Breaking Points: How Defense Contractors, Congressmen Made Trillions Off War On Terror

Foreign policy was one of my top five issues in 2016.

The Syria strike is why I broke with Donald Trump in early 2017. It told me all that I needed to know about his judgment. He spent the rest of his presidency getting pushed around by other people in his orbit. In the case of assassinating Qasem Soleimani, it was Senate Republicans. In the case of invoking the Insurrection Act to crush the George Floyd riots, it was Gen. Mark Milley. In the case of withdrawing troops from Syria and Afghanistan, it was the Pentagon. In the case of anything having to do with Israel, Bibi Netanyahu always got his way. In the case of Russia, it was the Democrats and “intelligence community.”

I’m at the point now where I refuse to go along anymore with the usual conservative boilerplate about “rebuilding our military” or “supporting our troops” by passing ever larger military budgets and occupying foreign countries forever. In the Trump years, we learned that we can’t continue to keep feeding this monster and expect that we will have different foreign policy outcomes. “America First” in practice always meant putting the Empire First and Israel First. “Peace through strength” meant “maintain the status quo forever.” It meant the same old Reaganism and letting Mike Pompeo run the State Department, “Mad Dog” Mattis the Defense Department and John Bolton serving as Trump’s National Security Advisor.

I don’t support this bloodsucking parasite. Period. At a minimum, we need to drastically cut the military budget, abolish the “intelligence community,” dismantle the American Empire and close its overseas bases. We would better off without all of these retired generals shilling for defense contractors.