War Dividends
The Pentagon Budget Keeps Soaring Up, Up, and Away!
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Cold War ended, I heard a lot about peace dividends. It was time to become a normal country in normal (more peaceful) times, said Jeanne Kirkpatrick, an early neocon who served under Ronald Reagan. More than thirty years later, America still awaits its peace dividends from the Cold War.
When the Afghan War came to a sputtering and ignominious end in 2021, I didn’t hear much at all about peace dividends. Even though the Afghan War was costing the United States almost $50 billion a year before it crashed and burned, the Pentagon budget for 2022 went up by that amount rather than down. You’d think the end of wars would lead to a decrease in military spending, but not in America.
And so we come to today, when I learned that the Pentagon budget for 2023, which sat at $802 billion per the request of the Biden administration, has been boosted big time to $847 billion by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. That’s $45 billion extra for more wars and weapons, a whopping sum of money that would likely end homelessness if it was invested in America.
One thing is certain: war dividends always come through. Peace dividends? Not so much.
How does the Washington Beltway crowd justify such enormous sums for “national defense”? Threat inflation, of course. Because of its debilitating war with Ukraine, Russia is weaker but somehow that means America must spend more because Putin or something. Chinese maneuvers near Taiwan are treated like direct incursions into U.S. coastal waters. A few North Korean missiles are enough to justify more than a trillion dollars for new or revamped nuclear forces over the next thirty years. And of course military Keynesianism is always a factor, as in Pentagon-related jobs spread as widely as possible through every Congressional district.
The Pentagon can’t even pass an audit (for the fifth year in a row!), yet it still gets more and more billions from you the taxpayer.
I took a quick look at NBC News online to see if there were any objections to this massive $847 billion budget for the Pentagon. The only story featured warned that “GOP senators threaten to delay military bill over vaccine mandate.” Yes, what’s truly worrisome is that a few troops might have to accept a COVID vaccine against their will. Geez, where were these senators when the military was jabbing me in the arm every year with a mandatory flu vaccine?
Trees are falling in the forest to print all the money the Pentagon wants (and then some), but few Americans hear a sound since the mainstream media refuses to cover wasteful military spending and disastrous American wars.
If you should want a sure bet in America, don’t toss money at your favorite sports team. Place your bet on America’s war horse. Whether it wins, places, or shows, or even comes up lame, it will always pay dividends.
Dennis: You wrote: “I see [Matt Hoh’s] running for senate as folly in the same way as Ralph Nader's foray into politics. Ralph had huge nationwide name recognition. And a track record of taking on the powerful and winning. And with a platform similar to Mat's, that you and I believe in, he never got to first base in politics.”
There are those who claim that Nader got to first base and beyond by costing Gore that election.
Which is Total and Complete Bullshit. If Gore had won EITHER his home state of Tennessee OR Clinton’s home state of Arkansas, he would have won that election regardless of what happened in Florida. Which makes Gore the only presidential candidate in history besides George McGovern in 1972 to lose his own state. And the only candidate to lose the home state of a seated President of the same party.
As i wrote back in July of 2004 shortly after John Kerry became the Democrats’ candidate for Election2004:
The simple fact of the matter is that because liberals, progressives, and radicals did not have the balls to vote their conscience, but instead voted for what they thought was a sure-fire way to win, GORE COST NADER THE ELECTION.
Because these people voted for one of the biggest thugs, liars, hypocrites, and thieves in Washington DC, they turned their backs on the ONLY true liberal, progressive, and radical in the campaign…the ONLY candidate with a life history consistent with true, alleged, and so-called democratic, liberal, and progressive values, principles, and ideals.
And, they got what they voted for. And what they deserved.
How is that?
My guess is that it was understood by all concerned that the Clinton/Gore wing of The Party had had its time in power (eight years to be exact), and that they had accomplished what they had been sent there to do:
* keep the Sanctions going in Iraq;
* facilitate globalization [on whose watch did NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO come into being?];
* facilitate the corporatization of medical care in the U.S.;
* de-regulate the media and communications industry;
* start letting people learn more and more about the evils of radical, fundamentalist Muslim terrorism;
* continue the tradition of un-declared, un-challenged, un-controlled War [(Yugoslavia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc etc etc];
* run a couple of 9/11 dress rehearsals [WTC bombing, Oklahoma City bombing];
* normalize post-Tiananmen Square relations with crypto-capitalistic Communist China;
* and piss off enough people with a President dumb enough to get caught getting a blowjob in the Oval Office from a woman young enough to be his daughter, and then get caught lying about it. But how else could something like MoveOn.org be spawned?
And that it was thus now time for the other guys in The Party to have their time at the helm, and to continue The Long March. You know….; The 8-On-8-Off Deal. “You guys take the Executive Branch for eight years and get your fair share of the loot, and then we’ll take it for our eight and get our fair share.”
Thus, while The Cheney Regime has accomplished just about everything that they were sent there to do [except perhaps to more totally and effectively rape, pillage, and plunder the U.S. Treasury], it’s unlikely that Kerry is anything more than a dutifully sacrificial Burning Bunny in the tradition of Bob Dole and Walter Mondale.
Received this statement from the Libertarian Party today:
Angela McArdle, on the House's passing the 2023 NDAA yesterday:
"Thankfully, the Covid vaccine mandates were removed from the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, but it’s difficult to see how this bill is anything other than another welfare program for the rich warmongers in the corporate war industry. This NDAA will steal $10 billion in taxpayer dollars and give it to the Taiwanese government so they can buy weapons from companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. It also provides $800 million in taxpayer funds for Congress to purchase weapons from these companies for Ukraine, a country that is stripping away religious liberties as we speak.
Every year the budget of the NDAA gets bigger, and the world becomes more dangerous. When will we wake up to our senses and recognize the destruction that this evil industry brings to life and liberty?"