Tag: war budget

The Department of Empire

W.J. Astore

And Its Bloated Imperial War Budget

Language and repetition of the same is so important. We hear about the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Pentagon budget and we think little of it. The DoD, of course, used to be called the Department of War until 1947, a far more telling and accurate name, and there wasn’t a Pentagon until we built one during World War II. In the old days, the Army fought the Navy for which service would get more money in the War Budget, with the Navy usually winning as America sought to control the seas as a means of dominating trade and “intercourse” among nations.

Those were more honest times when retired generals like Smedley Butler wrote in the 1930s that he’d served as a “gangster” for capitalism. Butler was a Marine who was twice awarded the Medal of Honor, so it wasn’t easy for the imperialists to smear him, though they certainly tried (as they did to David M. Shoup, another Marine Corps general and Medal of Honor recipient who turned against the Vietnam War in the 1960s).

Anyhow, I just saw at Antiwar.com that President Trump is proposing a $1.01 trillion budget for the Pentagon for FY2026, a 13% increase in imperial spending. Trump, of course, is proud of reaching the Trillion Dollar threshold. Big numbers have always appealed to him.

It doesn’t seem to matter who is president, whether it’s Biden or Trump, Democrat or Republican, when it comes to the Department of Empire and its bloated imperial budget. For that is what it is, a budget that seeks to sustain and enlarge America’s imperial domain. If you add other costs related to imperial dominance, such as interest on the national debt due to war spending, VA costs, nuclear weapons, and the like, the true imperial budget soars toward $1.7 trillion yearly.

No matter. A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

The Pentagon tries to disguise the enormous waste of this imperial budget by speaking of it as an “investment,” but imagine an “investment” that you’re involved in which fails seven audits in a row. How likely would you be to see this as anything other than theft?

Dwight D. Eisenhower had it right in 1953 when he spoke of military spending as a theft from those who hunger. Ike’s words are almost never heard today inside the Washington Beltway. It’s worth reflecting upon them again as America’s leaders boast of trillion-dollar war budgets:

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, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

America, I can’t improve upon that.

The War Party Rules Washington

W.J. Astore

Guess What’s a High Priority for Democrats in Congress?

Here’s a reminder of a stark reality: When President Joe Biden finally ended the disastrous Afghan War in 2021, the Pentagon war budget went up by roughly $50 billion.

The Afghan War was costing America almost $50 billion a year until the war party in DC (both Democrats and Republicans) decided enough was enough. So how could ending a war result in a substantial increase in military spending?

That’s easily answered. The bipartisan war party pivoted from the lucrative but frustrating war on terror to the much more lucrative “new cold war” with Russia and China. And of course Vladimir Putin’s provoked invasion of Ukraine early in 2022 sealed the deal. Putin’s illegal invasion, provoked as it was, as NATO itself admits, was a massive boon to the military-industrial-congressional complex. Pentagon war budgets have continued to soar since 2021 (and indeed since 2001 and the original launch of the war on terror), with no end in sight other than perhaps nuclear Armageddon. (Not an end I’m looking forward to, but there’s no fate but that which we make.)

A few in Congress, mostly Republicans, are finally growing tired of massive military aid to Ukraine, though these same Republicans are generally in favor of even more massive military budgets to “deter” China. Yet Democrats are fighting against reductions in military weaponry to Ukraine with the kind of energy you’d think would be devoted to helping Americans deal with poverty and inflation.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (left) carrying water for Zelensky of Ukraine. More war, please! 

So, for example, House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has stated that a high priority for Democrats in the ongoing struggle over electing a new House Speaker is that the new Speaker must support higher funding—for Ukraine! (Jeffries also wants the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden to end.)

Higher military spending for Ukraine is a top priority for Democrats, even as Americans struggle with higher bills for food, housing, health care, and other essentials of life. Think about that for a moment.

Of course, Congress was prepared to continue paying for Ukraine’s war effort even if the federal government had shut down, so Jeffries is nothing but consistent here. Waging a wildly expensive and dangerous proxy war against Russia is more important to Congress than helping Americans who are struggling across our land with food and gas bills.

Small wonder that the largest political party in America is composed of “independents.”

Whether it’s RFK Jr., Cornel West, or someone else, we need to get behind independent candidates and reject the Democratic-Republican war party. Vote the war pigs out!