(This post is part two in a series discussing America’s class war and its bearing upon Christian ethics and the church).
During the 1980 presidential primary race, George H. W. Bush famously described candidate Reagan’s “trickle-down” economic proposal as “voodoo economics.” (See post #1).
Check out the video below:
If the first ingredient in Reagan’s cauldron of economic voodoo was tax cuts for the wealthiest who needed them the least, the second ingredient was a huge expansion in the nation’s military budget. Check out this article by Matt Taibbi at the Rolling Stone for more on our current military spending.
More than half of the nation’s discretionary spending goes to the military-industrial-surveillance complex. The following pie chart depicts the 2015 budget allowances. Over half, 54% to be precise, went to the military:
The United States spends as much money on its military as the world’s next ten nations in line. President Trump approved a $717 billion defense bill, increasing U.S. military spending by over $200 billion in 2017.
Remember all of this money is going to an institution that recently failed its first ever audit and is unable to account for $21 trillion. That’s right: $21 trillion unaccounted for by our military-industrial complex! Haven’t heard this fact discussed much on
network news, have you?
That the American public allows this kind of abuse to continue is not only a classic example of throwing good money after bad, it is the ultimate illustration of something called the Stockholm Syndrome, when kidnapping victims are gradually brainwashed into sympathizing with, and even assisting, the very criminals holding them hostage.
Similarly, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs, the Defense Department and U.S. arms manufacturers all conspire to hold this country hostage.
They concoct imaginary threats (like Iran), bilk the American tax-payer for hundreds of billions of dollars in ransom money every year, and then watch approvingly as the masses dig deep to hand over the military’s blood money while standing to salute the flag and sing “God Bless America.”
The entire scenario is obscene. Especially because the spending is not motivated by the requirements of national defense, regardless of the political rhetoric used to assuage any (rare) objections or questions from the public.
The only reason standing behind our massive military budgets is the continued expansion of the American Empire, an Empire that enriches our billionaire class.
Do we really need 800 military bases in 70 countries around the world? No.
Is it necessary for us to conduct secret drone bombing campaigns in 8 different countries? No.
Don’t worry. The carnage is bi-partisan. In 2016 President Obama dropped nearly 31,000 bombs in seven countries. President Trump, “the most hawkish president in modern history,” topped that by 9,000, dropping nearly 40,00 bombs in 2017.
At the end of the day, all of these bombs and wars boil down to war-profiteers making more and more money. Listen to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson lambaste the unfettered greed laying at the heart of American war-making.
Yes, American warfare boils down to billionaires making more and more money; retired generals and admirals becoming CEOs, sitting on more and more boards of directors for more weapons manufacturers; or signing six figure contracts for their “consulting work” (otherwise known as lobbying) on behalf of armaments companies like Raytheon, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.
Check out the Ten Companies Profiting Most From War.
In 1935, Marine Corp General Smedley Butler wrote the anti-war classic, War is a Racket. He would know. I encourage you to read the general’s short 
book, if you haven’t already. Below is an excerpt:
“WAR is a racket. It always has been.
“It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
“In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.”
General Smedley’s words are as true today, perhaps more so, than they were 80 years ago.
Once again, feeding the war machine results in a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthiest Americans. First, our tax dollars justify increased, military expansion. Second, that expansion funnels hundreds of billions of dollars in profits to the CEOs and shareholders who run the burgeoning U.S. arms industry.
The rich get richer while everyone else bears the burden.
Of course, the greatest burden is the cost of war in human lives.
Rarely do the rich sign up to go to war (though a few legislators tried to 
change that in 1935. It didn’t happen). That responsibility falls to others who have few, if any, other options for a career or for higher education. And who knows how to begin counting the untold numbers of civilian casualties created by America’s sleek, stealth drones firing anonymously from thousands of feet in the air, killing innumerable, nameless brown people, men,woman and children, for who knows what reason.
But, don’t worry, American tax-payer. Every bomb dropped, every missile launched is just more money in the bank for another U.S. corporation
perfecting the dark-arts of human slaughter.
The final injustice of our obscene “defense” budgets (we really ought to call it an “offensive” budget) is the neglect of the American people and the social needs of our society.
In 2017, the U.S. budgeted $623 billion on national defense. Many budget analysts argue that by reducing our defense budget down to European levels, we would have the money needed to do such things as:
- Provide free, universal, early childhood development programs to all our children
- Debt-free college for anyone attending a state university
- Student loan forgiveness
- Dramatic reductions in our rates of homeless and childhood-poverty
- Reduce the nation’s deficit
- Provide free health care to every American
Everything discussed here are humanitarian concerns that ought to animate every disciple of Jesus Christ.
What could be a more pungent expression of “loving your neighbor” through social engagement than working to starve the war-mongering beast of American Empire for the good of everyone, at home and around the world?
