The mantra of the militarized state is national security. The true face of the military - industrial slaughter - is hidden. The essence of the military is masked with subterfuges - using the military to carry out humanitarian relief missions, evacuating civilians in danger, as we see in the Sudan, defining military aggression as "humanitarian intervention" or a way to protect democracy and liberty, or lauding the military as carrying out a vital civic function by teaching leadership, responsibility, ethics and skills to young recruits. The handful who did not, such as Rosa Luxemburg, were sent to prison.Ī society dominated by militarists distorts its social, cultural, economic and political institutions to serve the interests of the war industry. Instead, nearly every socialist leader walked away from their anti-war platform to back their nation's entry into the war. They would not, the socialists assured themselves, sign on for the suicidal slaughter of millions of working men in the trenches. The gravest mistake made by European socialists on the eve of the First World War was the belief that the working classes of France, Germany, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia and Great Britain would not be divided into antagonistic tribes because of disputes between imperialist governments. It imparts an emotional high that is impervious to logic, reason or fact. Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course. It imbibes the illusion of omnipotence and wallows in self-adulation. It speaks in the thought-terminating clichés spewed out by mass culture and mass media. It revels in the despicable beauty of our military prowess. The public, bombarded with war propaganda, cheers on their self-immolation. spent a record $213 billion servicing the interest on its national debt. This imbalance is not sustainable, especially once the dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency. national debt to over $31 trillion, nearly $5 trillion more than the U.S.'s entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These huge military expenditures, along with the rising costs of a for-profit healthcare system, have driven the U.S. spent $877 billion on the military, that's more than the next 10 countries, including China, Russia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom combined. It is a circular system of corporate welfare.īetween October 2021 and September 2022, the U.S.
The American public funds the research, development and building of weapons systems and then buys these same weapons systems on behalf of foreign governments. since 1949, almost all of it since 1971 in the form of military aid, with most of it going towards arms purchases from U.S. Israel has received $158 billion in bilateral assistance from the U.S. Egypt, which receives some $1.3 billion in foreign military financing, is required to devote it to buying and maintaining U.S. Military systems are sold before they are produced with guarantees that huge cost overruns will be covered. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government.
Since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its tax dollars on past, current and future military operations. The war state is a Götterdämmerung, as Dwight Macdonald writes, "without the gods." This amnesia, which means there is never accountability, licenses the war machine to economically disembowel the country and drive the Empire into one self-defeating conflict after another. Its military fiascos in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East have disappeared into the vast cavern of historical amnesia. Its billions of dollars in waste and fraud are ignored. The war machine's massive budgets are sacrosanct. It is axiomatic among the two ruling parties that there must be a constant preparation for war. America is a stratocracy, a form of government dominated by the military.
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