Tag: Military-Industrial Complex

Permanent War

The Normalization of Mass Violence

BILL ASTORE

OCT 25, 2026

Yet more U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran may be imminent, which is truly a sad manifestation of America’s state of permanent war and its normalization of violence. Sadly, it’s an old topic for me, as a reader recently referenced an essay I wrote for TomDispatch back in 2015: “War is the new normal.”

Here in America, military marches have become the elevator muzak to our lives. When we’re not at war with Iraq or Afghanistan or Iran or even with an abstract concept like “terror,” we’re making trillion-dollar preparations for the same. What is abnormal, even aberrant, in America today is serious efforts at peace. Peace consistently makes the news only when Donald Trump complains about his failure to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

Here’s my essay from 2015, more relevant now than ever.

War Is the New Normal

Seven Deadly Reasons Why America’s Wars Persist

BY WILLIAM J. ASTORE

It was launched immediately after the 9/11 attacks, when I was still in the military, and almost immediately became known as the Global War on Terror, or GWOT. Pentagon insiders called it “the long war,” an open-ended, perhaps unending, conflict against nations and terror networks mainly of a radical Islamist bent. It saw the revival of counterinsurgency doctrine, buried in the aftermath of defeat in Vietnam, and a reinterpretation of that disaster as well. Over the years, its chief characteristic became ever clearer: a “Groundhog Day” kind of repetition. Just when you thought it was over (Iraq, Afghanistan), just after victory (of a sort) was declared, it began again.

Now, as we find ourselves enmeshed in Iraq War 3.0, what better way to memorialize the post-9/11 American way of war than through repetition. Back in July 2010, I wrote an article for TomDispatch on the seven reasons why America can’t stop making war. More than four years later, with the war on terror still ongoing, with the mission eternally unaccomplished, here’s a fresh take on the top seven reasons why never-ending war is the new normal in America. In this sequel, I make only one promise: no declarations of victory (and mark it on your calendars, I’m planning to be back with seven new reasons in 2019).

1. The privatization of war: The U.S. military’s recourse to private contractors has strengthened the profit motive for war-making and prolonged wars as well. Unlike the citizen-soldiers of past eras, the mobilized warrior corporations of America’s new mercenary moment — the Halliburton/KBRs (nearly $40 billion in contracts for the Iraq War alone), the DynCorps ($4.1 billion to train 150,000 Iraqi police), and the Blackwater/Xe/Academis ($1.3 billion in Iraq, along with boatloads of controversy) — have no incentive to demobilize. Like most corporations, their business model is based on profit through growth, and growth is most rapid when wars and preparations for more of them are the favored options in Washington.

“Freedom isn’t free,” as a popular conservative bumper sticker puts it, and neither is war. My father liked the saying, “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” and today’s mercenary corporations have been calling for a lot of military marches piping in $138 billion in contracts for Iraq alone, according to the Financial Times. And if you think that the privatization of war must at least reduce government waste, think again: the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimated in 2011 that fraud, waste, and abuse accounted for up to $60 billion of the money spent in Iraq alone.

To corral American-style war, the mercenaries must be defanged or deflated. European rulers learned this the hard way during the Thirty Years’ War of the seventeenth century. At that time, powerful mercenary captains like Albrecht von Wallenstein ran amok. Only Wallenstein’s assassination and the assertion of near absolutist powers by monarchs bent on curbing war before they went bankrupt finally brought the mercenaries to heel, a victory as hard won as it was essential to Europe’s survival and eventual expansion. (Europeans then exported their wars to foreign shores, but that’s another story.)

2. The embrace of the national security state by both major parties: Jimmy Carter was the last president to attempt to exercise any kind of control over the national security state. A former Navy nuclear engineer who had served under the demanding Admiral Hyman Rickover, Carter cancelled the B-1 bomber and fought for a U.S. foreign policy based on human rights. Widely pilloried for talking about nuclear war with his young daughter Amy, Carter was further attacked for being “weak” on defense. His defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 inaugurated 12 years of dominance by Republican presidents that opened the financial floodgates for the Department of Defense. That taught Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council a lesson when it came to the wisdom of wrapping the national security state in a welcoming embrace, which they did, however uncomfortably. This expedient turn to the right by the Democrats in the Clinton years served as a temporary booster shot when it came to charges of being “soft” on defense — until Republicans upped the ante by going “all-in” on military crusades in the aftermath of 9/11.

Since his election in 2008, Barack Obama has done little to alter the course set by his predecessors. He, too, has chosen not to challenge Washington’s prevailing catechism of war. Republicans have responded, however, not by muting their criticism, but by upping the ante yet again. How else to explain House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress in March? That address promises to be a pep talk for the Republicans, as well as a smack down of the Obama administration and its “appeasenik” policies toward Iran and Islamic radicalism.

Serious oversight, let alone opposition to the national security state by Congress or a mainstream political party, has been missing in action for years and must now, in the wake of the Senate Torture Report fiasco (from which the CIA emerged stronger, not weaker), be presumed dead. The recent midterm election triumph of Republican war hawks and the prospective lineup of candidates for president in 2016 does not bode well when it comes to reining in the national security state in any foreseeable future.

3. “Support Our Troops” as a substitute for thought. You’ve seen them everywhere: “Support Our Troops” stickers. In fact, the “support” in that slogan generally means acquiescence when it comes to American-style war. The truth is that we’ve turned the all-volunteer military into something like a foreign legion, deploying it again and again to our distant battle zones and driving it into the ground in wars that amount to strategic folly. Instead of admitting their mistakes, America’s leaders have worked to obscure them by endlessly overpraising our “warriors” as so many universal heroes. This may salve our collective national conscience, but it’s a form of cheap grace that saves no lives — and wins no wars.

Instead, this country needs to listen more carefully to its troops, especially the war critics who have risked their lives while fighting overseas. Organizations like Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace are good places to start.

4. Fighting a redacted war. War, like the recent Senate torture report, is redacted in America. Its horrors and mistakes are suppressed, its patriotic whistleblowers punished, even as the American people are kept in a demobilized state. The act of going to war no longer represents the will of the people, as represented by formal Congressional declarations of war as the U.S. Constitution demands. Instead, in these years, Americans were told to go to Disney World (as George W. Bush suggested in the wake of 9/11) and keep shopping. They’re encouraged not to pay too much attention to war’s casualties and costs, especially when those costs involve foreigners with funny-sounding names (after all, they are, as American sniper Chris Kyle so indelicately put it in his book, just “savages”).

Redacted war hides the true cost of a permanent state of killing from the American people, if not from foreign observers. Ignorance and apathy reign, even as a national security state that is essentially a shadow government equates its growth with your safety.

5. Threat inflation: There’s nothing new about threat inflation. We saw plenty of it during the Cold War (nonexistent missile and bomber gaps, for example). Fear sells and we’ve had quite a dose of it in the twenty-first century, from ISIS to Ebola. But a more important truth is that fear is a mind-killer, a debate-stifler.

Back in September, for example, Senator Lindsey Graham warned that ISIS and its radical Islamic army was coming to America to kill us all. ISIS, of course, is a regional power with no ability to mount significant operations against the United States. But fear is so commonplace, so effectively stoked in this country that Americans routinely and wildly exaggerate the threat posed by al-Qaeda or ISIS or the bogeyman du jour.

Decades ago, as a young lieutenant in the Air Force, I was hunkered down in Cheyenne Mountain during the Cold War. It was the ultimate citadel-cum-bomb-shelter, and those in it were believed to have a 70% likelihood of surviving a five-megaton nuclear blast. There, not surprisingly, I found myself contemplating the very real possibility of a thermonuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, a war that would have annihilated life as we knew it, indeed much of life on our planet thanks to the phenomenon of nuclear winter. You’ll excuse me for not shaking in my boots at the threat of ISIS coming to get me. Or of Sharia Law coming to my local town hall. With respect to such fears, America needs, as Hillary Clinton said in an admittedly different context, to “grow a pair.”

6. Defining the world as a global battlefield: In fortress America, all realms have by now become battle spheres. Not only much of the planet, the seas, air, and space, as well as the country’s borders and its increasingly up-armored police forces, but the world of thought, the insides of our minds. Think of the 17 intertwined intelligence outfits in “the U.S. Intelligence Community” and their ongoing “surge” for information dominance across every mode of human communication, as well as the surveillance of everything. And don’t forget the national security state’s leading role in making cyberwar a reality. (Indeed, Washington launched the first cyberwar in history by deploying the Stuxnet computer worm against Iran.)

Think of all this as a global matrix that rests on war, empowering disaster capitalismand the corporate complexes that have formed around the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and that intelligence community. A militarized matrix doesn’t blink at $1.45 trillion dollars devoted to the F-35, a single under-performing jet fighter, nor at projections of $355 billion over the next decade for “modernizing” the U.S. nuclear arsenal, weapons that Barack Obama vowed to abolish in 2009.

7. The new “normal” in America is war: The 9/11 attacks happened more than 13 years ago, which means that no teenagers in America can truly remember a time when the country was at peace. ”War time” is their normal; peace, a fairy tale.

What’s truly “exceptional” in twenty-first-century America is any articulated vision of what a land at peace with itself and other nations might be like. Instead, war, backed by a diet of fear, is the backdrop against which the young have grown to adulthood. It’s the background noise of their world, so much a part of their lives that they hardly recognize it for what it is. And that’s the most insidious danger of them all.

How do we inoculate our children against such a permanent state of war and the war state itself? I have one simple suggestion: just stop it. All of it. Stop making war a never-ending part of our lives and stop celebrating it, too. War should be the realm of the extreme, of the abnormal. It should be the death of normalcy, not the dreary norm.

It’s never too soon, America, to enlist in that good fight!

Mission Accomplished in Iraq in 2003! Why, then, did U.S. troops stay until 2026?

Postscript (2026): Today, America’s Department of Defense has been rebranded as the Department of War. It’s led by a wannabe warlord who revels in attacking without mercy. Even worse, America’s commander-in-chief has threatened the total obliteration of Iran while going all-in on a Pentagon budget of $1.5 trillion in FY2027. A feckless Congress does nothing to stop Trump’s wars and has from day one facilitated Israel’s genocide against Gaza.

America’s leaders say they want peace, but that the only language they—the enemy of that day—understand is murderous violence. What if that language is the only one ourleaders understand? Even worse, why have we allowed them to preach and act as if war truly is peace?

What Does America Value?

War and Weapons, or Schools and Hospitals?

BILL ASTORE

OCT 17, 2026

The one quote I know from Joe Biden is show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value. Biden wasn’t exactly Abe Lincoln but that quote does resonate.

As the “Department of War” budget approaches $1.5 trillion, as spending on boondoggle weapons systems like the Sentinel ICBM, the B-21 nuclear bomber, and the “Golden Dome” continues to soar, it’s obvious what America’s leaders value: war and weapons, full-spectrum dominance, coercion and control, mass violence and threats of the same.

Only an American leader is currently threatening the complete annihilation of ninety million people, as Trump has done repeatedly with Iran. Surely mass death and destruction shouldn’t be what America values most?

As war and weapons spending continues to spiral upward, Americans should reflect on the lost opportunity cost of all that money. Better schools, more affordable health care, more housing, a cleaner and safer environment, all this and more is achievable if we invested in them rather than wasting it all on more weaponry and more wars.

Bringing this message home with the help of humble Oreo cookies is Ben Cohen, famously of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. The short video below is well worth watching.

Ben Cohen@YoBenCohen

What if we invested in Americans the way we invest in war? Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, and Sully break down something every American deserves to understand: where our tax dollars go and what else they could accomplish. Using Oreo cookies, we show what a $1.5 …

4:03 PM · Oct 15, 2026 · 3.23K Views

3 Replies · 24 Reposts · 87 Likes

Tell your members of Congress you’re fed up with murderous wars and deadly weaponry. Vote them out if they refuse to change their ways. And let’s start saving some Oreos for ourselves and our hungry neighbors rather than handing them all to gluttonous warmongers.

The Conceit of Total Dominance

And the Sheer Expense of It All

BILL ASTORE

18 HOURS AGO

A strange conceit of American exceptionalism is the naked ambition of full-spectrum dominance. The idea is this: America must dominate every realm of potential conflict, land-sea-air as well as space and cyber and any other realm you can imagine, for that is the only way Americans can truly be “safe.” Such a conceit comes with a hefty price tag as Pentagon spending soars toward $1.5 trillion a year. But money is the least of it. The heftiest price tag is the constant state of warfare (and preparations for yet more war) that has characterized U.S. foreign policy since 1945. That, and the erosion of personal liberty and freedom and the hollowing out of the American middle- and working classes as money flows upward to war contractors in the service of boundless imperial ambition.

There’s a god-like quality to this ambition, the idea America must be omnipotent, dominating all realms of warfare, and omniscient, sweeping up all data everywhere, in an unapologetic quest for global reach and global power together with the unapologetic exercise of that murderous power against peoples generally having brown or black skin and therefore treated as inferiors.

With only slight exaggeration, the U.S. government can be said to be projecting power everywhere and helping ordinary Americans nowhere. Destruction is favored over construction. Enriching the already rich is the goal even as the impoverished are made poorer.

The U.S. taxpayer, in the old days known as citizens, are paying through the nose for unneeded weapons systems (Sentinel ICBMs, B-21 nuclear bombers, Golden Dome), unwanted wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran), and an imperial structure of force projection that virtually guarantees the violence will be unending. This imperial structure, with its goal to control all, to know all, to dominate all, is supported by Democrats and Republicans. Critics of this structure, present in both parties but in small numbers, are attacked and otherwise kept on the margins.

None of this is new. In the early 1960s, Senator George McGovern, a decorated bomber pilot during World War II, argued against the pursuit of nuclear “overkill” and called for substantial cuts to defense spending and reinvestment in civilian infrastructure. In support of this initiative, he cited Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex warning of January 1961. McGovern’s initiative was quickly abandoned as the Johnson administration ramped up its disastrous war in Southeast Asia.

Nearly a decade later, with Southeast Asia ravaged if not defeated, McGovern urged his fellow citizens to “come home,” to stop the folly of overseas wars and ever-increasing military budgets. He was overwhelmingly defeated by Richard Nixon in the 1972 Presidential election.

Ever since that defeat, the Democratic Party has conspired to silence candidates who are antiwar and who dissent from the idea of imperial dominance. Dennis Kucinich comes to mind here. Even moderate calls for reform from candidates like Bernie Sanders are dismissed as naive or dangerous. The result has been Democrats like Obama, Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Harris who openly embrace “good” wars (Afghanistan, for Obama) and who eagerly celebrate military lethality (Harris).

Meanwhile, the Republican Party never met a military budget increase it didn’t like. Rare indeed are voices like Ron and Rand Paul and Thomas Massie who question the wisdom of endless wars and their adverse impact on rights and freedoms here.

What is to be done? Bernie Sanders called for a political revolution, surely a correct call, but he was neutered by the establishment of both parties. Elizabeth Warren spoke of “big, structural changes,” but that was for the domestic economy; her foreign policy was basically that of Biden/Harris. A few rogue Republicans speak up against the Iran war today, but rare indeed are those who openly call for major cuts to war spending.

In short, electing our way out of imperial dominance and colossal war and weapons spending is unlikely in the extreme. Many many people (myself included) have written sensible articles calling for deep cuts to military spending, but good ideas that go against the grain gain little traction without a strong and concerted movement behind them. 

America desperately needs a coordinated mass movement against endless war and massive military spending, yet the “powers that be” keep doubling down on yet more wars and even more massive war spending. That same establishment continues to multiply U.S. “enemies.” It may be Iran today, but Russia and especially China always loom, with North Korea and other “rogue” states held in reserve just in case.

The sheer folly and massive expense of it all will likely lead to the end of the (however imperfectly practiced) American democratic experiment. That’s a grim conclusion, I know, but I’m less than hopeful as the tools America has used in its unjust wars overseas are now increasingly applied in the “homeland” against alleged dissenters.

Remember when “dissenters” used to be called concerned citizens? Remember when war was considered to be bad and weapons spending was seen as the unwisest of ways to spend our resources?

America doesn’t have to be a warrior-state or in a state of constant war. A “silent majority” of Americans clearly doesn’t want endless war and outspokenly wants better lives for their children. But better days will not come if this majority remains silent or otherwise demobilized.

The Main Obstacle

As Ike said in 1961, the main obstacle is the military-industrial complex (MIC), to which he added Congress as an abetter and accomplice. That complex in 65 years has greatly added to its power and cultural penetration. The term MICIMATT adds the intelligence “community,” the media, academe, and think tanks. To that we might add the sporting world, Hollywood, video games, and now wildcard tech billionaires. All these interests conspire to absorb trillions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers, ostensibly in the name of national security, while waging or supporting endless war. 

Ike said only alert and knowledgeable citizens, actively participating in democracy, could compel the MIC to curb its worst and most grandiose ambitions. Sadly, this is precisely why the American people are constantly lied to, especially about wars, why so much is kept hidden or “classified,” and why people are encouraged to salute smartly and let the military experts handle everything.

Even worse, the very idea of active citizenship is now degraded; the only “duty” apparently left is voting, where you’re encouraged to vote Democrat or Republican and otherwise to reject any third-party candidate who may be antiwar as irrelevant if not invalid (and possibly un-American).

Our ultimate security doesn’t reside in guns or other weapons or in boundless violence. It resides in strong institutions committed to the rule of law in which individuals of character stand up and speak out against abuses of power. Come home, America, to a land of generosity and hope and peace.

Be an alert and knowledgeable citizen. And act.

Air Force Academy Football Team Honors New Nuclear Bomber

The Ultimate Fusion of Sports and Militarism 

BILL ASTORE

SEP 18, 2026

Incredibly, the Air Force Academy football program is honoring a weapon system, the new B-21 Raider bomber, which is surely music to the ears of Northrop Grumman, the lead contractor.

Here’s the announcement from the Air Force:

The Air Force football team will honor the B-21 Raider with the 2026 edition of the Air Power Legacy Series uniform. The Falcons will wear the special uniform for the Navy game scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 3, at 10 a.m. MT at Falcon Stadium on the campus of the United States Air Force Academy. The game will be nationally televised on CBS.

The idea of preventing conflict by maintaining a force so capable, ready, and credible that no adversary will ever risk war. It is the promise that peace is preserved through unmatched strength and readiness 24/7/365.

Power Projection is ability to rapidly fly, fight, and deliver decisive airpower anywhere on the globe, anytime, through any contested airspace. It ensures America’s reach has no limits.

Ah, “America’s reach” may have no limits, but recent events surely prove that our reach has greatly exceeded our grasp, whether in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or most recently in Iran.

And how is “preventing conflict” working for America’s massively steroidal military?

Perhaps one shouldn’t think too much about this. Focus on the cool uniforms and the sleek jets, am I right?

Here’s a slick Air Force PR image—if you can stand it.

Look at those gridiron warriors, embracing the new B-21 bomber! Truly inspiring.

The mixture of sports and militarism in America is increasingly deadly, especially for those people on the receiving end of America’s “projected” power. 

A special sports uniform for a plane that isn’t even fielded yet, let alone combat-proven. What insanity.

By the way, if you go to the Northrop Grumman website, you see this proud statement:

Air Power Legacy Series

Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Air Force Academy partnered on the 10th‑anniversary Air Power Legacy Series, unveiling a B‑21 Raider inspired football uniform that connects Air Force heritage to the future of American air power. The uniforms debut October 3 vs. Navy at Falcon Stadium.

No better illustration of Ike’s military-industrial complex can possibly exist.

P.S. The projected cost of each B-21 bomber is roughly $700 million, a “conservative” estimate. Given the usual cost overruns, it’s likely the B-21 will cost $1 billion per plane. Total program cost is just over $200 billion, but that’s in Fiscal Year 2019 dollars. Again, given the usual cost overruns, that cost will likely double over the next 10-20 years, assuming Congress continues to fund the plane. And, guess what? America doesn’t even need the B-21. The Air Force already has more than enough planes, bombs, and missiles to end most life on earth.

Talk about unlimited “reach”!

P.P.S. By happy coincidence, today is the Air Force’s 79th birthday. Why don’t you chip in a few hundred dollars for the new B-21? Not that you have any choice in the matter.

Random Sunday Thoughts

On Long Wars, the DSA, Aborigines, and Democracy in America

BILL ASTORE

AUG 09, 2026

On a very warm and humid Sunday morning, here are a few random thoughts for today:

1. It’s rather amazing that the U.S./Israel War against Iran has entered its six month with no end in sight. Remember when the Trump administration suggested it would last no longer than eight weeks? The war is holding the world economy hostage, apparently for “greater Israel” and continued U.S. dominance of trade in fossil fuels. I say “apparently” because the war doesn’t make much sense to most Americans, who are in the main against it. The only selling point Trump keeps repeating is that Iran must not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, even as Israel is allowed to have up to 300 of them. His own intelligence chief told Trump that Iran was not working to field a nuclear weapon, but the Israelis told him otherwise, and we know who Trump is most obeisant toward.

2. Patrick Lawrence has a great piece on the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, and how they want to abolish ICE and possibly the presidency itself while defunding the police, the Pentagon, and other instruments of authority and coercion. One sympathizes, but it’s neither a practical nor a winning political message. So I wrote this comment at his site:

Echoing George McGovern, “Come home, America.” You can’t abolish or dismantle everything. But we can downsize the imperium and reinvest in America rather than “investing” in more wars and Zionist Israel.

If the DSA wants to make a contribution, it should focus on that — downsizing the empire, putting the American people first, rather than dreaming of abolishing everything. For what will replace it?

Make the lives of average Americans better, more affordable, more livable. Clean up our environment. And forget the magical thinking and empty posturing.

Come home, America. Come home from wanton, wasteful, and immoral wars.

3. I was breezing through “The Devil’s Dictionary” by Ambrose Bierce and stumbled on his acerbic definition of “Aborigines”:

1. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

2. Considerate persons who will not trouble the lexicographer of the future to describe them.

Bierce, a veteran of the U.S. Civil War, didn’t mince words here. There are always “persons of little worth” to oppressors who’d prefer that they leave or die. What was true of aboriginal peoples of the 19th and early 20th centuries is true of the Palestinians today: they are seen as obstacles to be overcome, even as terrorists to be exterminated.

4. Antiwar forces in America remain fragmented, and that’s partly by design. To oversimplify, you have the so-called radical left, which is antiwar, sometimes anti-military, often as critical of America as it is of empire, versus the “unpatriotic” (to Trump) right, which is anti-dumb wars, generally pro-military, and animated by putting “America first.” Left and right have much in common: they want less war, less militarism, and more investment and support for Main Street USA. If they could combine, they would make a formidable force against the MICC and incessant warfare. Which is why each side is encouraged to distrust and even hate the other, i.e. the “radical left” is told the right is racist and reactionary and the “unpatriotic right” is told the left is woke, arrogant, and un-American.

The MICC and “Deep State” know that these two groups must be kept divided. They must never be allowed to cooperate in meaningful ways.

5. Ike said only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry could tame and reduce the anti-democratic forces unleashed by the MICC. Note how Ike said nothing about the left or right. Being for democracy, freedom, and liberty isn’t a right or left issue. The same applies to being against war and killing and massively wasteful military budgets. These are human issues that should unite everyone irrespective of political allegiances.

Caveat: Any foolishness written above is on account of the heat, but fortunately I’ve been told global warming is a Chinese hoax. Stay cool, everyone.

The Militarized Insanity of this American Moment

A “Top Ten” List

BILL ASTORE

AUG 04, 2026

There’s so much militarized crazy in America today that it’s entirely overwhelming. Here’s a “top ten” list:

1. The illegal and unconstitutional war against Iran.

Remember when Trump told us he wouldn’t start wars? Remember when attacks on Iran began, the Trump administration told us they’d be over in a matter of days, perhaps a few weeks, ending in Iran’s total defeat? Instead, the U.S. government and military is engaged in yet another disastrous losing undeclared war that is unsupported by most Americans. As if our opinions matter!

2. The continued blanket support of Israel’s genocide against Gaza, pogroms in the West Bank, and demolition/seizure of land in Lebanon.

The Trump administration remains 100% committed to the project of a “Greater Israel,” no matter how many Palestinians suffer and die in the process.

3. The obscene $500 billion increase in military spending in FY2027.

The U.S. military hasn’t won a major war since 1945. It’s failed eight audits in a row. The “punishment” is a vast increase in military spending in the next fiscal year.

4. The escalatory and nearly impossible Golden Dome proposal.

The golden dome missile defense system is a golden boondoggle for weapons makers. It’s unlikely to work, and if it does, if only partially, it may make nuclear war more likely.

5. The unnecessary “modernization” of the nuclear triad at a projected cost of $2 trillion.

U.S. militarists still believe the nuclear triad is the Holy Trinity. It isn’t. Land-based ICBMs and nuclear bombers should be scrapped as obsolete. The Navy’s Trident-missile-firing submarines are all the U.S. needs for nuclear deterrence.

6. The continued headlong pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI) and the ongoing empowerment and enlargement of the surveillance state.

AI combined with ever-more intrusive cameras and digital monitoring is creating a dystopic “Big Brother” state. Imagine sweeping AI with a steroidal Homeland Security; now imagine the total disappearance of privacy.

7. The war against the ICC and UN and indeed any legal check on U.S./Israeli aggression.

As the U.S. and Israel engage in global aggression, they attack institutions such as the International Criminal Court and the United Nations that attempt to limit and stop that aggression.

8. Related to (7), the proposal to merge the U.S. military with Israel’s for research and development, intelligence sharing, and the like.

Incredibly, the Trump administration is proposing a merger between the U.S. and Israeli militaries that would compromise U.S. national security at the highest levels of classification. Obedient to Aipac and Israeli imperatives, Congress seems prepared ultimately to support it.

9. Continued environmental damage due to war and military operations and the complete disregard of climate change.

Rarely in the U.S. do you hear any talk of how war and global military actions accelerate global warming and aggravate environmental damage. Check out the documentary by Abby Martin, “Earth’s Greatest Enemy,” and her interview with Chris Hedges.

10. The abandonment of the citizen-soldier tradition in the U.S., the embrace of a warrior ethos, and the increasing contempt for diversity within the military.

The last war America won (with serious help from allies like the Soviet Union) was World War II, also the last time America had a true citizen-soldier military. Since then, America has increasingly embraced a warrior ethos. And while diversity used to be a hallmark of the U.S. military, it is now under attack as “woke” by Pete Hegseth.

There you have it: ten signs of America’s increasingly militarized madness. Greater sanity would involve the reversal of all of these.

Not Another Article about the Military-Industrial Complex

1.5 Trillion Reasons to Focus on the MICC–the Blob that Ate Washington

BILL ASTORE

JUL 20, 2026

Last week, I was chatting with an old friend, fellow veteran, and loyal reader when he suggested I should write less about the military-industrial complex. I laughed. I wish I could, I replied, but I’ve got 1.5 trillion reasons to write about it.

The MICC (we must add Congress to the mix) won’t leave me and America alone. If a trillion dollar military wasn’t bad enough, we’re now approaching $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon’s war and weapons budget, an absurd amount that represents roughly 75% of federal discretionary spending. (Estimates vary from 63% to as high as 81% of federal discretionary spending.) Meanwhile, as the Pentagon gobbles up even more money, it still can’t pass Congressionally-mandated audits. Talk about absurdity! Eight failed audits and the reward is more money—much more.

To modify an old saying, Americans may not be interested in the MICC, but the MICC is interested in them. It’s most certainly interested in their money. And their obedience.

I remember a time, 40-50 years ago, when you’d see informed and critical articles about the MICC in the mainstream media (MSM). I grew up reading them in newspapers like the Boston Globe. Such articles have just about vanished in the MSM today, and we know why: the newspapers are owned by billionaires and corporations that profit from that same MICC. They are not about to bite the hand that feeds them. 

There’s a sense of resignation today (I think) where the average American just goes along to get along, or, worse, Americans who simply don’t have the time and who also believe national security issues are beyond them. Thus they wave the flag and defer to the “experts” they see on TV and cable, all those retired generals and admirals who shill for the arms makers (and takers of our tax dollars), who repeat talking points they get from the Pentagon.

That’s why America needs a “big tent” movement of “alert and knowledgeable” citizens that incorporates critical voices from the left, right, and center. Instead, “hot button” cultural issues are used to divide and distract us. Somehow we must come together and resist wanton and wasteful spending on wars and weapons before the U.S. empire collapses under the weight of its own folly and greed.

We must fight the good fight against wars and ultra-expensive preparations for the same while we can.

I’d like to see a U.S. military focused on true national defense, and maybe we once had one in World War II, but of course it’s morphed into a global Goliath where naked aggression is twisted as “preemptive defense.”

Thirty-five years ago, when I was a young captain, there was a fleeting opportunity for “peace dividends” with the collapse of the Soviet Union. We had a precious opportunity, as Jeanne Kirkpatrick said back then, of becoming “a normal country in normal times.” But the vested interests and the pursuit of wealth triumphed over peace dividends and greater economic equity. Under Bill Clinton, the Democrats happily shifted to the right and adopted much of Reaganism. U.S. workers were abandoned for the pursuit of profit. Anger at this treachery helped to strengthen the BS populism of men like Donald Trump and his ilk.

Hope is dying, as is our trust in government. After all, why should we trust the government? It gave us the Pentagon Papers, the Afghan War Papers, the missing WMD in Iraq, and now we’re engaged in another disastrous war with Iran, basically for Israel.

And that’s not all. Congress is bought by AIPAC and major corporations. Members of Congress are selected, not elected, with big-money donors doing the selecting. SCOTUS said money is speech so those with lots of money control things and those with very little have no say at all. That’s not democracy, it’s plutocracy, and the plutocrats often double as kleptocrats (Trump and Pelosi, for example, using their offices to get richer, though Pelosi is a piker compared to Trump).

Run for your lives … before it’s too late!

We’ve drifted a bit from the MICC, but then again cutting the MICC’s budget and influence is a big part of the solution to America’s problems. For FY2027, the proposed Pentagon budget is the blob that ate Washington. We’ll never free ourselves of wasteful weapons and even more wasteful wars if we keep feeding that same blob.

Trump, running in 2024, complained about the MICC’s greed and sold himself as anti-war. As president, he’s worked to enlarge and engorge the blob while feverishly fighting new wars. In that sense, he’s much like other U.S. presidents, only more so. He’s become increasingly consumed by war, so much so that he’s reinforcing failure in Iran. The MICC, naturally, is happy to reap the benefits in more money, never mind the troops dying for no defensible or sensible reason.

So, despite my friend’s well-intended advice, I find myself once again writing about the MICC, the blob that ate Washington. And I guess I will continue to do so until the blob consumes me—or until we combine to put a stop to it.

America’s Dilemma at 250

A Budget of the Pentagon, By the Congress and For the War Profiteers

BILL ASTORE

JUL 13, 2026

Note to Readers: The short essay below represents a joint effort of the Eisenhower Media Network, or EMN, an organization of former military and government officials who seek a wiser course for America and a more peaceful world. I’ve been a member since EMN’s founding.

In Common Sense, Thomas Paine challenged Americans to question an institution that had long seemed beyond challenge. He wrote, “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.” Two hundred and fifty years later, those words apply just as well to America’s defense budget. What has become accepted through habit is neither sustainable nor accountable. Only the American people can change it.

The “defense of custom” now comes from the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address. Years earlier, in his famous “Cross of Iron” speech, Eisenhower observed: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed… Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

More than seventy years later, Eisenhower’s warning has become reality. The United States spends more on its military than the next eight countries combined, most of them allies, while millions of Americans struggle with the costs of health care, child care, education, and housing.

The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex thrives by portraying every international challenge as justification for ever-larger Pentagon budgets. Defense contractors finance political campaigns and employ armies of lobbyists who help shape the annual National Defense Authorization Act. Taxpayer dollars then flow back into executive compensation, shareholder dividends, stock buybacks, and continued political influence, creating a self-perpetuating cycle that rewards corporate profits rather than national security. Even maintenance contracts are often structured so that only the original contractor can repair the equipment, locking taxpayers into decades of additional costs. The troubled F-35 fighter program—billions over budget, years behind schedule, and only partially mission capable—has become a symbol of this dysfunction.

An Air Force general described the F-35 (top) as a Ferrari, meaning it’s ultra-expensive, less than reliable, and overall less effective than the two F-16s also shown in the photo (Official AF photo)

Yet despite these enormous expenditures, America’s recent military record raises serious questions about whether ever-increasing budgets produce better outcomes. Since World War II, the United States has rarely achieved the political objectives it set out to accomplish in major conflicts, despite possessing the world’s largest military establishment and one of the most geographically secure nations on Earth.

Even more troubling, the Pentagon remains unable to account for how it spends taxpayer money. It has repeatedly failed the financial audits required by law, something every other federal department has managed to complete. Nevertheless, it is now requesting a budget approaching $1.5 trillion. Asking taxpayers to approve such an increase before explaining where previous funding went reflects a level of fiscal irresponsibility that would be unacceptable anywhere else in government—or in any American household.

Thomas Paine understood that institutions derive their power not only from force but from unquestioned assumptions. Britain’s empire appeared invincible in 1776 until Americans decided its authority no longer deserved their consent. Today, questioning the continual expansion of military spending may seem equally unfashionable, but history reminds us that accepted practices are not always wise ones.

A $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget represents more than $9,000 per taxpayer. As America marks its 250th anniversary, we should ask whether endless increases in military spending truly make us more secure, or whether they come at the expense of the investments that strengthen our nation at home. The courage required today is not to defeat an empire abroad, but to confront the entrenched interests of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex and reclaim a government that serves the American people rather than the economics of perpetual war.

Why Does War Always Win in America?

Answering a Question from a Reader

BILL ASTORE

JUL 10, 2026

Hello Readers: I thought I’d highlight an excellent question from a reader and my attempt to answer it succinctly. Please use the comments section to chime in.

Dear William, starting from the assumption that you are substantially right in your arguments, what I ask myself is why, from 1945 to the present day, there has never been a lasting reversal of course in the history of the United States, but only brief anti-war flare-ups against the foolish and bloody choices of military interventions abroad? I mean, what is it that we don’t know about the American people that justifies the MICC [military-industrial-congressional complex] always managing to assert its kleptocratic, racist, colonialist, supremacist, and megalomaniacal designs? I believe that the American people are mostly made up of good people, willing, respectful of family and clan values, and lovers of cooperative living together. There are totally different groups, but to my knowledge, they are strongly in the minority and substantially ghettoized. It is the presidents or politicians of the moment who open the doors to these groups of rowdies. So I ask myself: what are the main factors that determine the success of the MICC? I await your reflections to delve deeper into the topic. WR Rocco Santoro

Answer by Bill Astore

Hello Rocco: that is a very big question. Threat inflation by the MICC is part of the answer. So too is the fact that both political parties, Democratic and Republican, are right-wing, pro-war parties. See this recent article by Caitlin Johnstone: 

Caitlin’s Newsletter

It’s Been Ten Years. It’s Time To Admit Bernie Sanders Was Wrong.

Reading by Tim Foley…

Read more

a day ago · 318 likes · 249 comments · Caitlin Johnstone

The power of propaganda is strong. Americans are told “our” troops are freedom-bringers. We’re taught we’re the exceptional nation, inherently good. We’re taught we’re not imperial.

As Ike said, only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel and control the MICC, and we are neither. The MICC is shrouded in secrecy, and Americans in general are not knowledgeable about our own history, let alone what the MICC has been up to for the last eighty years (since the end of World War II).

Those who seriously question it, and especially those who seriously resist it, are denounced as misguided, or unpatriotic, and in some cases they are arrested and put in prison.

Perhaps the biggest reason is that Americans no longer think of themselves as citizens with a right to knowledge. We’ve been reduced to passive consumers. Meanwhile, we’ve been sold the idea “our” troops are warriors and warfighters. We’ve come to believe and accept that being constantly at war is normal, the health of the state, when it’s actually the death of democracy and liberty.

The other part of this is that Americans are kept divided, distracted, and downtrodden, making it very difficult to act en masse against an entity as powerful and wide-reaching as the MICC.

*****

That was my initial answer. I must add the enormous amount of “legal” corruption in the U.S. government. Effectively, money equals speech in America, meaning that most Americans have no say in their government.

Obviously, powerful corporations have deep pockets and thus plenty of say. Weapons makers like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman also help to determine policy, exercising influence over Congress and also through propaganda. Corporations control what is shown on our mass media. The mainstream media in America is almost entirely pro-military and pro-war.

The Pentagon has so much money that even academe in America is highly cooperative with the national security state, even as Americans are told to fear a Marxist, “radical left” academic establishment! Consent has been manufactured in America to support a state that’s constantly in a state of war or in preparations for the same.

Perhaps the best source for understanding how and why this has happened is George Orwell’s “1984,” and especially his book within a book that details how a permanent state of war can be maintained in what is ostensibly a republic but which is actually a militaristic empire.

Within the U.S., militarism is a form of cancer, and we are at Stage 4. That cancer is represented by the MICIMATT(SHV) and the penetration of most sectors of society by military imperatives and war. So, to define the awkward acronym: military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think-tank, plus sport, Hollywood, and video gaming. All these are throughly invested in, infested by, militarism.

The Trump administration’s answer to Stage 4 militarism is to give the Pentagon and the national security state another $500 billion, accelerating the cancer further.

The “cure” is deep cuts to the Pentagon’s budget, a dramatic downsizing of empire, and a return to being “a normal country in normal times.” It’s Stage 4 cancer, so radical surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation will take their toll. The cure will hurt. But the alternative is death. Death of the republic, and perhaps of the world in the case of widespread nuclear war.

Back in 1963, Senator George McGovern put together a sound plan to return America to a saner path, a less militarized one, citing Ike’s military-industrial complex speech in 1961. McGovern’s plan included the conversion of military production back to civilian purposes. But his ideas, supported by many prominent democrats back then, were dismissed as a major war with Vietnam was ginned up in the stated cause of curbing communist aggression.

The MICC will always have a war, a reason, to continue to expand. War on terror. War on Iran. Chinese expansion. Russia. Even communism again. Even a war within against “radical leftists.” Against “illegal” immigrants.

More than anything, the American people need to reject this fear-mongering. We must remember that “fear is the only darkness.” That “fear is the mind-killer.” We must reject the mindset of war and embrace the possibilities of peace. But that is very difficult when the drums of war sound so loudly, and when America’s leaders are so eager to buy even more war drums and to amplify them yet further.

Readers, what do you think?

Weapons Are Us

More Guns, Please, Never Mind the Reason

BILL ASTORE

JUN 30, 2026

Almost fifteen years ago, I wrote an article for TomDispatch with the title, “Weapons ‘R’ Us.” It was a play, of course, on Toys ‘R’ Us, echoing the old saw about the difference between men and boys being the price of their toys. Nowadays, I guess “real men” play with F-35s, Ford-class aircraft carriers, Sentinel ICBMs, and the like, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars each year. And if that’s not enough, Americans can always spend billions of dollars more on private weaponry like assault- and sniper rifles. Rather amazingly, there are more firearms than people in America, with the only amendment SCOTUS won’t dare abridge being the Second Amendment.

Back in 2012 I gave a Tomcast interview with Timothy MacBain about my own weapons “addiction”; it started the usual way with toy soldiers, GI Joes, and cap pistols and escalated from there. As a teenager, I built a lot of model military planes, tanks, warships, and the like. All gone now, though I kept and used a few when I was teaching a course on “technology and warfare.”

The military loves to speak of weapons as “investments,” but President Dwight D. Eisenhower was far more honest in calling them a form of theft from those who hunger, from those who need health care, from those who want a better education. Weapons, I think Ike would agree, have a very narrow band of winners, specifically those who profit from making and selling them. They are the real band of (gun-running) brothers, with a few sisters thrown in as well.

If wars were won purely by weapons, America would never lose, such is our commitment to winning through “superior firepower.” But they’re not, so losing has become an American habit.

Speaking of losing, I recently read a terrific article by Patrick Lawrence that argues it’s high time for America to embrace defeat and to learn from it. He’s right about that, but how to tell “winner” Trump that his war against Iran has been a big loser?

Thinking about that led me to make this comment in response to Lawrence’s article:

Yes, but this is America, where the worst insult is to be called a “loser,” and where to criticize even the stupidest war is to be labeled a “defeatist.”

Meanwhile, management gurus speak of “win-win” scenarios, because talk of losing must be avoided at all costs. Even compromise is suspect.

To modify an old expression, if not he who dies with most toys, wins, it seems we in America believe that he who dies with the most weapons, wins.

So, we’ll embrace our weapons–very tightly indeed–before we [ever] embrace defeat.

Bill Astore

4d

Yes, but this is America, where the worst insult is to be called a “loser,” and where to criticize even the stupidest war is to be labeled a “defeatist.”

Meanwhile, management gurus speak of “win-win” scenarios, because talk of losing must be avoided at all costs. Even compromise is suspect.

To modify an old expression, if not he who dies …52

So, no matter how poorly America’s wars go, the demand for weapons continues to rocket upwards. That old “arsenal of democracy” of World War II fame has for the last sixty years or so mutated into merely an arsenal, ever-growing in cost if not in effectiveness.

The F-35, often unavailable to fly, and still very expensive (USAF Photo)

Today’s big-ticket weapons like the F-35 are becoming so expensive, and often so unreliable, that America is almost disarming itself by accident. All the more reason, weapons proponents will say, for America to spend even more on weapons!

Abandon all logic, ye who wish to curb America’s “investment” in more weaponry.