Permanent War Footing

Since Biden took office I have been criticizing his war footing that seems to want the US to be on at all times.

His latest antic just reinforces my belief on the statement.

I am talking about the thing about TikTok and the cover it provided to strip out more taxpayer cash for the wars he wants in Ukraine and Israel and the one he stokes with Taiwan and China.

All this just smacks of the US being on a ‘permanent war footing’.

The White House is steering the United States into a budgetary ditch it may not be able to get out of.

The Biden administration is supersizing the defense industry to meet foreign arms obligations instead of making tradeoffs essential to any effective budget. Its new National Defense Industrial Strategy lays out a plan to “catalyze generational change” of the defense industrial base and to “meet the strategic moment” — one rhetorically dominated by competition with China, but punctuated by U.S. support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

Instead of reevaluating its maximalist national security strategy, the Biden administration is doubling down. It is proposing a generation of investment to expand an arms industry that, overall, fails to meet cost, schedule, and performance standards. And if its strategy is any indication, the administration has no vision for how to eventually reduce U.S. military industrial capacity.

When the Cold War ended, the national security budget shrank. Then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and deputy William Perry convened industry leaders to encourage their consolidation in a meeting that later became known as the “Last Supper.” Arms makers were to join forces or go out of business. So they ended up downsizing from over 50 prime contractors to just five. And while contractors needed to pare down their industrial capacity, unchecked consolidation created the monopolistic defense sector we have now — one that depends heavily on government contracts and enjoys significant freedom to set prices.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/biden-war-strategy/

There are risks for the Biden ‘permanent war footing’ thing….and the risks could be catastrophic…..then there his opponent Trump his policies would only make things worse (if that is possible)….

There is no daylight between presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump on the permanent war economy. Both tout the weapons industry as a source of jobs, jobs, jobs for Americans, never mentioning that the billions of government dollars flushed through the military-industrial complex could go for other things. Think universal health care, free higher education or maybe just the green economy – if money spent on what Politico called Bombenomics went to producing solar panels and wind turbines, we’d have jobs AND a planet not heating up at warp speed. Sadly, our two presidential contenders never met a weapon system they didn’t like. And as recent history repeats – if you spend all your cash building tanks, guns and bombs, they’re gonna get used.

Even worse, the U.S. MIC compels other countries to beef up their militaries. Take Russia. Before invading Ukraine, Moscow’s weapons industry puttered along, as did military conscription, but as soon as the Kremlin realized that it had no peace partners in the west or in Ukraine – a revelation that dawned on Moscow when then British prime minister Boris Johnson sabotaged peace talks between the two opponents in spring 2022 – things changed. Russia put itself on a war footing, so that now its industrial military base hums along, churning out tanks, hypersonic missiles (which the West lacks), rockets, guns and don’t forget nuclear bombs. Russia also placed tactical nukes in Belarus.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/15/the-evil-of-a-permanent-war-economy/

Let’s get real…..the War Department gets $900 billion and the rest of the country scrambles for the crumbs that the M-IC will allow Congress to give.

This whole scenario is becoming ridiculous!

We do not need more and more war….what we need is to rebuild the Middle Class and tighten up our infrastructure….war will not accomplish anything but wasted lives and money.

I know….some think that it is a hopeless cause to rant on and on…..but to me the only cause that will do the most damage to our country is those that rollover and play dead and do nothing but hide in the shadows.

I want my country to thrive not bogged down in countless misadventures of war.

I have spoken so it is written

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

8 thoughts on “Permanent War Footing

  1. I feel much the same about increased military spending in the UK. It’s a ‘mystery’ where all the money goes. We have a very small army and navy, though the air force seems about the same. We have a lot of defence spending, some of which has been diverted to ‘selling’ weapons to Ukraine which they have no hope of ever paying for. We also gave them just a few tanks, claiming we didn’t have enough to cover our own requirements. So if we are barely able to protect Britain, where has all the money been spent?

    Best wishes, Pete.

      1. Sure thing…I have been reading some of the historic stuff and find it great….hope you like it chuq

  2. Of course we have to be on a permanant war footing in today’s world. When it hits the fan I don’t think we’ll have a year for mobilization and train troops to send “over there” or even for “over here”. That’s why semper paratus is called for. I do take issue, however, about how much of the expenditures seems to evaporate into some mysterious place and why pencils may cost $10 each.

    1. Proxmire had the right idea about exposing monthly those types of ‘hidden’ costs….we need someone who is not on the take to step up and do the same work. chuq

      1. Agree 100 %. Perhaps the unfunded or over- runs get transfered to clandestine CIA activities acct which would never appear on the expenditures and never publically approved.

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