Budget For War Up, Food Down In U.S. Imperial End Times

View a detailed analysis of the proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2017 at nationalpriorities.org

Now that we know the current regime's budget plans to accelerate robbing the poor to further enrich Pentagon contractors, maybe the U.S. public will begin to pay more attention to the cost of our endless wars of conquest. 

But, probably not.

Lately I've been examining the issue of young organizers' disinclination to focus on opposing militarism, and how their anti-imperialist approach might carry us into a better future. A skillfull young organizer in DC told me recently she had found plenty of young people willing to oppose wars and occupations. They just did not want to do so under the banner of the organization she had formerly worked for -- mostly old, mostly white, and very top down in operations.

I've also noted how women's march organizers and many others fronting for the Democratic Party have carefully avoided any mention of opposition to the empire's wars. 

An interesting analysis by Daniel May in The Nation this week nevertheless also avoided any mention of the role of the Democratic Party in silencing war dissent. May reached some of the same conclusions as young organizers I spoke with: the war machine is both everywhere on the planet and yet nowhere specific enough to be effectively confronted. 

It's corporate government that's the real disease, and endless wars are a symptom rather than a cause. 


The invisibility of war has been with us for a while now. I watched a music video  recommended by an 8th grader yesterday. "Hey Brother" depicted vintage televised war and had images alluding to PTSD and a military funeral. Some students thought it was about WWII because they are too young to know that that war, like the ones their country has been waging their entire lives, wasn't televised either.

Remember when Barack Obama said he wasn't against all wars, just dumb ones? That was before he won the Nobel Peace [sic] Prize, occupied Afghanistan and Iraq for eight more years, bombed Libya, and ordered thousands of drone strikes that killed thousands of innocent people. 

Now the demagogue with bad hair finds himself in the same bind: calling the war in Afghanistan a mess while campaigning, and then finding Pentagon brass pushing for escalation. 

Except the unpopularity of war makes Vietnam-era terms like "escalation" verboten; instead, government spokesmen prefer euphemisms like "surge" and "humantiarian intervention."

Why would Pentagon brass push for wasting more tax dollars on an unwinnable war in Afghanistan? Here's a quote from May's article that helps put their advocacy in perspective:

Raytheon, the fourth-largest military contractor in the United States and the world’s leading producer of guided missiles, received 90 percent of its revenues in 2015 from the federal government. In that year, Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy took home $20.4 million in total compensation. Among the large military contractors, this is the norm. In 2014, the CEO of Lockheed Martin—which received 78 percent of its revenues from the government that year—was paid a total of $33.7 million. In 2015, the CEO of Boeing, the second-largest government contractor, earned $29 million—and paid no federal income tax in 2013 [emphasis mine].

And, to bring this narrative right up to date, yesterday the demogague with bad hair nominated Boeing senior vice president Patrick Shanahan for Deputy "Defense" [ironic quotation marks mine] Secretary.

As the rich get richer and the poor sink into bankruptcy, war-fueled opioid addiction, and early death, who will effectively object? Of course the people in the countries being bombed and occupied will continue to raise their voices. An excellent example are the Youth Peace Volunteers of Afghanistan, whose Global Days of Listening project has for years been bringing truth to those with ears to hear it.

Survivors of the recent U.S. bombing of a mosque in Syria cry out, but who hears them? 

From Common Dreams: "Civil defense team members and people try to rescue people who were trapped under the debris of a Mosque after an aerial attack on a mosque during prayer in the Cina village of Etarib district of Aleppo, Syria on March 16, 2017.'  (Photo: İbrahim Ebu Leys/ Anadolu Agency )

Families digging through the rubble in Mosul as they try but fail to free trapped relatives weep on camera, but who sees this? Those of who who try to do the work that corporate media will not do, e.g. sharing the images of war victims via social media, are scorned by comfortable liberals who don't want to face burned children over their morning coffee. One click blocks such truth from bleeding through into the reality they prefer. Which is marching around demanding environmental protection while ignoring the leading cause of carbon pollution worldwide.

From The Intercept: "Pentagon Denies Bombing Syrian Mosque, But Its Own Photo May Prove That It Did"  Boy walking through ruins after U.S. airstrikes hit a crowded mosque during night prayer in Al-Jiney village, Aleppo on March 17, 2017. Photo: Ibrahim Ebe Leys / Anadolus Agency / Getty Images 

There's nothing new about any of this. Until the war arrives on your shores it's easier to pretend that your elderly next door neighbor is literally starving because...capitalism is great! the Arab world hates us for our freedoms!..than to admit the war machine robbed her of sustenance.

Once people are hungry enough they may finally notice the real causes and effects at work here. Or, they may continue to be fooled by propaganda into voting against their own prosperity as they did in the 2016 election in the U.S. and the Brexit vote in the U.K. Ordinary people can't see the uber wealthy CEOs draining the nation's coffers to build still more weapons of mass destruction. Those yachts sail far offshore, and those private jets land at secluded private air fields.

All empires fall after reaching the stage of wretched excess we're seeing today: cut Meals on Wheels for the elderly while funding still more weapon systems. 

And also funding lavish perqs for the president's family that are characteristic of kleptocracies.

Can we claw our way back from this stage of history? Probably not. But we can band together to hasten the demise of empire, building relationships to sustain one another through the dark days ahead.

Consider the opportunity to come together with others  paying attention to the cancerous growth of militarism by attending "Pivot Toward War: U.S. Missile Defense and the Weaponization of Space," the 25th Annual Space Organizing Conference & Protest from April 7-9 in Huntsville, Alabama. Col. Ann Wright (U.S. Army retired, diplomat) will be the keynote speaker at this important international conference. More details here.