From Philadephia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch’s newsletter (you can sign up here — it’s free):
>> The billions for a more just, less racist America are hiding in plain sight at the PentagonÂ
You couldnât blame the legions of marchers whoâve taken over some of Americaâs streets this past month in the name of justice for George Floyd for wondering which army they were fighting. Many protests have been met with weapons of warfare â with choking tear gas (actually, the UN doesnât even allow that in war!), sharpshooters taking out eyes with rubber bullets, or cops tossing grenades that go flash and bang, occasionally with an armored personnel carrier as a scenic backdrop.
To protesters, the massive response by helmeted robocops is proving their point that America spends too much on policing, and it does! $115 billion a year to be exact. But what if the problem with âmilitarized policeâ isnât only the police but the âmilitarizedâ part? … a sickness that manifests itself in warrior cops at home but also drone strikes in an endless U.S. âforever warâ overseas.
What if the money to pay for all the social programs that our over-policed cities really need â to hire school nurses and buy new textbooks, and recruit a new kind of army of social workers and drug counselors â isnât only supporting your local police, but hiding in plain sight on the left bank of the Potomac River?
No political leaders from either party ever ask how taxpayers could possibly afford the $1.5 trillion for the Pentagonâs underwhelming F-35 stealth jet, even as your coronavirus nurse works the ICU wearing a Hefty bag. â Will Bunch
Defund the police? Sure. But real leaders defund the Pentagon.
âOur security investments have been in too many of the wrong places,â Matt Duss, the top foreign-policy advisor to former presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, told me this week, in what could arguably be called an understatement. âWeâve need to have a serious conversation about reducing the defense budget.â
Do we ever! The current Pentagon annual budget of $736 billion is larger than military spending by the next 10 biggest nations combined â and weâre talking about places like China, Russia and India. (For the curious, only Chinaâs military spends more than that $115 billion America spends just on cops.) Yet somehow, no political leaders from either party ever ask how taxpayers could possibly afford the $1.5 trillion (yes, with a âtâ) thatâs gone down a sinkhole for the Pentagonâs underwhelming F-35 stealth jet, even as your coronavirus nurse works the ICU wearing a Hefty bag.
The weird part of this, though, is the way that congressional Democrats â who once could be counted on to at least pay lip service to curbing the military-industrial complex â have thrown in the towel on defense cuts in the Trump era. When Democrats re-took control of the House in 2019, their $733 billion proposal for the Pentagon was only a tad smaller than President Trumpâs bloated plan.
âMembers of Congress are very concerned about being cast as âweak on defense,ââ Duss told me â a problem thatâs become deeply rooted in the so-called âwar on terrorâ era, post 9/11. Thereâs other issues â Americaâs politically wired allies in the Middle East and elsewhere pushing for a U.S. military presence, and defense jobs scattered across so many congressional districts.
Despite all these roadblocks, Congress, led by Dussâ boss, Vermontâs Sanders, last year turned heads with an unprecedented vote to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabiaâs war in Yemen â thwarted, of course, by a Trump veto. Now, in a George Floyd moment where radical change seems possible, Sanders is pushing an amendment to immediate cut defense spending by 10 percent to funnel more than $70 billion into anti-poverty programs.
Currently the most ambitious dreamer among the defund-the-Pentagon crowd is California Rep. Barbara Lee, the only House member to cast a ânoâ vote on authorizing the anti-terror war in 2001. Her resolution aims to cut U.S. defense spending roughly in half â some $350 million â which would include canceling Trumpâs Space Force (the real one, not the badly reviewed TV show) and getting rid of a majority of Americaâs global archipelago of military bases. Canât afford it? With a deep economic recession and pressing social needs, can we afford not to?
Taking on the military-industrial complex isnât a distraction from the demands on the street for racial justice; rather, it cuts to the core of the problem. Whether armed men are firing tear gas into Lafayette Square or Predator drones into weddings in Afghanistan, the amount of money that America spends on suppressing, attacking and killing human beings is obscene. And thereâs a new generation, with a new explanation, thatâs figuring this out.