a status too often assigned by our society to well-paid professional athletes).
Which brings me to a humble request: At our sporting events, is it too much to ask that we simply “Play Ball?” In our appeals for military recruits, is it too much for us to tell them that war is not a sport?
Think of these questions the next time those military warplanes roar over the coliseum of your corporate-owned team.
Welcome back, everyone. I hope you enjoyed Labor Day Weekend.
It’s grim times in America. Perhaps grimmest of all is the U.S. government’s support of genocide through mass killing and starvation in Gaza. “Never again” was the message of the Holocaust, not “Yes, again” if it benefits Zionists in Israel.
Americans, in the main, are against mass killing (at least, I hope we are), but what does it matter when all 100 senators take money from AIPAC and the Trump administration is rabidly pro-Israel? “Our” government isn’t ours; the man who gets what he wants with the loudest applause is Bibi Netanyahu. Talk about foreign interference in America’s elections and governance!
Courtesy of Lisa Savage at her Substack site
Why is it so hard for Americans to come together in sensible ways? A decade ago, I wrote about how we’re kept divided, distracted, and downtrodden. The letter D truly is for defective and deficient—disastrous as well—but permit me a little exercise in alliteration as I expand my D list to seven, as in the 7 habits of a highly defective country.
1. Divided: Are you Republican or Democrat? Red or Blue? MAGA or “libtard”? Woke or Anti-woke? Cis white male or BIPOC? Pro-life or Pro-choice? There are far too many labels and efforts that end in division. And we know how rulers use division to conquer.
2. Distracted: Wherever you look, Americans are bombarded with distractions, starting with the screens we carry everywhere with us. The Romans had bread and circuses; we have junk food, NASCAR, and the NFL. Curl up before that 75-inch TV and chow down.
3. Downtrodden: When you’re working 50+ hours a week, straining to make ends meet, suffering from high health care costs, student loan debt, and so on, it’s hard to pay attention to what’s going on in Washington—and even harder to act against it.
4. Discontented: Paradoxically, the discontentment so many of us feel is not resulting in significant political action. Instead, it’s being channeled in counterproductive ways. Consumer goods and drugs from big pharmaceutical companies are offered as palliatives to “cure” our discontentment. We buy more, or pop more pills, but contentment remains elusive.
5. Duopoly: Sure, Democrats and Republicans aren’t exactly the same. But when it comes to war, foreign policy, weapons sales, serving Israel, favoring billionaires, kowtowing to the big banks and Wall Street, and genuflecting to corporations, both parties are virtually indistinguishable. Both also work together to quash third parties. Small wonder that the largest voting bloc in America is Independent/Non-aligned.
6. Discouragement: Faced with that grim fact—a government completely unresponsive to ordinary people—Americans are discouraged from acting in dynamic and outspoken ways. Also serving to discourage political action is America’s increasingly militarized streets, now occupied with agents from Homeland Security and even armed members of the National Guard.
7. Despair: Remember “hope and change” Barack Obama and the surging idealism of 2008? Those were the days. Now it seems the mantra is “no hope” and change that only makes matters worse. This contributes to despair, our sense of hopelessness and helplessness before impersonal government forces—and this is deliberate. A weaponizing of despair.
So, what is to be done? On the small scale, get involved. Get educated. Follow protesters like Lisa Savage and Clif Brown. Small acts of protest can be contagious.
Clif Brown, taking a stand and sending a message
I do my thing here on Substack and belong to organizations like the Eisenhower Media Network and Space4Peace (The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space). Since 2007, I’ve written against militarism and war at TomDispatch.com and similar alternative sites. Do what you can, what matches your talents, even if it’s just talking to your family, your friends, your neighbors about your concerns. (Believe me, that isn’t always easy!)
Maybe it’s easier to say where the answer isn’t coming from. It’s not coming from Democrats or Republicans. It’s not coming from Congress. It’s not coming from the richest among us, nor from corporate and financial elites.
Fundamentally, the first big step we need to take as a country is publicly funded elections. No more lobbyists. No more “legal” bribes. That requires a reversal of the SCOTUS Citizens United Decision. It requires legislation or a Constitutional amendment.
How to force that when war and weapons are bipartisan? When the powers that be are more than happy with the status quo? Probably only through mass organizations and protest. Or perhaps the creation of a viable third party–but that will be staunchly resisted by the duopoly (the Dems and Repubs).
The short answer is we need a lot more profiles in courage to counter the profiles in pusillanimity produced and elevated within a corrupt system.
The system as it exists today seems unreformable and unstoppable, but history teaches us that sometimes a crack can widen to a fault that leads to an earthquake quickly and unpredictably. So the only recourse is to keep fighting, to keep the pressure on, hoping those cracks will indeed lead to something greater.
Apathy and surrender are not options. Discouragement and despair mustn’t be our end state. Take inspiration from people like Lisa and Clif, the writing of people like Chris Hedges, and sites like Antiwar.com.
Last Tuesday, I appeared again on Judge Napolitano’s show. We talked about the Russia-Ukraine War and President Trump’s efforts to foster a peace deal, as well as the so-called Deep State and (briefly) the CIA.
The show’s lede raises a provocative question: Can America be rid of the CIA? Anything is possible in theory; the problem is the sprawling size and enormous power of the so-called intelligence community, or IC. (This idea of “community” was already a euphemism in the 1970s, as the movie “Three Days of the Condor” reveals; I’ve always liked how Robert Redford’s character scoffs at the “community” conceit.)
There are eighteen (18!) agencies that make up the IC with a combined yearly budget just north of $100 billion. For all that spending on intelligence, America has not fared well in recent wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. A bureaucracy of that size and reach is difficult to corral and control, especially since its budget keeps rising. Threat inflation is a major component of these rising budgets; you’re not going to get a threat assessment from the IC that says, well, actually, America’s pretty safe, let’s spend money on infrastructure, education, and social uplift.
As Chuck Schumer once said about Trump’s efforts to challenge the IC, the community has “six ways from Sunday” to get back at the president. That is, of course, more than worrisome. POTUS is supposed to command the IC; the IC is supposed to serve the president while upholding the U.S. Constitution. The IC shouldn’t scheme to “get back” at the president—any president.
My guess is that Trump has learned that lesson from Schumer. He’s appeasing the IC by giving it more and more money. Meanwhile, a Trump loyalist, Tulsi Gabbard, is trying to exert a measure of control as DNI, or Director of National Intelligence. I can’t imagine the in-fighting going in within the “community” as Gabbard releases files that suggest elements within the IC put their thumbs on the scale against Trump’s runs for president.
Eighteen agencies, $100 billion, and less than impressive results suggest a deep state that is out of control and in urgent need of major reform. Meanwhile, Edward Snowden’s revelations show a power structure that is more than willing to illegally spy on and surveil Americans.
For democracy to prosper, Americans need privacy and the government should be transparent to and controllable by the people. Instead, the IC is shrouded in secrecy and Americans are the ones whose lives are transparent to and controllable by the IC.
Of course, I’m not suggesting the IC is peeking under every door—unless you’re some kind of crazy dissident who believes genocide is wrong and the military-industrial complex is dangerous. You know—someone like Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The business of nuclear weapons is booming in the U.S., as Part II of a documentary on the military-industrial complex reveals. It’s well worth a few minutes of your time:
The documentary is especially strong in its focus on the Sentinel ICBM program, the least survivable leg of the nuclear triad. I didn’t know, for example, that Northrop Grumman has already spent $220 million lobbying for the Sentinel. Meanwhile, the projected cost of the Sentinel system, the documentary points out, has mushroomed from $78 billion to $140 billion. And I see estimates today have risen to $160 billion. All this for a system that’s not needed. Land-based ICBMs should be retired, not replaced.
Because land-based ICBMs represent a fixed target (unlike bombers and submarines, the other two legs of the triad), they are likely to be attacked first in a nuclear war, contributing to a “launch on warning (of attack)” mentality. But with warnings of nuclear attacks being both uncertain (false alarms have occurred in the past) and “time-sensitive,” i.e. urgent and pressure-packed, it’s likely a U.S. president, faced with a crisis, would only have 5-10 minutes to decide whether to launch ICBMs.
As the U.S. prepares to spend as much as $1.7 trillion on upgrading the triad, more money is also being dedicated to low-yield nuclear weapons, lowering the threshold for going nuclear. An escalatory spiral could follow from any use of nuclear weapons, but that concern doesn’t seem to trouble advocates for so-called tactical nukes.
Even as President Trump in the past has bragged about the size of his nuclear button, he does appear to view nuclear weapons as awful things, which they are. They are genocidal weapons. In essence, America is “investing” $1.7 trillion in weapons that are genocidal, indeed ecocidal, for any “general exchange” of nuclear weapons in a future war would destroy most life on earth (blast and heat, followed by radiation and nuclear winter).
As the Outlaw Josey Wales once mused, “Dyin’ ain’t much of a living.” The same applies to mass dying.
America’s war budget now exceeds $1 trillion a year—an almost unimaginable sum.
The Pentagon plans to spend $1.7 trillion “modernizing” a nuclear triad that should instead be downsized. A proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense system may cost $500 billion while making nuclear war more likely. And a “new” Cold War with China and Russia is already underway, with threat inflation as one of its defining features.
With military spending so high—and the military so valorized—Washington offers it as the solution to nearly everything: crime in D.C., eliminating drug cartels south of the border, containing China and Russia, “winning” in Somalia, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—the list is endless. Supporting and defending the Constitution, however, is rarely mentioned.
War has become America’s new normal. “Peace” is now a word that dare not speak its name. According to the Pentagon, the only peace worth pursuing is “peace through [military] strength.” A warrior ethos is marketed as if it were synonymous with democratic virtue.
I once called for a 10% reduction in Pentagon spending. That’s no longer enough. We need a 50% cut—we need a military dedicated to genuine national defense, not imperial dominance. Surely we can protect America for $500 billion a year rather than the $1 trillion we’re spending now.
Changing the narrative is crucial. Why do we need 750+ bases overseas? Why expand our nuclear arsenal when we already have 5,000 warheads? We don’t need these things—they are the hallmarks of wasteful militarism. They escalate tensions, endanger us, and drain the nation’s wealth.
And why do we have 17 or 18 intelligence agencies? Despite all that intelligence, we still lost in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Where is the accountability? Why are no generals relieved of command for such failures? In fact, they’re more likely to fail upwards.
“All governments lie,” as I.F. Stone warned. Combine that with the truth that war’s first casualty is truth itself, and you begin to see the rot in America today. Perpetual war fuels deception and government overreach. Almost anything can be justified when the cry is, “We’re at war!”—even when the reasons for going to war are false.
Consider the Gulf of Tonkin incident—revealed later as phony—and the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. Consider Iraq’s mythical WMDs. Consider the lies revealed in the Afghan War Papers. Consider the weasel words of generals like David Petraeus, forever hedging “gains” as “fragile” and “reversible.” Consider the U.S. military’s record since World War II—generally ineffective because there’s been little accountability for failure. (And yes, civilian leaders share the blame.)
The military-industrial complex grows ever more powerful, sidelining the American people while democracy withers.
Something is rotten in the States of America.
Many thanks to Judge Napolitano for asking me to discuss some of these issues on his show, “Judging Freedom.”
President Trump’s decision to federalize the police in DC and to deploy National Guard troops there is in keeping with creeping authoritarianism—and just plain creepiness as well. Increasingly, Trump seems to think he can rule by emergency decree—where have I seen this before in history? One example: Weimar Germany followed by Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933, which led to more emergency decrees in the alleged cause of law and order.
I was asked for a comment this AM about Trump’s decision and I came up with this:
Trump is an authoritarian. We knew this in 2016 when he said during a debate he expected the military to follow his orders irrespective of their legality. Trump is also an opportunist. He knows “tough action” against crime will play with his base, even though crime rates in DC have been declining. He’s manufacturing a crisis to consolidate his power.
Finally, this is what happens when you spend $1 trillion on the military. It becomes the “solution” to every problem, whether it’s crime in DC, drug cartels south of the border, civil strife in Somalia, or potential nuclear proliferation with Iran. Yet history shows the deployment of military forces, especially in situations for which they’re not trained, aggravates problems instead of alleviating them.
Readers, what do you make of all this? One thing is certain: Before exporting more “democracy” to the rest of the world, America would do well to address its own shrinking and disappearing version of the same.
Soon, America’s democracy may well be invisible—vanished. Poof!
It’s well worth a few minutes of your time to watch the first episode of this series on the military-industrial complex and its enormous reach and power, especially in American society.
I remember when I used to see thoughtful series like this on Frontline. Occasionally, you’d see critical reports on the mainstream media: I’m referring here to the 1970s and 1980s and shows like “60 Minutes” and “20/20.” Those days, dear reader, are long gone.
It’s rather amazing that Americans have to look to Al Jazeera for critical and sensible reporting on our very own military-industrial complex. Remember what Ike warned us about in 1961? Remember when he challenged us to remain alert and knowledgeable? America, we have a trillion-dollar “pentagon of power” to monitor—and we’re not doing the greatest job at it, are we? In fact, that pentagon of power is doing a far better job at monitoring us.
Indeed, when our mainstream media covers the Pentagon, it usually relies on retired generals and admirals, who often have unreported conflicts of interest (they may sit on corporate boards of weapons contractors, for example, or even get their talking points handed to them by the Pentagon). Let’s just say you rarely hear a negative word about the MIC in this very much unbalanced and biased coverage.
I see that YouTube is cautioning us that Al Jazeera is partially funded by the Qatari government. The horror!
Anyway, Al Jazeera is promising three more episodes in the series, the next one on America’s $1.7 trillion “investment” in new nuclear weapons. Should be sobering.
With an ongoing genocide in Gaza and a dangerous war between Russia and Ukraine, who has the time to look to Africa? As we said when I was still in the military, I need to get smart on this.
Coverage of America’s military adventurism/fiascos in Africa is difficult to come by. Fortunately, there’s Nick Turse at The Intercept, whose latest article is entitled:
PENTAGON: U.S. COUNTERTERRORISM EFFORTS HAVE FAILED AFRICANS
A new Pentagon report sheds light on AFRICOM’s disastrous counterterrorism campaigns.
I know Nick Turse from his days at TomDispatch, so I sent him this note in response to his article:
Bombing worked so well to win the war in Indochina — so why not bomb in Africa?
It seems like the goal is permanent war — you throw gasoline on it with all the weapons exports and drone strikes. And they work — war continues.
I guess that’s my obvious take — pay no attention to their words, watch instead what they do. It’s just war and more war. Given that AFRICOM is a military command, should we be surprised that the “solutions” are always violent ones?
That seems to be the U.S. “strategy” in Africa: bomb the “terrorists” while exporting more weapons related to military “assistance” (the building of indigenous African forces ostensibly allied to the U.S.). Again, it’s a strategy that worked so well in Indochina in the early 1960s …
Unfortunately for Somalia, it occupies a strategic position in the Horn of Africa. The U.S. has a major military base in Djibouti.
Besides the perpetuation of war there, I don’t know what the U.S. government is up to in Africa. The mainstream media rarely discusses it. I assume control of scarce resources is a major goal. Also, the military-first AFRICOM approach to the area ensures higher profits for and more power to the military-industrial complex. Geographically, the Horn of Africa is vital to the control of sea and trade routes. Proximity to Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and the Red Sea is obvious.
In short, I’m exposing my own ignorance as a way of encouraging all of us to get a bit smarter about what our government is up to in Africa. According to the Pentagon’s own sponsored report, it’s not going well. Here’s the kicker from Turse’s article:
“Africa has experienced roughly 155,000 militant Islamist group-linked deaths over the past decade,” reads a new report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. “Somalia and the Sahel have now experienced more militant Islamist-related fatalities over the past decade (each over 49,000) than any other region.”
“What many people don’t know is that the United States’ post-9/11 counterterrorism operations actually contributed to and intensified the present-day crisis and surge of violent deaths in the Sahel and Somalia,” Stephanie Savell, director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University, told The Intercept, referencing the frequent targeting of minority ethnic groups by U.S. partners during counterterrorism operations.
The U.S. provided tens of millions of dollars in weapons and training to the governments of countries like Burkina Faso and Niger, which are experiencing the worst spikes in violent deaths today, she said. “In those critical early years, those governments used the infusion of U.S. military funding, weapons, and training to target marginalized groups within their own borders, intensifying the cycle of violence we now see wreaking such a devastating human toll.”
Terrorist groups are also gaining ground at an exponential rate. “The past year has also seen militant Islamists [sic] groups in the Sahel and Somalia expand their hold on territory,” according to the Africa Center. “Across Africa, an estimated 950,000 square kilometers (367,000 square miles) of populated territories are outside government control due to militant Islamist insurgencies. This is equivalent to the size of Tanzania.” And as militant groups have expanded their reach, Africans have paid a grave price: a 60 percent increase in fatalities since 2023, compared with deaths from 2020 to 2022, according to the report.
As Turse notes, U.S. special forces deployed to Somalia soon after 9/11 as part of the global war on terror (or, if you prefer, the global war of terror). More than two decades of U.S. military strikes (and strife) in the area have only made matters worse. Can we as a nation stand for more of this “success”?
I think the U.S. strategy in Africa is to continue on the same course while suppressing the news of our failures there. Our influence in the region, such as it is, is military-driven, i.e. various African leaders want our weapons and money but little else (because we have little else to offer).
So, all our military leaders can boast of in the region is colossal air strikes. Did you know we used 60 tons of bombs to kill 14 militants in Somalia last February? Victory indeed will soon be ours … if you define “victory” as rising profits for the bomb-makers.
Readers, help me out. If any of you are following America’s war in Africa, I welcome your insights.
Bracing Views 