Prior to America’s invasion of Iraq, The New York Times was playing key role as a major propaganda vessel telling the world that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was possessing Weapons of Mass-Destruction (WMD), whereas editors of the newspaper were fully aware that it was a blatant lie. In fact, New York Times has been regularly publishing lies bigger than the clumsy nonsense propaganda it did run against Saddam Hussein. One of their recent lies is called ‘Liberals Have a Blind Spot on Defense” but mentions nothing related to defense’. It simply fantasizes that militarism is defensive by applying that word and by lying that “we face simultaneous and growing military threats from Russia and China”, which actually is another blatant lie.
Military budget of the United States is more than the combined budget of Russia and China. On 29 countries, out of around 200 in the world spend even one percent what the US does in the defense sector. Of those 29 countries, 26 are customers of America’s weapons. Many of these countries receive free weapons or training from the United States. Only one non-ally, non-weapons customer spends over 10 percent what the United States does, namely China, which was at 37 percent of the US spending in 2021 and likely about the same now despite the highly horrifying increases widely reported in the US media and on the floor of Congress.
That is not considering weapons for Ukraine and various other US expenses. While the United States has planted military bases around Russia and China, neither has a military base anywhere near the United States, and neither has threatened the United States. Still military industrial complex and its beneficiaries in the US politics and media are continuously telling Americans – unless the United States further increases its defense purchase budget, they country may face invasion soon by China and Russia and other “enemies of the US”. They want to fill the entire world with American weaponry and provoke Russia and China on their borders. In this line, The New York Times has started spreading additional lies to its readers:
“Defense spending is about as pure an application of a domestic industrial policy – with thousands of good-paying, high-skilled manufacturing jobs – as any other high-tech sector”.
But it is not true. Just about any other way of spending public dollars, or even not taxing them in the first place, produces more and better jobs.
Here’s a doozie:
“Liberals also used to be hostile to the military on the assumption that it skewed right wing, but that’s a harder argument to make when the right is complaining about a ‘woke military’”.
What in the world would it mean to oppose organized mass murder because it skews right wing? What the hell else could it skew? I oppose militarism because it kills, destroys, damages the Earth, drives homelessness and illness and poverty, prevents global cooperation, tears down the rule of law, prevents self-governance, produces the dumbest pages of the New York Times, fuels bigotry, and militarizes police, and because there are better ways to resolve disputes and to resist the militarism of others.
And here is the lie – “The Biden administration touts the size of its US$842 billion budget request, and in nominal terms it is the largest ever. But that fails to account for inflation”.
If one will look at US military spending according to SIPRI in constant 2021 dollars from 1949 to now (all the years they provide, with their calculation adjusting for inflation), Obama’s 2011 record will probably fall this year.
Looking at the actual numbers, not adjusting for inflation, Biden has set a new record each year. If free weapons for Ukraine is added, then, even adjusting for inflation, the record fell this past year and will probably be broken again in the coming year.
People will hear all sorts of different numbers, depending on what’s included. Most used is probably US$886 billion for what Biden has proposed, which includes the military, the nuclear weapons, and some of “Homeland Security”. In the absence of massive public pressure on a topic the public hardly knows exists, one can count on an increase by Congress, plus major new piles of free weapons to Ukraine. For the first time, US military spending (not counting various secret spending, veterans spending, etc.) will likely top US$950 billion as predicted.
Military industrial complex, war profiteer-funded thinks tanks, corrupt politicians (in fact 100 percent of the American politicians are corrupt – this war or that way) like to view military spending as a philanthropic project to be measured as a percentage of an “economy” or GDP, as if the more money a country has, the more it should spend on organized killing. There are two more sensible ways to look at it. Both can be seen at Mapping Militarism.
One is as simple amounts per nation. In these terms, the US is at a historic high and soaring far, far over the rest of the world.
The other way to look at it is per capita. As with a comparison of absolute spending, one has to travel far down the list to find any of the designated enemies of the US government. But here Russia jumps to the top of that list, spending a full 20 percent of what the US does per person, while only spending less than 9 percent in total dollars. In contrast, China slides down the list, spending less than 9 percent per person what the United States does, while spending 37 percent in absolute dollars. Iran, meanwhile, spends 5 percent per capita what the US does, compared to just over 1 percent in total spending.
The New York Times writes that the United States needs to spend more to dominate four oceans, while China need worry only about one. As Jimmy Carter told Donald Trump, “Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody? None. And we have stayed at war … China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that’s why they’re ahead of us. In almost every way”.
Warmonger politicians, ever-increasing defense budget and America’s increased military involvement in foreign countries is actually pushing the country towards exclusively focusing on killing people – mostly in the foreign land (as currently they are doing in Ukraine and countries in the Middle East), while at one point, Americans will finally realize, how badly they have been screwed by their politicians, corporate media cartel and warmonger intelligence establishment. Until that realization comes into the minds of American masses, the country shall not be liberated from the grips of corrupt politicians, bandit media cartel and greedy thinktanks.
