{"id":200923,"date":"2021-12-13T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=200923"},"modified":"2021-12-07T10:03:48","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T10:03:48","slug":"how-congress-loots-the-treasury-for-the-military-industrial-congressional-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/12\/how-congress-loots-the-treasury-for-the-military-industrial-congressional-complex\/","title":{"rendered":"How Congress Loots the Treasury for the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex"},"content":{"rendered":"

6 Dec 2021 – <\/em>Despite a disagreement over some amendments in the Senate, the United States Congress is poised to pass a $778 billion military budget bill for 2022. As they have been doing year after year, our elected officials are preparing to hand the lion\u2019s share – over 65%<\/a> – of federal discretionary spending to the U.S. war machine, even as they wring their hands over spending a mere quarter of that amount on the Build Back Better Act.<\/p>\n

The U.S. military\u2019s incredible record of systematic failure\u2014most recently its final trouncing by the Taliban after twenty years of death<\/a>, destruction<\/a> and lies<\/a> in Afghanistan\u2014cries out for a top-to-bottom review of its dominant role in U.S. foreign policy and a radical reassessment of its proper place in Congress\u2019s budget priorities.<\/p>\n

Instead, year after year, members of Congress hand over the largest share of our nation\u2019s resources to this corrupt institution, with minimal scrutiny and no apparent fear of accountability when it comes to their own reelection. Members of Congress still see it as a \u201csafe\u201d political call to carelessly whip out their rubber-stamps and vote for however many hundreds of billions in funding Pentagon and arms industry lobbyists have persuaded the Armed Services Committees they should cough up.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s make no mistake about this: Congress\u2019s choice to keep investing in a massive, ineffective and absurdly expensive war machine has nothing to do with \u201cnational security\u201d as most people understand it, or \u201cdefense\u201d as the dictionary defines it.<\/p>\n

U.S. society does face critical threats to our security, including the climate crisis, systemic racism, erosion of voting rights, gun violence, grave inequalities and the corporate hijacking of political power. But one problem we fortunately do not have is the threat of attack or invasion by a rampant global aggressor or, in fact, by any other country at all.<\/p>\n

Maintaining a war machine that outspends the 12 or 13<\/a> next largest militaries in the world combined actually makes us less<\/em> safe, as each new administration inherits the delusion that the United States\u2019 overwhelmingly destructive military power can, and therefore should, be used to confront any perceived challenge to U.S. interests anywhere in the world\u2014even when there is clearly no military solution and when many of the underlying problems were caused by past misapplications of U.S. military power in the first place.<\/p>\n

While the international challenges we face in this century require a genuine commitment to international cooperation and diplomacy, Congress allocates only $58 billion, less than 10 percent of the Pentagon budget, to the diplomatic corps of our government: the State Department. Even worse, both Democratic and Republican administrations keep filling top diplomatic posts with officials indoctrinated and steeped in policies of war and coercion, with scant experience and meager skills in the peaceful diplomacy we so desperately need.<\/p>\n

This only perpetuates a failed foreign policy based on false choices between economic sanctions that UN officials have compared to medieval sieges<\/a>, coups that destabilize<\/a> countries and regions for decades, and wars and bombing campaigns that kill millions<\/a> of people and leave cities in rubble, like Mosul in Iraq<\/a> and Raqqa in Syria<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The end of the Cold War was a golden opportunity for the United States to reduce its forces and military budget to match its legitimate defense needs. The American public naturally expected and hoped for a \u201cPeace Dividend<\/a>,\u201d and even veteran Pentagon officials told the Senate Budget Committee in 1991 that military spending could safely be cut<\/a> by 50% over the next ten years.<\/p>\n

But no such cut happened. U.S. officials instead set out to exploit the post-Cold War \u201cPower Dividend<\/a>,\u201d a huge military imbalance in favor of the United States, by developing rationales for using military force more freely and widely around the world. During the transition to the new Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright famously asked<\/a> Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell, \u201cWhat\u2019s the point of having this superb military you\u2019re always talking about if we can\u2019t use it?\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1999, as Secretary of State under President Clinton, Albright got her wish, running roughshod over the UN Charter with an illegal war to carve out an independent Kosovo from the ruins of Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n

The UN Charter clearly prohibits the threat or use<\/a> of military force except in cases of self-defense<\/a> or when the UN Security Council takes military action<\/a> \u201cto maintain or restore international peace and security.\u201d This was neither. When U.K. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told Albright his government was \u201chaving trouble with our lawyers\u201d over NATO\u2019s illegal war plan, Albright crassly told him<\/a> to \u201cget new lawyers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty-two years later, Kosovo is the third-poorest<\/a> country in Europe (after Moldova and post-coup Ukraine) and its independence is still not recognized by 96 countries<\/a>. Hashim Tha\u00e7i, Albright\u2019s hand-picked main ally<\/a> in Kosovo and later its president, is awaiting trial in an international court at the Hague, charged with murdering at least 300 civilians under cover of NATO bombing in 1999 to extract and sell their internal organs on the international transplant market.<\/p>\n

Clinton and Albright\u2019s gruesome and illegal war set the precedent for more illegal U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, with equally devastating and horrific results. But America\u2019s failed wars have not led Congress or successive administrations to seriously rethink the U.S. decision to rely on illegal threats and uses of military force to project U.S. power all over the world, nor have they reined in the trillions of dollars invested in these imperial ambitions.<\/p>\n

Instead, in the upside-down world of institutionally corrupt<\/a> U.S. politics, a generation of failed and pointlessly destructive wars have had the perverse effect of normalizing even more expensive<\/a> military budgets than during the Cold War, and reducing congressional debate to questions of how many more of each useless weapons system<\/a> they should force U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill for.<\/p>\n

It seems that no amount of killing, torture, mass destruction or lives ruined in the real world can shake the militaristic delusions of America\u2019s political class, as long as the \u201cMilitary-Industrial-Congressional Complex\u201d (President Eisenhower\u2019s original wording) is reaping the benefits.<\/p>\n

Today, most political and media references to the Military-Industrial Complex refer only to the arms industry as a self-serving corporate interest group on a par with Wall Street, Big Pharma or the fossil fuel industry. But in his Farewell Address<\/a>, Eisenhower explicitly pointed to, not just the arms industry, but the \u201cconjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eisenhower was just as worried about the anti-democratic impact of the military as the arms industry. Weeks before his Farewell Address, he told<\/a> his senior advisors, \u201cGod help this country when somebody sits in this chair who doesn\u2019t know the military as well as I do.\u201d His fears have been realized in every subsequent presidency.<\/p>\n

According to Milton Eisenhower, the president\u2019s brother, who helped him draft his Farewell Address, Ike also wanted to talk about the \u201crevolving door.\u201d Early drafts of his speech referred to<\/a> \u201ca permanent, war-based industry,\u201d with \u201cflag and general officers retiring at an early age to take positions in the war-based industrial complex, shaping its decisions and guiding the direction of its tremendous thrust.\u201d He wanted to warn that steps must be taken to \u201cinsure that the \u2018merchants of death\u2019 do not come to dictate national policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Eisenhower feared, the careers of figures like Generals Austin<\/a> and Mattis<\/a> now span all branches of the corrupt MIC conglomerate: commanding invasion and occupation forces in Afghanistan and Iraq; then donning suits and ties to sell weapons to new generals who served under them as majors and colonels; and finally re-emerging from the same revolving door as cabinet members at the apex of American politics and government.<\/p>\n

So why does the Pentagon brass get a free pass, even as Americans feel increasingly conflicted about the arms industry? After all, it is the military that actually uses all these weapons to kill people and wreak havoc in other countries.<\/p>\n

Even as it loses war after war overseas, the U.S. military has waged a far more successful one to burnish its image in the hearts and minds of Americans and win every budget battle in Washington.<\/p>\n

The complicity of Congress, the third leg of the stool in Eisenhower\u2019s original formulation, turns the annual battle of the budget into the \u201ccakewalk\u201d<\/a> that the war in Iraq was supposed to be, with no accountability for lost wars, war crimes, civilian massacres, cost overruns or the dysfunctional military leadership that presides over it all.<\/p>\n

There is no congressional debate over the economic impact on America or the geopolitical consequences for the world of uncritically rubber-stamping huge investments in powerful weapons that will sooner or later be used to kill our neighbors and smash their countries, as they have for the past 22 years and far too often throughout our history.<\/p>\n

If the public is ever to have any impact on this dysfunctional and deadly money-go-round, we must learn to see through the fog of propaganda that masks self-serving corruption behind red, white and blue bunting, and allows the military brass to cynically exploit the public\u2019s natural respect for brave young men and women who are ready to risk their lives to defend our country. In the Crimean War, the Russians called British troops \u201clions led by donkeys.\u201d That is an accurate description of today\u2019s U.S. military.<\/p>\n

Sixty years after Eisenhower\u2019s Farewell Address, exactly as he predicted, the \u201cweight of this combination\u201d of corrupt generals and admirals, the profitable \u201cmerchants of death\u201d whose goods they peddle, and the Senators and Representatives who blindly entrust them with trillions of dollars of the public\u2019s money, constitute the full flowering of President Eisenhower\u2019s greatest fears for our country.<\/p>\n

Eisenhower concluded,<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That clarion call echoes through the decades and should unite Americans in every form of democratic organizing and movement building, from elections to education and advocacy to mass protests, to finally reject and dispel the \u201cunwarranted influence\u201d of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Medea Benjamin is cofounder of <\/em>CODEPINK for Peace<\/em><\/a>, and author of several books, including <\/em>Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of<\/em> Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 Dec 2021 – The conjunction of dysfunctional military leadership, an ever-growing arms industry and a Congress that keeps handing them trillions of dollars, constitutes the full flowering of President Eisenhower’s greatest fears for the future of the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":200924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,1161,1188,120,267,1126,260,487,1050,504,950,1105,780,769,91,86,112,109,287,2648,2649,1709,95,70,126,118,492,172,75],"class_list":["post-200923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-arms-industry","tag-arms-race","tag-conflict","tag-geopolitics","tag-hegemony","tag-history","tag-human-rights","tag-imperialism","tag-international-relations","tag-invasion","tag-military-industrial-complex","tag-military-intervention","tag-military-supremacy","tag-nato","tag-occupation","tag-pentagon","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-space-command","tag-space-digital-military-branch","tag-space-weapons","tag-us-military","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-war","tag-war-on-terror","tag-west","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}