Last week, “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth offended many Americans by asserting that a 50 percent hike in the US military budget—from an already staggering one trillion dollars to an even more unimaginable one and a half trillion—represents a “fiscally responsible investment.”
“Thanks to President Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense budget, this War Department has moved from bureaucracy to business,” he stated last Thursday.
In a sense, his comment holds some truth. This dramatic increase is driven far more by “business” interests than by genuine national defense needs against possible invasions.
However, this is not the type of “business” that advocates of free markets would support. Rather, it amounts to transferring enormous wealth from the financially pressured middle and working classes to a privileged Beltway elite, all justified by misleading claims and fearmongering.
The mainstream US media play a pivotal role in weaving the myth that unless we mortgage the futures of our children and grandchildren to bankroll this lavish military spending, a hostile foreign force will attack or invade us.
A brief inquiry reveals why both mainstream and some so-called “independent” media outlets perpetuate these alarms: they are owned or financed by huge corporations closely linked to defense contractors.
This harmful alliance is identified as “corporatism”—a blend of ostensibly private companies and government operations. It serves as a forerunner to true fascism, where the government takes partial control of such companies.
We are approaching this reality faster than most Americans realize.
This entire deception isn’t about safeguarding Americans at home. Rather, it’s about maintaining the US empire abroad, which ultimately damages the American public.
Indeed, they exploit us financially to sustain their empire while falsely assuring us it ensures our security. Nothing could be more inaccurate. Our perpetual military incursions on nearly every continent only fuel animosity among global populations. Anyone who believes that US bombs are welcomed abroad has been consuming too much Fox News or too many Washington Post articles.
And what returns do we see from maintaining the world’s priciest military, which outspends the next dozen or so countries combined? Very little. Iran’s military budget, less than one percent of ours, has succeeded in destroying or disabling every US base in the Middle East.
Surprisingly, Iran has downed numerous multi-million dollar US spy drones—and even several nearly billion-dollar spy radar facilities—with drones costing just thousands of dollars apiece.
The intended US surprise attack aimed to force Iran into submission but achieved the opposite: demonstrating that despite trillions taken from Americans to fund the most costly military on earth, the US armed forces can no longer prevail in the wars that presidents unlawfully drag them into.
US forces remain locked in battles reminiscent of World War II, relying on prohibitively expensive aircraft carriers that avoid direct combat—while modern warfare has evolved drastically.
The one positive takeaway from the conflict with Iran is how clearly it exposes the deceit of vested interests regarding the urgent justification for escalating military budgets.
This has never been about defending the United States. Instead, it protects the expanding fortunes of special interests at the expense of everyone else. This must end—immediately.
Original article: ronpaulinstitute.org
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