Last night’s election results proved that a majority of
people in this country do not want war and genocide. Polling overwhelmingly
showed that the war on Iran was one of the biggest motivating factors in
voting.
So why are we about to give the very people voters rejected an
unprecedented $1.5 trillion budget to continue their reign of death and
destruction? Why are we going to allow Congress to hand over the largest war
budget in human history to weapons manufacturers and AI tech billionaires who
work at the behest of known war criminals?
In the next few weeks, Congress is set to pass what
should be viewed as the deadliest piece of legislation of our time – the 2027
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – or the country’s defense budget, as
it is more commonly known.
Its potential passage is setting U.S. taxpayers up
to be the funders of their own demise by giving carte blanche to a department
of war criminals and their humanity-destroying tech-fascist friends with an
obscene 1.5 trillion-dollar treasure chest to control, murder, oppress, and
destroy the planet as we know it. Sounds a bit hyperbolic? Not if you look at their past
and what they are openly saying now, as a prologue.
To understand why this war budget is a catastrophic time
bomb, you first have to understand what it actually funds. Under the guise of
providing national “security” and protecting “democracy,” the annual Pentagon
budget does little of both. Instead, the budget, which consistently fails its
financial audits, is a mechanism to funnel billions of dollars into the pockets
of weapons manufacturers, who make the very weapons that murder men, women, and
children and destroy the planet. Well over half of the discretionary budget
each year goes directly to private contractors.
Between 2020 and 2024, the Pentagon designated roughly
$2.4 trillion out of $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending to private
industry. But hey, at least those private companies are providing much-needed
jobs for America’s workforce, right? Well, not so fast.
According to the Climate and Community Institute,
employment at military contractors has plummeted over the past three decades:
from an estimated 3.2 million workers during the Reagan military-spending peak
in the mid-1980s to 1.1 million workers in 2020. The drop occurred even as
Pentagon budgets rose 22 percent over the same period.
Meanwhile, the
industry’s top recipients of military contracts, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon,
General Dynamics, and Boeing, pay their CEOs a combined salary of almost $100
million a year. They are literally making a killing off the killing of others.
And now, not only are we draining our pocketbooks for
weapon company CEOs, but we are also subsidizing tech-overlords whose recent
main objective is to move jobs and agency away from the working class to
robots, as well as use that very technology to mass-surveil those who oppose
it.
The Pentagon is requesting an unprecedented $58.5 billion this year for an
artificial intelligence program. This program is already responsible for the
February 28 Minab School massacre that murdered at least 156 schoolchildren and
staff.
Even more frightening, the money for that deadly program
is set to go to the most insane lineup of anti-worker villains, including Sam
“bad things should happen to benefit AI” Altman; Peter “if you’re evil, you’re
not bad” Thiel; and Elon “AI will make jobs irrelevant” Musk. They’re openly
telling us they don’t need humans anymore. Meanwhile, they are building their
bunkers so that when the United States military finally plunders away all the
resources around the world, they can survive.
Why are we handing the military $1.5 trillion to do all
this? As it stands, U.S. taxpayers are already paying $116.43 million every
hour for war and terror.
That’s more than $4,000 in weapons and war costs for
the average taxpayer last year alone. Both figures will likely double, since
the Trump administration’s request is Biden’s already bloated $1 trillion.
Meanwhile, nearly 30% of people have to finance groceries, and 45,000 people
will likely die because they lack health insurance or access to affordable
healthcare.
If you were watching a summer Blockbuster and the main
characters were handing over their hard-earned money and essentially their
trust to the person you know is going to assassinate them in the final act, you
would be screaming at the screen, “Don’t do it!” But that is exactly what is happening right now, and in
fact, many are screaming.
Polls consistently show that Americans are moving away
from a war-centric approach to foreign affairs. Almost two-thirds of people in
the United States disapprove of Trump’s war on Iran, and 60% disapprove of the
U.S. supported genocide in Gaza.
Similarly, 59% of voters believe the proposed
$1.5 trillion Department of Defense budget is too high, and 3 in 5 voters (58%)
prefer directing government funds toward domestic priorities like healthcare
rather than military or war spending.
The voices are there, but most of those with the power to
stop it aren’t listening or are too invested in the war-industrial complex to
care. Which begs the question: How can we even call ourselves a democracy, much
less its defender, when we, the people, seem to have no agency outside of
voting and the majority’s demands are ignored?
This administration, as did previous ones, proudly
ignores what the majority is begging for: an end to the genocide in Gaza and
the occupation of Palestine; an end to the war on Iran that was started for no
reason and is currently sustained through the administration’s pompous
arrogance; an end to ICE’s reign of terror across the United States; an end to
the AI/data center boom that is chipping away at our humanity and livelihoods;
and reinvestment into the things that will actually keep us safe, such as healthcare,
housing, and climate justice.
Make no mistake, the 1.5 trillion dollars set to go to
Pete Hegseth’s war department is not funding our security; it is funding our
endgame and stealing from our lifelines. If passed, it will be nearly
impossible to undo the damage that will come. We all must unite around this –
healthcare workers, environmentalists, teachers, journalists, students,
veterans- and make democracy actually work for the people before it’s too late.
We have to let those we elected to work for us know that this is a red line that
humanity cannot afford to cross.
History shows that public pressure can influence
policies. Our collective voice can change this country’s trajectory – if we
mobilize now. We don’t have to fund our endgame; we can say no. Join us in DC
Nov. 10- 13 as we demand our country stop funding war and start funding life.
Melissa Garriga is the communications and media
analysis manager for CODEPINK. She writes about the intersection of militarism
and the human cost of war.
