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Miriam
How the House Armed Services Committee, in the Middle of a Pandemic,
Approved a Huge Military Budget and More War in Afghanistan
Glenn Greenwald, System Update
July 9 2020, 12:28 p.m.
Today's SYSTEM UPDATE episode about this topic can be viewed on The
Intercept's YouTube channel or on the player below.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Calif., left, House Republican
Conference chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and House Minority Whip Steve
Scalise of La., smile as they arrive for a news conference on Capitol Hill,
Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019 in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Rep. Liz
Cheney, R-Wyo. smiles as she arrives for a news conference on Jan. 15, 2019,
in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) AP
WHILE THE COUNTRY IS SUBSUMED by both public health and an unemployment
crisis, and is separately focused on a sustained protest movement against
police abuses, a massive $740.5 billion military spending package was
approved last week by the Democratic-controlled House Armed Services
Committee. The GOP-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee will almost
certainly send the package with little to no changes to the White House for
signing.
As we reported last week, pro-war and militaristic Democrats on the
Committee joined with GOP Rep. Liz Cheney and the pro-war faction she leads
to form majorities which approved one hawkish amendment after the next.
Among those amendments was one co-sponsored by Cheney with Democratic Rep.
Jason Crow of Colorado that impeded attempts by the Trump administration to
withdraw troops from Afghanistan, and another amendment led by Rep. Ruben
Gallego, D-Ariz., and Cheney which blocked the White House's plan to remove
10,000 troop stationed in Germany.
While those two amendments were designed to block the Trump administration's
efforts to bring troops home, this same bipartisan pro-war faction defeated
two other amendments that would have imposed limits on the Trump
administration's aggression and militarism: one sponsored by Democratic Rep.
Tulsi Gabbard to require the Trump administration to provide a national
security rationale before withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear
Forces Treaty, or INF, signed with the Soviet Union in 1987, and another to
impose limits on the ability of the U.S. to arm and otherwise assist Saudi
Arabia to bomb Yemen.
NPR website
Perhaps most remarkable is the amount of the military budget itself. It is
three times more than the planet's second-highest military spender, China;
it is ten times more than the third-highest spender, Saudi Arabia; it is 15
times more than the military budget of the country most frequently invoked
by Committee members as a threat to justify militarism: Russia; and it is
more than the next 15 countries combined spend on their military. They
authorized this kind of a budget in the midst of a global pandemic as tens
of millions of newly unemployed Americans struggle even to pay their rent.
How does this happen? How do Democrats succeed in presenting an image of
themselves based on devotion to progressive causes and the welfare of the
ordinary citizen while working with Liz Cheney to ensure that vast resources
are funneled to the weapons manufacturers, defense sector and lobbyists who
fund their campaigns? Why would a country with no military threats from any
sovereign nation to its borders spend almost a trillion dollars a year for
buying weapons while its citizens linger without health care, access to
quality schools, or jobs? Who are the people in Congress doing this, and
why?
These are questions that are rarely examined in media venues. News sites,
op-ed pages and especially 24-hour cable news are obsessed with
trivialities: Trump's latest tweet or offhand remark in a rally; symbolic
culture war distractions in which Congress plays little role; the offensive
remarks of people who wield little power. As a result, what the U.S.
government really does - in the bowels of the Congress and in the underbelly
of sub-committee proceedings - receives little substantive attention.
This media dynamic is exacerbated by the journalistic practice of obsessing
on the areas where the two parties squabble, while steadfastly ignoring the
very consequential and numerous areas where they find full agreement - such
as approving close to a trillion dollars in military spending and ensuring
the oldest war in U.S. history continues without end. When the two parties
are in agreement, as they so often are, this is boring from a media
perspective, so it is typically ignored. This has the dual-propagandistic
effect of creating the appearance that the two parties never agree when they
in fact agree constantly, while also suppressing those vital policies which
receive overwhelming bipartisan consensus.
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In reporting on the approval of this military budget last week, I watched
all 14 hours of the committee proceedings. It was remarkably revealing about
how the U.S. government really functions, who the culprits are, what their
motives are in pursuing policies that so blatantly have no benefit for the
people they pretend to represent, and the vast gap between the image they
create for themselves and the reality of what they really do in Washington.
It is, of course, impossible to understand how the Congress works without
understanding those who wield power in it. The chair of the House Armed
Services Committee selected by Nancy Pelosi and her caucus is the obscure
but powerful Rep. Adam Smith of Washington. He has a long record of
supporting pro-war policies, from the invasion of Iraq to numerous
Bush/Cheney war on terror transgressions to blocking reform of the NSA after
the Snowden reporting to denouncing the Obama administration's efforts to
reduce the troop presence in Afghanistan.
When Smith had a progressive challenger in 2018, who criticized him for this
militarism, the defense industry, as my colleague Lee Fang reported, poured
money into his coffers to ensure their loyal pro-war servant kept his perch
as chair of this crucial committee.
Armed Services Committee ranking member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., speaks
during a hearing on the FY2019 budget with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis,
left, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, and Under Secretary of
Defense (Comptroller) and Chief Financial Officer David L. Norquist, on
Capitol Hill, Thursday, April 12, 2018 in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex
Brandon)Adam Smith speaks during a hearing on the FY2019 budget on April 12,
2018, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Alex Brandon/AP
A similar episode occurred the same year when a progressive challenger
emerged to run against the former Marine and Iraq War veteran Jason Crow.
House Majority Leader Steney Hoyer, as Fang also revealed by publishing a
secret recording, tried to bully his opponent out of the race. Crow now
joins with Liz Cheney to continue the war in Afghanistan. Pro-war Democrats
wield all the power for military and foreign policy because that is who
House Democratic leadership selects.
When these committee members return to their blue districts, they talk
endlessly about topics such as the NRA, LGBTs, and reproductive rights -
issues on which many do little work and over which they wield little
influence - in order to manufacture brands for themselves as good, caring
progressives, which is how they are reelected over and over from very blue
districts. But as these little-discussed proceedings demonstrate, when they
return to Washington, what they really do is spend their time collaborating
with lobbyists for weapons manufacturers to ensure that as much taxpayer
money as possible is diverted away from social programs and into the coffers
of the "defense" industry.
There is a pocket of anti-war and anti-imperialism resistance on the
committee and in the broader Congress, particularly on the left and to some
extent on the isolationist right. But, as the House Armed Services Committee
hearing of last week proves, they are outnumbered by the Adam Smiths, Jason
Crows, and Liz Cheneys who work in bipartisan tandem to ensure their defeat
and maintain a path of endless war for the United States.
And it is impossible to overstate the central role which the concocted,
wildly exaggerated "Russia threat" plays in all of this. Over and over, the
pro-war committee members from both parties invoked the scary threat of
Moscow and the Kremlin to justify this bloated budget of imperialism and
aggression.
Having spent large amounts of time watching many hours of these committee
proceedings and speaking to several people with in-depth knowledge of the
committee, I decided it would be very worthwhile to devote this week's
SYSTEM UPDATE episode to showing how this committee works and what it did
last week so that some much-needed light is brought to these usually hidden
proceedings. We're very proud of the show we produced this week because it
fulfills the goal of providing in-depth examinations of complex but
extremely consequential matters that receive far less media attention than
they deserve.
The program can be viewed on the Intercept's YouTube channel or on the
player below:
