Each year more than one trillion dollars goes up in smoke. More accurately,
it is stolen from the middle and working classes and shipped off to the one
percent. I am talking about the massive yearly bill to maintain the US empire.
Washington’s warmongers have sold the lie that the military budget has
been gutted under President Obama, but even when the “Sequester” was
in effect military spending continued to increase. Only the pace of increase
was reduced, not actual spending.
None of this trillion dollars taken from us is spent to keep us safe, despite
what politicians say. In fact, this great rip-off actually makes us less safe
and more vulnerable to a terrorist attack thanks to resentment overseas at our
interventions and to the blowback it produces.
The money is spent to maintain existing conflicts and to create new areas of
conflict overseas that in turn feeds the demands for more military spending.
It is an endless cycle of theft and deceit.
Billions were spent not long ago overthrowing an elected government in Ukraine
and provoking Russia. A new Cold War is a bonanza for the military industrial
complex, the pro-war think tanks, and the politicians. NATO is on the move in
eastern Europe, placing heavy weapons right on Russia’s border and then
blaming the Russians when they complain about the rising militarism. NATO military
exercises on Russia’s border have increased and become more confrontational.
In the Middle East, more billions have been spent attempting to overthrow the
secular government of Syria over the past five years. The big winners in this
grand scheme have been the Islamist extremists, who are funded directly and
indirectly by the US and its allies. NATO is planning to go back into Libya,
an admission that its 2011 “liberation” of that country has been a
disaster.
In Asia, the US empire challenges and provokes China, sending military ships
and aircraft into territory China claims in the South China Sea. How much will
they continue to escalate before China gets fed up?
The more money sent to the Pentagon and other parts of the Washington war apparatus,
the more danger we are in.