Category: US Politics

Only We Can Bomb It

W.J. Astore

The U.S. Empire, Thrashing and Lashing Out as It Declines

President Donald Trump has promised to bomb Yemen for a “long time.” Trump is a real president now. Presidents become “real” when they bomb something. Remember how Trump was praised by the U.S. mainstream media when he launched missiles against Syria in 2017?

Back in 2017, I wrote this: The launch of 59 expensive cruise missiles against a Syrian airfield did little to change the actions of the Assad government. Nor did it knockout the airfield. Yet it was spun by Trump as a remarkable victory. In his words, “We’ve just fired 59 missiles, all of which hit, by the way, unbelievable, from, you know, hundreds of miles away, all of which hit, amazing. It’s so incredible. It’s brilliant. It’s genius. Our technology, our equipment, is better than anybody by a factor of five. I mean look, we have, in terms of technology, nobody can even come close to competing.”

“Only we can bomb it” should replace “In God we trust” as the U.S. national motto.

America’s best and brightest (who were never quite that) have become the worst and dimmest. And that’s true whether the president is blue or red, Biden or Trump. The problem is our “leaders” have no moral principles. No integrity. No sense of right and wrong. They’re all about power and sending “messages” through bombing. Or sending tons and tons of bombs to Israel so that the Zionists can send “messages” to the Palestinians. The main message: begone or be dead.

Even as our “leaders” do this, they seek to solidify a mythic history of the U.S. (see video above) where America is exceptional in its rightness and where they (the leaders) are the ones who grant us our rights (such as freedom of speech) when these rights are inalienable. Indeed, rather than protecting our rights, they want to control them, limit them, and make them obedient and subservient to power.

Rulers’ ideas rule. And our rulers’ ideas are increasingly toxic.

With democracy already deeply compromised in America, we’re witnessing and experiencing the thrashing and lashing out of a declining American empire, not only externally but in the “homeland.” 

Readers, what do you make of all this?

“War are the only ones … who can do this”

W.J. Astore

American exceptionalism in action in Yemen

The so-called SignalGate scandal centered on the bombing of Yemen is highly revelatory. First, some resources. CNN has a useful annotated account of the chats exchanged at the highest levels of the Trump administration. At their respective Substacks, Lenny Broytman and Caitlin Johnstone have telling dissections of these chats as well. At Jacobin, Branko Marcetic has an important article that reminds us of the illegality of the attacks. As the article’s subheading puts it: The press [mainstream media] is mostly framing the Yemen group chat scandal as a story of incompetence. There’s little attention being paid to the deadliness, illegality, and ineffectiveness of the strikes themselves.

To me, among the most telling “chats” came from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. It highlights the “exceptional” nature of America:

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Pete Hegseth to Vice President JD Vance: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.

But Mike [Waltz, the National Security Adviser] is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing…

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This is precisely the problem for America since the Vietnam War, if not before then. We’ve created a monster military, a “global strike” force, that is capable of destroying any target anywhere around the globe. “Nobody else even close,” SecDef Hegseth correctly says. And because we can do it, because we are exceptional in military force, our leaders believe we should do it, even if it’s only to send a “message” to the world how tough we are, how committed we are to killing others.

Other countries—like those “free-loading” European ones—are PATHETIC because they don’t have America’s military might. Only we can smite evildoers around the globe, only we can do so while also arming Israel to the teeth and covering its flanks while it continues its annihilation of Gaza, and this is something we are immensely proud of.

My fellow Americans, this is not something to be proud of. Consider if America’s military in the 1960s had lacked the ability to deploy over half a million troops to Vietnam while also facing down the Warsaw Pact in Europe. Consider if America’s military had lacked the ability to invade Iraq in 2003 while also waging war in Afghanistan and garrisoning the globe with roughly 800 military bases. Consider how much blood would not have been spilled, and treasure wasted, if the U.S. military was smaller, focused on defense, and led by people who didn’t put muscle and flame emojis in their chats to celebrate U.S. military prowess at killing people in Yemen.

That U.S. military forces are the only ones who can kill globally with such comparative ease, that “nobody else even close,” is exactly what is wrong with our government. We place far too much faith and pride in military prowess, so much so that the Pentagon becomes the Pentagod, something we worship, something we make immense sacrifices to, as in budgets that approach $1 trillion yearly.

Not for nothing did President Dwight D. Eisenhower say in 1953 that this is no way of life at all—that we are crucifying ourselves on a cross of iron. Tell me again, who are the pathetic ones?

We must end our intoxication with military power before it ends us.

Available on Kindle at Amazon

Department of Offense

W.J. Astore

The U.S. Military Is a Global Strike Force

Officially, the U.S. has the DOD, the department of defense. But when was the last time the U.S. military was primarily oriented toward defense of the CONUS? (CONUS is a military acronym for continental United States.)

My old service, the U.S. Air Force, is far more open about its true aims. It boasts assertively of “global reach, global power” and notably of “global strike.” Not to be outdone, the U.S. Navy has “carrier strike groups,” what used to be termed carrier task forces when they fought real battles in World War II.

Here’s a recent official description: “A Carrier Strike Group (CSG) is a highly powerful, self-contained naval force, capable of projecting power globally, with an aircraft carrier as its core, supported by cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and an air wing, making it a formidable force capable of striking targets 1,000 miles away.”

Doesn’t sound defensive, does it? And of course the U.S. Marines are defined as “expeditionary” forces that are “forward-deployed” for all sorts of expected “contingencies” overseas.

The U.S. military is not about defense. It’s about “full-spectrum dominance.” That means dominance of the land, sea, air, space, cyber, information in all its forms, indeed just about any realm you can think of. No other military, moreover, divides the world into global commands (CENTCOM, AFRICOM, etc.) for the application of U.S. military power. This is not about defending America. It’s about dominating the world. Such a grandiose vision of defense dominance is partly what drives colossal Pentagon budgets that are climbing toward a trillion dollars a year.

SecDef Pete Hegseth, always talking warrior-tough (Doug Mills/NYT)

Consider here the recent kerfuffle about leaked U.S. strike plans for Yemen, which were inadvertently shared with the editor-in-chief at The Atlantic. Here’s an excerpt from those plans:

From Secretary of Defense Offense Pete Hegseth

  • “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
  • “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”
  • “1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
  • “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”
  • “1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”
  • “MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”
  • “We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
  • “Godspeed to our Warriors.”

Note the repetition of the word “strike” and the closing prayer to America’s “warriors.” And ask yourself: Is this truly what national defense should look like? Prayerful appeals to “warriors” as they strike weak and poor countries thousands of miles away in undeclared (and therefore unconstitutional) wars?

Close Down the Pentagon!

W.J. Astore

Send the “troops” to the front!

Coming soon to a Kindle store near you: all my articles for TomDispatch, with a new introduction by me and a foreword by Tom Engelhardt. You can preorder it by clicking on this link. Thanks!

Speaking of American militarism on steroids:

It’s been called the “House of War” by esteemed author James Carroll. Within the military, it’s jokingly referred to as the five-sided puzzle palace on the Potomac. It’s a monetary black hole that consumes eagerly and without bounds (in light of seven failed audits in a row) roughly a trillion dollars in yearly military expenditures. It’s a place where full-bird colonels, who should be leading regiments in the field, become errand boys and girls to a grossly inflated number of generals. Yes, it’s America’s very own Pentagon, built in record time in the early months of World War II to manage that colossal war—and never shuttered since because perpetual global war is very much fundamental to the American way of life.

If there’s a symbol of America that captures current and past governmental budgetary priorities and foreign policy commitments, it’s the Pentagon. Forget the Statue of Liberty. Never mind Freedom Towers and national parks and bald eagles and the like. Increasingly, the Pentagon is America, a highly militarized version of our country, which is precisely why it needs to be closed down. Where’s Elon Musk and the DOGE wunderkinds when you need them?

Nearly 30,000 people work in the Pentagon on a daily basis. It makes for some crowded parking lots—and cramped offices even for those aforementioned bird colonels. It’s a hotbed of intrigue and competition among the services for money and resources. It’s depressingly short on natural light. It’s a repository for hidebound thinking, a place where good ideas go to die. A line from the original “Star Wars” has been used more than once to describe it: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

And (again) it’s time to shut it down.

Here’s an idea to make the U.S. military far more efficient. Empty the Pentagon of all its worker-bees and from them create infantry battalions. An average battalion consists of roughly 800 “effectives,” so demobbing the Pentagon work force and mobilizing them instead for action in the field would create roughly 35 battalions. Send these battalions to all combat zones where U.S. troops are deployed today. Does Ukraine need more troops at the front? Does Israel need more stormtroopers in Gaza? We’ve got some Pentagon legions for you, Bibi.

Of course, I jest. I want to close the Pentagon to weaken militarism, not to wage war and genocide. Nevertheless, I’m guessing putting the entire Pentagon workforce at the point of the spear might serve to dull it a bit. Perhaps war boosterism might decrease if the cheerleaders were sent directly into the trenches instead of remaining safely on the sidelines?

Going Full Orwell

W.J. Astore

War Is Peace!

Yesterday, I awoke to grim news that Israel is bombing Gaza yet again, killing a few hundred people, even as the U.S. targets Yemen with “precision” bombs and strikes, apparently to intimidate Iran as well—and perhaps to provoke a war, as Israeli jets escort U.S. B-52 bombers in “exercises.”

War is in the news, incessantly, with Congress sidelined and feckless as usual.

The constant drumbeat of war—the never-ending concussion of bombs in the Middle East—put me to mind of Orwell’s 1984. Nothing favors authoritarian states more than a constant state of war. If you truly want to weaken the Trump administration, reject their “warrior” and “war fighting” rhetoric and their selling of “peace through strength,” by which they mean peace through bombing and killing. Some “peace,” right? They may as well go full Orwell and declare that “war is peace” while making the Pentagon the “Ministry of Peace.”

Speaking of Orwell, and needing a break from death and mayhem, I remembered this piece that I wrote in 2018. Citizens, you had best police not only your words and actions, but the faces you make as well, especially when our Dear Leader is talking.

Written in September 2018

Facecrime!

plaidshirtguy

W.J. Astore

We’re truly living in Orwellian times. A 17-year-old high school student, now known as #plaidshirtguy due to his choice of wardrobe, was removed from a Trump rally in Montana because of the faces he was making as Trump spoke. You can read all about here, and watch an interview with him at CNN.

Not surprisingly, people who stand behind Trump are selected ahead of time and told to clap and cheer. This young man did that, but he also chose to look quizzical, skeptical, and bemused at times. This is not allowed! A Trump staffer eventually intervened to remove him from the audience due to his “face crime.” To make matters worse, he was then held by the Secret Service for ten minutes, after which he was asked to leave the event.

Leave the event? For making skeptical and quizzical facial expressions?

You may recall from George Orwell’s “1984” that “Facecrime” existed. Anyone making skeptical or otherwise unacceptable faces when the Party announced bogus victories, production figures, and so forth opened himself or herself up to serious punishment.

Thanks to plaid shirt guy, we now know that facecrime has come to America. Just remember, fellow citizens, always to smile and cheer in the presence of Our Dear Leader. Unless you want to be detained and sent away — perhaps next time to the cornfield.

*From my copy of “1984”: “In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.” (From the end of Chapter 5.)

A Revealing Poll by NBC News Tells People How and What to Think

W.J. Astore

Forget about peace or reductions to military spending

According to an NBC News poll, America is rooting for Ukraine but Trump prefers Russia. Seriously. That’s the gist of the headline.

The intent of this poll wasn’t to analyze how Americans think about the Russia-Ukraine War or Trump or military strength. It was to control how they think by giving them only the most constrained choices.

Let’s take a close look at the results and the NBC headline. According to NBC News:

When asked where they believe Trump’s sympathies are, 49% choose Russia, 40% say they think Trump favors neither side, and 8% choose Ukraine. Another 3% say they are not sure.

So, a majority of Americans, 51%, believe Trump is either carefully neutral on the war, a Ukraine supporter, or they don’t know. A minority (49%) believes he sympathizes with Russia. But the headline says Americans believe “Trump prefers Russia.”

The photo that accompanies the NBC article shows Trump lecturing Zelensky.

Interestingly, I see no question about whether the Russia-Ukraine War should end after three long and bloody years so that lives are saved, or whether the U.S. should stop sending billions in weaponry to Ukraine with virtually no oversight as to where the weapons end up.

Further on, Americans are asked whether we should focus more on domestic affairs or whether we haven’t been strong enough globally. A majority of Americans believe we should focus on domestic affairs. But note how there’s no choice given for opposing war and preferring peace. Americans aren’t asked if they think the government is relying too much on military force. You have only two options: focus more at home, or strengthen the U.S. position abroad. 

Interestingly, it’s Democrats who are most concerned with strengthening America’s position abroad, with nearly six out of ten taking this position, whereas six out of ten Republicans want to focus on domestic affairs. That is a remarkable result, as Democrats have supplanted Republicans as the party of military interventionism and “strength.”

Again, NBC didn’t bother to ask directly whether Americans would prefer peace and substantial reductions to military spending. You are not supposed to have those preferences, so you’re not asked about them.

The bottom line of this poll and article is simple: Real Americans support Ukraine. Only 2% of Americans support Russia. Trump is overly sympathetic to Russia.

Apparently, real Americans can’t support peace nor are they allowed to consider significant reductions to spending on wars and weapons. To do so would be un-American, or so NBC News seems to suggest.

Dude, Where’s My Country?

W.J. Astore

Peace Through Strength!

As a retired U.S. military officer, I’m appalled at the notion of “peace through strength.” You may as well say “war is peace.” Peace is achieved through dialogue. Diplomacy. Engagement. A spirit of good will. It isn’t achieved by brandishing weapons while selling the same around the globe. (The U.S. dominates the global arms trade, accounting for nearly half of it.)

I’m also outraged by the ongoing militarism of this moment, whether it’s Kamala Harris celebrating military lethality and embracing the Cheneys in 2024 or the Trump crowd that embraces “warriors” and “warfighters.” The solemn tradition of the citizen-soldier has long been abandoned in the U.S., replaced as it has been by a mercenary mindset that sees war as permanent and therefore “normal,” even admirable.

Even as we’re essentially being told and sold “war is peace,” we’re also being told and sold that ethnic cleansing in Gaza is urban renewal, a prelude to a new Riviera, a new playground for the rich, even if it’s erected on the bones of millions of Palestinians. Obviously, this cleansing of genocide using the imagery of crass and vulgar tourism must be condemned in no uncertain terms.

Put colloquially, I often wonder, Dude, where’s my country?

Explore Gaza, by Mr. Fish (at Chris Hedges’ Substack)

Four Years Ago, Democrats Could Have Won the 2024 Election

W.J. Astore

The Road Not Taken

Remember in February of 2021 when Democrats said they were going to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour? That raise would have lifted nearly a million workers out of poverty while placing Democrats firmly on the side of working-class Americans.

You may recall the “Senate Parliamentarian,” an obscure official, ruled that the pay raise couldn’t be included in the proposed bill, a decision that Democrats said they oh-so-reluctantly respected. And so the federal minimum wage still sits at $7.25 an hour (the last time it was raised was in 2009).

Must…Obey…the Senate Parliamentarian! (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Vice President Kamala Harris, presiding over the Senate, could have simply overruled the Parliamentarian, but she and the Biden administration chose not to.

Think about that. Biden/Harris ran on a platform of raising that wage to $15. Biden himself promised it and promoted it. But when push came to shove, they didn’t shove, nor did they even push. They just caved to their corporate overlords.

A counterfactual: What if the Democrats had done what they’d promised? What if Harris had run in 2024 on a proven record of delivering higher wages to workers? What if she’d said she was going to raise it even higher, say to $20 an hour, when she became president? My guess is that she would have fared far better with workers and may in fact have won the election.

Elections have consequences, Democrats like to say. So too does a broken promise.

We’re #1 in Selling Weapons!

W.J. Astore

American Exceptionalism Defined

We’re #1 (once again) in selling weapons! Amazingly, the USA now accounts for 43% of the world’s trade in deadly weaponry. No country beats more plowshares into swords and pruning hooks into spears than America, which is also, obviously, the most Christian nation in the world.

Let’s take a look at a useful chart from Stephen Semler (be sure to check out his blogon Substack):

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Finding #1: The US is the world’s largest arms dealer

The US accounts for 43% of global arms exports, more than the next seven largest arms-exporting countries combined. All the countries outside the top eight account for less than 17% of the worldwide total.

^Alt text for screen readers: The U.S. exports more weapons than the next 7 largest arms exporters combined. This graph has two columns, one showing the U.S.’s 43% share of global arms transfers, and the other showing the combined share of France, Russia, China, Germany, Italy, U.K., and Israel, totaling 40.4%.

For another perspective on America’s record-breaking year of selling deadly weaponry, check out this column by Lenny Broytman.

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Way back in 2012, I wrote a column for TomDispatch: “Weapons ‘r’ us,” in which I examined America’s dominance of the weapons trade. Here’s what I wrote back then:

Yes, we’re the world’s foremost “merchants of death,” the title of a best-selling exposé of the international arms trade published to acclaim in the U.S. in 1934. Back then, most Americans saw themselves as war-avoiders rather than as war-profiteers. The evil war-profiteers were mainly European arms makers like Germany’s Krupp, France’s Schneider, or Britain’s Vickers.

Not that America didn’t have its own arms merchants. As the authors of Merchants of Death noted, early on our country demonstrated a “Yankee propensity for extracting novel death-dealing knickknacks from [our] peddler’s pack.” Amazingly, the Nye Committee in the U.S. Senate devoted 93 hearings from 1934 to 1936 to exposing America’s own “greedy munitions interests.” Even in those desperate depression days, a desire for profit and jobs was balanced by a strong sense of unease at this deadly trade, an unease reinforced by the horrors of and hecatombs of dead from the First World War.

We are uneasy no more. Today we take great pride (or at least have no shame) in being by far the world’s number one arms-exporting nation. A few statistics bear this out. From 2006 to 2010, the U.S. accounted for nearly one-third of the world’s arms exports, easily surpassing a resurgent Russia in the “Lords of War” race. Despite a decline in global arms sales in 2010 due to recessionary pressures, the U.S. increased its market share, accounting for a whopping 53% of the trade that year. Last year saw the U.S. on pace to deliver more than $46 billion in foreign arms sales. Who says America isn’t number one anymore?

Who, indeed? And we remain, of course, our own best customers, as this year’s Pentagon budget soars to $900 billion, even as the Trump administration argues for “peace through strength,” or, put bluntly, peace through superior firepower.

Only in America is Jesus heavily armed and packing heat. Truly exceptional!

Obviously, American Jesus preached peace through strength

The Democrats Boldly Respond to Trump by Citing–Ronald Reagan

W.J. Astore

Trust me, I’m ex-CIA!

I confess I didn’t watch President Trump’s address last night nor the response from the Democrats. I’ve heard enough of Trump bloviating and I’ve had my fill of Democrats and their “resistance.”

Checking my news feed this AM, I see that the Democratic response was given by a “moderate,” Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. She’s an ex-CIA agent, so I guess that means we can trust her? And she served alongside troops in the disastrous Iraq War, so I guess she’s patriotic and smart?

Here’s the link to her address.

Senator Slotkin tackled Trump not by citing progressive ideas and Democratic worthies like FDR and George McGovern but by applauding a Republican President, Ronald Reagan. President George W. Bush also got a positive mention.

Her main complaint was the “chaos” unleashed by Trump/Musk. She made a big deal about protecting the “homeland” along with immigration reform. She dropped a lot of buzzwords. She stressed that Trump apparently doesn’t think that America is theexceptional nation. And that he’s too cozy with Russia and Putin. The usual charges.

What was missing was vision, especially moral commitments to peace and justice. I heard nothing concrete about enlarging unions, boosting wages, affordable health care for all, serious student loan debt relief, or putting a stop to genocide in Gaza.

We’re still exceptional. Apple pie!

Slotkin’s speech was a perfect product of the corporate Democrats, or, more accurately, the uniparty and the national security state. She’s for “responsible” change. She’s for the middle class. Even apple pie got a mention!

Apparently, the Democratic plan to win back the presidency in 2028 is to reanimate the body of Ronald Reagan with apple pie as his running mate. How’s that for “resistance,” America? 

Bonus Lesson: Slotkin said America’s “superpower” is that we’re a nation of “strivers” and “risk-takers” who are “never satisfied.” I guess other nations and peoples don’t have innovators with ambition, or maybe they’re too easily satisfied, unlike Americans?