It's Not About Supporting Our Troops. It's About Not Supporting a Bloated Military Budget
by John Lawrence
Somehow they always say it's about supporting our troops. I support our troops. I just don't support the military budget which is larger than the next 10 closest nations combined (China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil). And it's really about supporting Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon, defense contractors which have managed to locate plants in all 435 Congressional districts so as to be sure that Congress will support their demands for more money. Recently, Trump bypassed Congress on a deal to sell Saudi Arabia $8.1 billion worth of weapons.
“There is no emergency to the United States or to UAE or to Saudi Arabia regarding the war in Yemen,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., who introduced the measure to stop the deal, said on the House floor before the 246-180 vote. “It is a horrific humanitarian problem. The Saudi-led coalition has killed countless civilians. But it is not an emergency that would justify weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and UAE that bypasses congressional procedure.” But Trump thinks it will maintain and support jobs, contribute to the economy regardless of the ethics or morality. Business is business even when it means more death and destruction.
CNN reported:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to sit for an interview with the State Department inspector general's office as part of its probe into the administration's move to bypass Congress and expedite last year's $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia by declaring an emergency, a congressional aide told CNN Monday. ...
The allegation Pompeo declined to cooperate with the investigation came after House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, Eliot Engel, claimed the State Department inspector general fired by President Donald Trump on Friday, Steve Linick, had nearly completed an investigation into Pompeo's controversial decision to fast-track the same arms sale.
"I have learned that there may be another reason for Mr. Linick's firing. His office was investigating — at my request — Trump's phony declaration of an emergency so he could send weapons to Saudi Arabia. We don't have the full picture yet, but it's troubling that Secretary Pompeo wanted Mr. Linick pushed out before this work could be completed," Engel, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement to CNN Monday.
In the spring of 2019, the Trump administration pushed through a plan for more than $8 billion in weapons sales, almost entirely to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It employed an emergency declaration that under the law supposedly allowed it to proceed without the statutorily required 30-day period during which Congress must be formally notified and has the option of voting to block the sale.
On May 20, 2017, U.S. President Trump and Saudi Arabia's Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud signed a series of letters of intent for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to purchase arms from the United States totaling US$110 billion immediately, and $350 billion over 10 years. So we not only have a bloated defense budget, but we support arms sales to countries around the world - whoever will buy them. This adds to our GDP and creates Trump's "great" economy. It doesn't matter whether the economy is based on solving problems or creating them as long as exports contribute to American GDP. The French export wine and cheese; America exports death and destruction.
These arms sales supported the American military-industrial complex, companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman among others. So the US not only is foolishly mucking around in wars in the Middle East itself contributing to 800,000 deaths there since George W Bush lied us into the war in Iraq, but is fueling even more war by arming Saudi Arabia to the teeth. The US has also made major contributions to the 70 million person refugee problem. Most of the refugees come from Syria and Afghanistan, countries in which the US has had major military activities. Although the Trump administration is doing nothing to help the refugee problem it helped to create, it is doing everything it can to help defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon.