Written by Tyler Durden
Written by John Whitehead and Nisha Whitegear through The Rutherford Institute,
"Every weapon produced, all warship launched, all rocket fired means, ultimately, stealing from those who starve and are not fed, those who are cold and not dressed."
- president Dwight D. Eisenhower (16 April 1953)
Seventy years after president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the cost of the military-industrial complex, America continues to rob its own citizens to fund a global empire.
Only in 2025 the US began raids in Yemen (Operation Rough Rider), bombed Huti-controlled ports and radar installations (killing dozens of civilians), deployed more troops and many aircraft carriers in the mediate East, and closer to a direct war with Iran to support the escalation of the Israeli conflict.
Each of these "new" fronts was sold to the public as a national defence. To tell you the truth, these are the latest facilities in the ten-year run to keep the empire – 1 that fills the pockets of arms companies, while schools collapse, bridges collapse, and veterans sleep in the streets in their homes.
This isn't about national defense. This is the maintenance of an empire.
It is about preserving the military-industrial complex, which derives profits from endless wars, global police and abroad occupations – while national infrastructure rots and its inhabitants are neglected.
The United States has spent most of the last half century guarding order in the world, occupying another countries and conducting endless wars.
Most Americans do not realize that these ongoing wars have small to do with ensuring the safety of the country, and all of that with the maintenance of a military-industrial complex that aims to dominate the world.
The war has become a immense venture making money, and the United States government, with its immense military empire, is 1 of the best buyers and sellers.
The function of America in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has already cost taxpayers over $12 billion.
And now the price of the empire is rising again.
Clearly, it is time for the U.S. government to halt keeping an eye on the world's order.
The American military is reportedly above 1.3 million men and women in active service, of which Over 200,000 are stationed abroad in almost all country in the world.
US troops are stationed in Somalia, Iraq and Syria. In Germany, South Korea and Japan. W Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. In Niger, Chad and Mali. In Turkey, the Philippines and northern Australia.
These numbers are most likely much higher, which is consistent with Pentagon policy, which does not uncover full where and how many soldiers are deployed due to "operational safety and depriving the enemy of any advantage". Investigative writer David Vine explains: "Although fewer Americans realize it, the United States is likely to have more bases on alien lands than any another people, nation or empire in history".
It's unbelievable, but American armed forces are not deployed abroad to defend our freedoms in the country. Rather, they are utilized to defend oil fields, build abroad infrastructure and defend the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year to defend oil resources worldwide.
American Military empire includes almost 800 bases in 160 countrieswhich are exploited at over $156 billion a year. As Vine reports, "Even American military resorts and recreational areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul in South Korea are any kind of bases. Worldwide The military runs more than 170 golf courses.
Thus the military empire occupies the Earth's sphere.
For 20 years, the U.S. war device supported Afghanistan with a sum billions of dollars and thousands of human lives lost. erstwhile the troops left Afghanistan, the military-industrial complex simply moved to another theatres of action – turning Yemen, Iran and the Red Sea into fresh front lines.
Every fresh conflict is advertised as a national defence. In fact, it is simply a average business for the global scope of the Pentagon, with American soldiers utilized as pawns in the government's endless quest to control global markets, support abroad regimes and safe oil, data, and strategical ports—all this while at the same time saying that it is behind freedom.
Thus the military-industrial complex, assisted and instigated by specified people as Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and others, proceed to be rich at the expense of taxpayers.
However, although the reasons why American armed forces patrol the world, they can change, these wars abroad do not make America – or the remainder of the planet – safer, they surely do not make America large again and undeniably drive the US into deeper debt.
War expenses make America bankrupt.
Although the United States is only 5% of the world's population, America can boast almost 50% of global military expenditure, spending on the military more than the next 19 countries with the largest full expenditure.
In fact, The Pentagon spends more than all 50 states together spends on health, education, social welfare and security.
The American military-industrial complex erected an unparalleled empire in past in terms of momentum and scope, dedicated to conducting continuous wars all over the earth.
Since 2001, the United States government has spent more than $10 trillion to lead endless warsMost of which were borrowed, a lot wasted, all paid for by blood and taxpayers' money.
If we add to this escalation in Yemen and the mediate East in 2025, the final bill for future wars and military exercises worldwide will be tens of billions.
Co-opted by greedy defence contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, the expanding American military empire bleeds the country at a rate above $32 million per hour.
In fact, the US government spent more money in Iraq all 5 seconds, than the average American earns in a year.
Let's talk about fiscal irresponsibility: the U.S. government spends money that's not there, a military empire that he can't afford.
Even today, if we ended the government's interference in military affairs and brought all the soldiers home, it would take us decades to pay the price of these wars and remove government creditors from our backs.
As the Uri Friedman investigative writer put it, for over 15 years the United States fight terrorism with credit card, "essentially financing debt wars, in the form of purchases of US government bonds by US-based entities specified as pension funds and state and local governments, as well as by countries specified as China and Japan".
War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly to consider government incompetence, fraud and greedy contractors. Indeed, the leading accounting firm has come to the conclusion that 1 of the largest Pentagon agencies "is incapable to account for hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of expenses".
Unfortunately, prospects are not much better for spending that you can follow.
Government audit has shown that the arms company Boeing massively imposes besides advanced charges on taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in excessive spending by tens of millions of dollars. As noted in the report, American payer paid:
$71 for a metallic pin that should cost only 4 cents; $644.75 for tiny equipment little than a dime that sells for $12.51: over a 5.100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, besides little than a dime that could be bought at the DoD for $7.71, an increase of 21,000 percent. $71.01 for a straight, thin metallic pin that the Department of defence had on hand, not utilized by tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.
The fact that specified price increases has become an accepted form of corruption in the American military empire, is simply a sad proof of how small control "we, people," we have over our fleeing government.
Remember, it's not just corrupt behavior. It's deadly, immoral behavior.
To date, the Americans have allowed themselves to constantly feed on pro-war propaganda, which makes them content to wave flags with patriotic enthusiasm and are little inclined to watch the increasing number of casualties, ruined human lives, ravaged countries, repercussions resulting from reckless killings with drones and bombing campaigns in abroad countries. Or turning our own homeland into a war zone.
Bombing Yemeni port Ras Isa by American forces – In which more than 80 civilians died – this is just the latest example of war crimes justified by national interest.
This has to change.
The United States government does not make the planet any safer.It makes the planet more dangerous. It is estimated that The American military drops a bomb somewhere in the planet all 12 minutes. Since 11 September 2001, the United States government has straight contributed to the death of about 500,000 human lives. Each of these deaths was paid out of taxpayers' money.
With the escalation in 2025, these numbers will only grow.
The United States government doesn't make America any safer. This exposes American citizens to alarming levels of response, which is the CIA word referring to the unintended consequences of the US government's global action. Chalmers Johnson, erstwhile CIA consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s usage of its army to gain power over the planet economy will origin a devastating blow.
The 9/11 attacks were a blow.. The bombing during the Boston Marathon was a blow. Times Square bombing attempt it was a fiasco. A gunman from Fort Hood, a major in the U.S. Army, was shocked..
I'm afraid the ongoing drone attacks by the American army will origin even greater retaliation in the American people.
Militaryization of America by war hawks – bringing home war spoils (military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, tarans, night imagination binoculars, etc.) and turning America into a battlefield in this way – is besides a blow.
James Madison was right: "No nation can keep its freedom in the midst of continuous wars." Madison explained: "Of all the enemies of public freedom, war is possibly the most terrifying due to the fact that it contains and develops the seed of any other. War is the father of the army; From these come debts and taxes... acquainted instruments to subdue many reigns of few."
We see how it happens in front of us.
The government is destabilising the economy, destroying national infrastructure by neglecting and deficiency of resources, and besides turning taxpayers' money into bloody money through endless wars, drone attacks and an expanding number of victims.
The country's infrastructure is simply a mess. Public schools are underfunded. Psychiatric care is failing. The basic needs specified as housing, transport and clean water stay unmet. Meanwhile, government contractors drop bombs on 3rd planet villages and call it a strategy.
It's not just bad budgeting. It's a moral bankruptcy. A country that can't take care of its own citizens has no interest in keeping an eye on the remainder of the world.
Bridges collapse, water supply systems fail, students drown in debt, and veterans sleep on the streets – while the Pentagon builds runways in the desert and funds substitute wars that no 1 can explain.
There is no uncertainty that our national priorities urgently require thorough review.
We're financing our own fall. Roads rot, and military convoys roll. The power grid fails erstwhile drones fly. Our national strength is sucked to feed a war device that produces nothing but death, debt, and dysfunction.
We don't request another war. We request a republic revival.
It's time to halt keeping order in the world. Bring the troops home. Close military bases. halt the secret wars. Cut the Pentagon budget. The way to peace begins with a complete withdrawal from the empire.
At the tallness of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not look into the face of a failing economy and an expanding army. The prolonged periods of war and false economical prosperity have mostly led to its collapse. According to historian Chalmers Johnson:
The destiny of erstwhile democratic empires suggests that specified a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in 1 of 2 ways. Rome tried to keep its empire and lost democracy. Britain decided to stay democratic and thus abandoned its empire. Consciously or not, the United States nation is already well implemented for the course of an undemocratic empire.
It is an "unwarranted influence whether it is wanted or not, by a military-industrial complex" from which president Dwight Eisenhower warned us not to let them to endanger our freedoms or democratic processes.
Eisenhower, who served as commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in Europe during planet War II, was afraid about the growth of a profit-driven war machine, which appeared after the war – which, in order to survive, had to proceed to wage war.
We disobeyed his warning.
As I explained in my book "Battlefield America: The War on the American People" (Poland Battles America: War on the American Nation)) and in its fictional counterpart "Eric Blair Diaries", War is the enemy of freedom.
As long as American politicians engage us in wars that will lead the nation to bankruptcy, endanger our soldiers and women, increase the hazard of terrorism and retaliation in the country, and besides push the nation so far closer to the final fall, "we, nation" will be in a constant state of tyranny.
After all, not only the empire falls. It's a republic he hollowed out along the way.
The views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
