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Sometimes, strange as it might seem, striking historical moments pass almost unnoticed. As far as I'm concerned, that couldn't be truer recently. Under the administration of President Donald Trump (who snags every headline in sight for just about anything he says or does), an extraordinary moment did indeed pass essentially unnoticed. Yes, there were a few news reports on it, but they were all too easy to miss.
And yet, in a reasonable world, it would have made blazing headlines (or the TV and social media equivalent of the same) and been the focus of every talk show in town.
I won't be faintly surprised, by the way, if you don't have the slightest idea what I'm thinking about. How could you? So, let me quietly fill you in. (No headlines here!) Yes, in June it became clear that, under Trump, the Pentagon budget, still often referred to as the "defense budget," would for the first time actually cross the trillion-dollar mark, a jump of perhaps $160 billion. (Remember when Trump promised that he and Elon Musk would find -- and cut -- "hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse" from that very budget?) And yes again, at the very moment when President Trump seems dedicated to cutting everything in sight, the U.S. military (and the giant defense contractors that go with it) are going to rake in the ever-bigger bucks.
And, of course, that's undoubtedly just the beginning. Given the staggering cost of the military's latest and future weaponry, it's bound to go higher yet. In fact, if our all-American world continues on anything like its present course, that trillion dollars could, some years down the road, seem modest indeed. And with that in mind, let TomDispatch regular William Astore, once upon a time a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force and the creator of the must-read Bracing Views substack, explore just how that military is helping us head for a disaster first-class and why the rest of us should raise our voices about it. Tom
America the FUBAR
An Ailing, Flailing, Failing Empire Lashes Out
As a retired U.S. Air Force officer, I firmly believe in civilian control of our military. This country should be a nation of laws -- not of special interests, oligarchs, or kings. Before committing our forces to battle, Congress should always declare war in the name of the people. Our military should indeed be a citizen-soldier force, not an isolated caste driven by a warrior ethos. And above all, the United States should be a republic ruled by law and shaped by sound moral values, not a greed-driven empire fueled by militarism.
Yet when I express such views, I feel like I'm clinging to a belief in the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus. It feels idealistic, naà à ? ï ? ? ï ? ?ve, even painful to think that way. Yes, I served this country in uniform for 20 years, and now, in the age of Donald Trump, it has, as far as I can tell, thoroughly lost its way. The unraveling began so long ago -- most obviously with the disastrous Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s, though in truth this country's imperial desires predated even the Spanish-American War of 1898, stretching back to the wanton suppression of indigenous peoples as part of its founding and expansion.
A glance at U.S. history reveals major atrocities: the displacement and murder of Native Americans, slavery, and all too many imperial misadventures abroad. I knew of such realities when I joined the military in 1985, near the end of the Cold War. Despite its flaws, I believed then that this country was more committed to freedom than the Soviet Union. We could still claim some moral authority as the leader of what we then referred to as "the free world," however compromised or imperfect our actions were.
That moral authority, however, is now gone. U.S. leaders fully support and unapologetically serve an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. They sell weapons to nearly every regime imaginable, irrespective of human rights violations. They wage war without Congressional approval -- the recent 12-day assault on Iran being just the latest example. (The second Trump administration has, in fact, launched almost as many air strikes, especially in Yemen and Somalia, in its first five months as the Biden administration did in four years.) Those same leaders have been doing a bang-up job dismantling the America I thought I was serving when I took that oath and put on second lieutenant's bars four decades ago. That America -- assuming it ever existed -- may now be gone forever.
FUBAR: A Republic in Ruins
My fellow citizens, America is FUBAR (a term that dates from World War II). We are not faintly who we claim to be. Rather than a functioning republic, we are an ailing, flailing, perhaps even failing empire. We embrace war, glorify warriors, and profit mightily from the global arms trade, no matter the civilian toll, including tens of thousands of dead and wounded children in Gaza, among the latest victims of U.S.-made bombs, bullets, and missiles.
Signs of moral rot are everywhere. Our president, who would like to be known for his budget cuts, nonetheless giddily celebrates a record trillion-dollar war budget. Our secretary of defense gleefully promotes a warrior ethos. Congress almost unanimously supports or acquiesces in the destruction of Gaza. Images from the region resemble bombed-out Stalingrad in 1942 or Berlin in 1945. Meanwhile, for more than two decades now, America's leaders have claimed to be waging a successful global "war on terror" even as they fuel terror across the globe. What do they think all those U.S. weapons are for -- spreading peace?
My wife and I cope through dark humor. We see news on cuts to Medicaid, the mentally ill in the streets, and crumbling infrastructure, and quip: "But Bibi [Netanyahu] needs bombs. Or Ukraine does. Or the Pentagon needs more nukes." That's why Americans can't have nice things like health care. That's why all too many of us are unhoused, in debt, out of work, and desperate. In 1967 -- yes, that's almost 60 years ago! -- Martin Luther King warned of exactly this: America's approaching spiritual death through militarism (aggravated by extreme materialism and racism). That death is visibly here, now.
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