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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://theintercept.com/2020/07/09/how-the-house-armed-services-committee-in-the-middle-of-a-pandemic-approved-a-huge-military-budget-and-more-war-in-afghanistan/">theintercept.com</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">How the House Armed Services Committee, in the Middle of a Pandemic, Approved a Huge Military Budget and More War in Afghanistan</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Glenn Greenwald - July 9, 2020<a href="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/07/AP_19015567103352.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90"><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/07/AP_19015567103352-1024x683.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90" alt="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)" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="461" height="307"></a></div></div><div class="gmail-content"><div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><div><div><p class="gmail-caption">Rep.
Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. smiles as she arrives for a news conference on
Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019 in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex
Brandon)</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
AP</p></div></div><div><p><u>While the country is subsumed</u> 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 <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/house-democrats-working-with-liz-cheney-restrict-trumps-planned-withdrawal-of-troops-from-afghanistan-and-germany/">was approved last week</a>
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.</p>
<p>As we <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/house-democrats-working-with-liz-cheney-restrict-trumps-planned-withdrawal-of-troops-from-afghanistan-and-germany/">reported last week</a>,
pro-war and militaristic Democrats on the Committee joined with GOP
Congresswoman 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-AZ) and Cheney which blocked the White House’s plan to
remove 10,000 troop stationed in Germany.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/01/inf-donald-trump-confirms-us-withdrawal-nuclear-treaty">withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)</a>
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.</p></div><div><div><p><a href="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/07/rent.png?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90"><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/07/rent-440x440.png?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90" alt="" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="440" height="440"></a></p><p class="gmail-caption">NPR website</p></div></div><div><p>Perhaps most remarkable is the amount of the military budget itself. It is <a href="https://www.globalfirepower.com/defense-spending-budget.asp">three times more</a>
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 <em>combined</em> 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 <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/05/01/848247228/rent-is-due-today-but-millions-of-americans-wont-be-paying">struggle even to pay their rent</a>.</p>
<p>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 <em>Liz Cheney</em> 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?</p>
<p>These are questions that are rarely examined in media venues. News
sites, op-ed pages and especially twenty-four 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>In reporting on the approval of this military budget last week, I watched all <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbwU7NXt0ng">fourteen</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z16SPe_63ww&">hours</a>
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.</p>
<p>It is, of course, impossible to understand how the Congress works
without understanding those who wield power in it. The Chairman 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.</p>
<p>When Chairman Smith had a progressive challenger in 2018, who criticized him for this militarism, the defense industry, as my <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/11/04/adam-smith-sarah-smith-military-affairs-challenged-over-pro-war-votes-support-from-defense-lobby/?comments=1">colleague Lee Fang reported</a>, poured money into his coffers to ensure their loyal pro-war servant kept his perch as Chair of this crucial Committee.</p></div><div><div><p><a href="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2018/11/AP_18102570275311_small-1541185766-e1541185960449.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90"><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2018/11/AP_18102570275311_small-1541185766-e1541185960449-1024x512.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90" alt="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)" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="461" height="231"></a></p><p class="gmail-caption">Adam Smith speaks during a hearing on the FY2019 budget on April 12, 2018, in Washington, D.C.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Photo: Alex Brandon/AP</p></div></div><div><p>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, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/04/26/steny-hoyer-audio-levi-tillemann/">tried to bully</a>
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.</p>
<p>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 re-elected 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.</p>
<p>There is a pocket of anti-war and anti-imperalism 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The program can be viewed on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejqYrzEX14E&feature=youtu.be">the Intercept’s YouTube channel</a> or on the player below:</p></div></div></div></div>
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