I am glad to see a revival of the struggle against militarism in the USA. However, I am disturbed that, like in the Bush presidency some anti-militarism efforts have been focused on personal attacks rather than against the militarization of US. Militarism since the 80’s has reached new heights. In my opinion, the left, liberals, progressives and democrats will lose credibility and integrity by personalizing the struggle on individuals than the system
I know ‘facts’ can be twisted but here are some that I think we who fight militarism must be aware of in order to be credible and direct our protest and nonviolent actions against the system and not the person. If you dispute any of these facts please let me know and I will adjust them as necessary. Facts do Matter.
First let us look at the Department of Defense military budgets since the 90’s.
The following is historical spending on defense from 1996–2015, spending for 2014–15 is estimated. The Defense Budget is shown in billions of dollars and total budget in trillions of dollars.
Note how the Defense budget has gone up since the 90’s and reached new heights in 2010 and 2011 when all branches of the government where controlled by the Democrats. Also in 2009 President Obama asked for a supplementary defense appropriations bill of $83.4 billion to fund “ongoing military, diplomatic, and intelligence operations. With a Democratic House and Senate he received 106 billion over and above the Defense budget.
In FY 2010 Defense budget had a record setting $538 billion, basic budget, not including the added cost of the wars. This exceeded the Reagan peak of $517 billion in 2010 dollars.
2016 Defense budget was for 598 Billion.
On December 26, 2016 the president signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which authorizes $611 billion for the military spending in 2017.
Despite all the propaganda and hype on all sides the President Trump’s proposed Military Defense budget for 2018 is for $608 billion, including funding for Department of Energy. President Obama has called for blowing past congressional spending caps and spending $585 including funding for Department of Energy in 2018. The actual difference between what President Obama projected spending and what President Trump is just $18 billion dollars.
I am not saying we should not hold President Trump accountable for outrageous military spend or it was wrong to hold Rep. Moore accountable for her major support of more military spending in 2009 and 2010 or presently Senator Baldwin for her advocating more military spending. We need to resist militarism in all form, using our universities to teach war and killing, more arms sales, the new F-35 fighter jet, “killer drones” be it from Republicans, Democrats, military/industrial/educational complex. To be human, in my opinion we must resist militarism in all its forms.