In the event you were concerned that fighting the COVID-19 War would distract our political leaders from increasing the already inflated military budget for fighting wars overseas, fear not.
On 1 July, a $740.5 billion military spending package was approved by the Democratic-controlled House Armed Services Committee. The GOP-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to pass it quickly.
Among the amendments in the higher military budget is a provision that prohibits the reduction of U.S. troops in Afghanistan below 8,000 unless a list of conditions is met. This virtual guarantee of continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan came after Democrats worked with Republicans Jason Crow and Liz Cheney (daughter of former VP Dick Cheney, who championed the 2003 Iraq War and sold the lies that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction”).
Within the list of conditions required for troop reduction is the certification that leaving Afghanistan “will not increase the risk for the expansion of existing or formation of new terrorist safe havens inside Afghanistan and “will not compromise or otherwise negatively affect the ongoing United States counter terrorism mission against the Islamic State, al Qaeda and associated forces.”
Another amendment attached to the bill blocks the White House and Pentagon plan to remove 9,500 U.S. troops from Germany.
With a vast 49-7 majority, the Armed Services Committee “bans the administration from lowering troop levels below current levels until 180 days after Pentagon leaders present a plan to Congress and certify it will not harm U.S. or allied interests.”
Democrats and Republicans joined across the aisle to defeat two proposed amendments to tone down American militarism.
One of those proposals, sponsored by Representative Tulsi Gabbard, the so-called peace candidate when she ran for the Democratic nomination in the Presidential Reality Show®, would have forced the Trump administration to provide Congress with a detailed rationale for withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The U.S. signed this treaty with the Soviet Union in 1987.
The other defeated amendment sought to strictly limit any further U.S. aid that went to helping Saudi Arabia continue to bomb Yemen (which, as previously reported in the Trends Journal, has been the cause of the greatest humanitarian disaster in the world, according to the United Nations).
The new military budget, approved by the House and soon to be passed by the Senate, is three times the amount spent on defense by China, which has the second largest military budget in the world.
The effort in the House to pass the record military budget was led by Adam Smith, the Democrat appointed by Nancy Pelosi to be Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Smith supported the invasion of Iraq as well as numerous other pro-war programs under the Bush/Cheney administration to amplify funding the War on Terror.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: To continue to inflate the already overinflated defense budget at a time of an unfolding severe economic crisis is anathema to civility and rationality.
Rather than waste hundreds of billions to enrich the already bloated military/industrial/intelligence complex, taxpayer money instead should be directed toward rebuilding the nation’s rotting infrastructure, creating productive jobs, and growing the failing economy… which is included in the mission statement of the not-for-profit I founded, “Occupy Peace and Freedom.”
For more details, please visit www.OccupyPeaceandFreedom.org.
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