Don't Call It a "Defense" Budget
Tuesday 02 February 2010
by: Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Spc. Luke Thornberry / The U.S. Army, Paul Bridgewater)
This isn't "defense."
The new budget from the White House will push US military spending well above $2 billion a day.
Foreclosing the future of our country should not be confused with defending it.
"Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors," The New York Times reported February 2.
It isn't defense to preclude new domestic initiatives for a country that desperately needs them: for health care, jobs, green technologies, carbon reduction, housing, education, nutrition, mass transit ...
"When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, social programs must inevitably suffer," Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out. "We can talk about guns and butter all we want to, but when the guns are there with all of its emphasis you don't even get good oleo. These are facts of life."
At least Lyndon Johnson had a "war on poverty." For a while anyway, till his war on Vietnam destroyed it.
Since then, waving the white flag at widespread poverty - usually by leaving it unmentioned - has been a political fact of life in Washington.
Oratory can be nice, but budget numbers tell us where an administration is headed. In 2010, this one is marching up a steep military escalator, under the banner of "defense."
Legitimate defense would cost a mere fraction of this budget.
By autumn, the Pentagon is scheduled to have a total of 100,000 uniformed US troops - and a comparable number of private contract employees - in Afghanistan, where the main beneficiaries are the recruiters for Afghan insurgent forces and the profiteers growing even richer under the wing of Karzai-government corruption.
After three decades of frequent carnage and extreme poverty in Afghanistan, a new influx of lethal violence is arriving via the Defense Department. That's the cosmetically named agency in charge of sending US soldiers to endure and inflict unspeakable horrors.
New waves of veterans will return home to struggle with grievous physical and emotional injuries. Without a fundamental change in the nation's direction, they'll be trying to resume their lives in a society ravaged by budget priorities that treat huge military spending as sacrosanct.
"At $744 billion, the military budget - including military programs outside the Pentagon, such as the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons management - is a budget of add-ons rather than choices," said Miriam Pemberton at the Institute for Policy Studies. "And it makes the imbalance between spending on military vs. non-military security tools worse."
Of course, the corporate profits for military contractors are humongous.
The Executive Director of the National Priorities Project, Jo Comerford, offered this context: "The Obama administration has handed us the largest Pentagon budget since World War II, not including the $160 billion in war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan."
The word "defense" is inherently self-justifying. But it begs the question: Just what is being defended?
For the United States, an epitaph on the horizon says: "We had to destroy our country in order to defend it."
As new sequences of political horrors unfold, maybe it's a bit too easy for writers and readers of the progressive blogosphere to remain within the politics of online denunciation. Cogent analysis and articulated outrage are necessary but insufficient. The unmet challenge is to organize widely, consistently and effectively - against the warfare state - on behalf of humanistic priorities.
In the process, let's be clear. This is not a defense budget. This is a death budget.
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Comments
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Absolutely right: it's NOT a
Tue, 02/02/2010 - 21:51 β Anonymous (not verified)Absolutely right: it's NOT a defense budget. It's a violence budget.
Dude's right, we take this
Wed, 02/03/2010 - 00:22 β zang (not verified)Dude's right, we take this lying down every year. How about we all try to call our congressmen this week and voice our disgust? That's an easy start. Then we can link up with local activist groups (google em up if you don't know any) and talk about planning a demonstration and holding some signs to get more people focused on the sin that is this offense budget. Let's do this!
The only federal components
Wed, 02/03/2010 - 04:44 β Carlton (not verified)The only federal components involved in national defense are the border patrol and coast guard. If young people want to join up to protect the USA, choose these two.
Right-on, Norman
Wed, 02/03/2010 - 05:37 β S. Wolf Britain (not verified)Right-on, Norman Solomon!
No, "Carlton", don't join either of those militarized branches of the corporate-fascist, military-industrial government either! They are increasingly being trained and used to police U.S. citizens, take away liberties, abuse Americans, close us in, demonize "foreigners" especially Muslims, imprison through "ICE" as many as possible indefinitely without true presumption of innocence and due process of law, etc., and it's only going to get much worse.
We cannot conscientiously be complicit in ANY of it!
No "Change We Can Believe
Wed, 02/03/2010 - 07:10 β Gordon K (not verified)No "Change We Can Believe In," obviously. Obama can surely talk the populist talk, but he walks the military-industrial-intelligence-pharmaceutical industrial walk. His election demonstrates how far the country has come: We wanted a progressive president, and didn't care how much melanin happened to be in his skin. That he is unable or unwilling to implement a progressive agenda is a tragedy. Solutions to our dilemma are elusive. Without some sort of preference voting, third party candidacies are mere spoilers. An independent might do better, a la Jesse Ventura. Of course, unless electronic vote rigging is stopped, all political activism is moot. Does it bother anyone that (according to blackboxvoting.org) all of the districts using paper, hand counted ballots in the recent Massachusetts special election for Senate voted for the Democrat, while the electronic tallies gave the victory to the Republican?
Wow, for heaven sake... Do
Wed, 02/03/2010 - 08:22 β Anonymous (not verified)Wow, for heaven sake... Do you people have anything better to do than spending your day getting so emotional about something you can't change... Let me tell you people this too... I am in the Army, though some of the budget will be spent poorly, I will benefit from vehicles that resist bombs, armor that stoppa bullets, and aircraft they watchover me as I go fo what this country asks of me. Cut all you want, but know who you are hurting, it won't be the politians. Lastly, the Coast Guard and Boarder Patrol risk life and lim every day stopping HHS drugs you use from crossing the boarder and saving those in need... They deserve your respect... Don't talk down to these men and women.
To the soldier who posted
Wed, 02/03/2010 - 15:49 β Anonymous (not verified)To the soldier who posted here, once you grow up and understand the difference between defense and aggression you will still be wearing moral diapers. Sadly, once you do grow up, and hopefully you will, you may be scared for life like so many tens of thousnads of soldiers who realize the tragedy of being sent into illegal wars!!!
To the guy at 8:22: the only
Wed, 02/03/2010 - 16:04 β Anonymous (not verified)To the guy at 8:22: the only ones asking you to kill women and children and others fighting to beat out the invaders to their country are the fat pigs who profit from the blood. I suppose one outcome of your employment by the military is that you have a job and that can be considered, in Keynesian terms, a stimulus package. But so is a lot of other pork spending. So I guess you have a pretty good racket going for yourself, if you manage to avoid permanent damage. I often marvel at the fact that a bunch of guys running around in sheets and sandals can beat the daylights out of you guys, our "best fighters," who cost us a million dollars a year per soldier, with their state of the art everything. Then still, many of you commit suicide and come back damaged and demented for the rest of your lives, proving very well you're not the toughies your trainers convince you of. Why's that? To shed you of your illusion, you're not doing it for me, and most the people in this country, anyway. You're doing it because you can't make it in our society like everyone else, and the military program is the biggest welfare scam in history.
US mantra: Crush, kill,
Wed, 02/03/2010 - 20:13 β ixtlan (not verified)US mantra: Crush, kill, destroy. Remember Lost in Space?
What a contrast in opinions.
Wed, 02/03/2010 - 20:59 β Anonymous (not verified)What a contrast in opinions. The US needs to get a handle on the military machine before it gets out of control. It needs a military much reduced in size, based in the US , and focused on defense of the country ONLY.
The way I see it we spend
Thu, 02/04/2010 - 00:55 β Eric Rogers (not verified)The way I see it we spend way too much on defense. We are maintaining military bases in other countries all over the world. I donβt think it is necessary to do this in order to keep other countries from attacking the U.S. homeland. In fact I think it feeds a negative feedback loop. The more we are in other countries the more other countries hate America and want to attack us, or our interests. I donβt think it is our homeland they want to attack anyway but our interests that we are protecting by being in those other countries. What interests? Business interests! Which businesses? The corporations! Who owns the corporations? Most of the stock is owned by a very few very rich people, not the average citizens. So we, the people, pay for the protection of the interests of the rich. Unfunded wars have been the biggest contributor to the national debt. I think we should decrease the national debt by closing most of our overseas bases.
To the US Army
Thu, 02/04/2010 - 07:13 β John L. Opperman (not verified)To the US Army commenter:
You aren't "protecting our country", your risking your life and being ordered to murder your brothers and sisters, babies, children, and old folks, for the corporate/financial Establishment-none of which gives a damn about you or your buddies, or any victims of these criminal wars.
Grow up, soldier...
~John L.
(20- year retired US Military)
It is absolutely sick and
Thu, 02/04/2010 - 18:22 β Anonymous (not verified)It is absolutely sick and insane how much we waste on military spending. We have a very small portion of the world's population, yet we spend more than everybody else combined! Is it any wonder we have so many hungry children and adults in this country? Is it any wonder we don't have enough money for schools, infrastructure, green energy, and so on? Our priorities are completely upside down. We think death is good and life is bad. That's it in a nutshell. And even if this money really were for defense, we are almost totally ignoring by far the biggest threat to our security: global warming. If we cut the military budget in half, or in a quarter, we'd still be spending more than any other country on earth. But if we took that money and spent it to fight global warming (fund solar and wind plants, research, better measurements, and so on) we could easily do more than our part to fight global warming. Instead, we pour the vast majority of our research dollars into finding new ways to kill people and the vast majority of our tax dollars on implementing and manning those weapons. None of these weapons will do us any good when global warming gets out of control. Then we'll be too concerned with finding food and water and disposing of all the dead bodies. I guess we could all become cannibals for a while. What is wrong with our system? How can it be so utterly broken? How can we let this go on year after year? In this country we worship death and hate life, judging from our actions.
Of course, we are all aware
Fri, 02/05/2010 - 17:15 β agronomo (not verified)Of course, we are all aware that the "Defense" Dept used to be the "War" Dept. They changed the name but not the function.
Changing War Dept. to
Fri, 02/19/2010 - 02:40 β Anonymous (not verified)Changing War Dept. to Defense Dept. is only the "tip of the iceberg" of PR that has made patriotism (once called the "last refuge of a scoundrel") so sacrosanct that "peace" is no longer used in describing Christmas as the birthday of the Prince of Peace. And, of course as he must, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize had to use his acceptance speech to defend war--well, more of our funds go there than for necessities--or gifts.
Your soldier respondent must not read many truthout revelations. The purpose of cutting spending, as in the Vietnam era, is to end the occupations and bring him and his buddies home whole--out of harm's way. He is the obvious result of the PR propaganda.