On Friday the House passed a massive National Defense Authorization for
2016 that will guarantee US involvement in more wars and overseas
interventions for years to come. The Republican majority resorted to trickery
to evade the meager spending limitations imposed by the 2011 budget control
act - limitations that did not, as often reported, cut military spending but
only slowed its growth.
But not even slower growth is enough when you have an empire to maintain
worldwide, so the House majority slipped into the military spending bill an
extra $89 billion for an emergency war fund. Such "emergency"
spending is not addressed in the growth caps placed on the military under the
2011 budget control act. It is a loophole filled by Congress with Fed-printed
money.
Ironically, a good deal of this "emergency" money will go to
President Obama's war on ISIS even though neither the House nor the Senate
has debated - let alone authorized - that war! Although House leadership
allowed 135 amendments to the defense bill - with many on minor issues like
regulations on fire hoses - an effort by a small group of Representatives to
introduce an amendment to debate the current US war in Iraq and Syria was
rejected.
While squashing debate on ongoing but unauthorized wars, the bill also
pushed the administration toward new conflicts. Despite the president's
unwise decision to send hundreds of US military trainers to Ukraine, a move that
threatens the current shaky ceasefire, Congress wants even more US
involvement in Ukraine's internal affairs. The military spending bill
included $300 million to directly arm the Ukrainian government even as
Ukrainian leaders threaten to again attack the breakaway regions in the east.
Does Congress really think US-supplied weapons killing ethnic Russians in
eastern Ukraine is a good idea?
The defense authorization bill also seeks to send yet more weapons into
Iraq. This time the House wants to send weapons directly to the Kurds in
northern Iraq without the approval of the Iraqi government. Although these
weapons are supposed to be used to fight ISIS, we know from too many prior
examples that they often find their way into the hands of the very people we
are fighting. Also, arming an ethnic group seeking to break away from Baghdad
and form a new state is an unwise infringement of the sovereignty of Iraq. It
is one thing to endorse the idea of secession as a way to reduce the
possibility of violence, but it is quite something else to arm one side and
implicitly back its demands.
While the neocons keep pushing the lie that the military budget is
shrinking under the Obama Administration, the opposite is true. As the CATO
Institute pointed out recently, President George W. Bush's average defense
budget was $601 billion, while during the Obama administration the average
has been $687 billion. This bill is just another example of this unhealthy
trend.
Next year's military spending plan keeps the US on track toward
destruction of its economy at home while provoking new resentment over US
interventionism overseas. It is a recipe for disaster. Let's hope for either
a presidential veto, or that on final passage Congress rejects this bad bill.
