Show Me the Money: A Loutish Administration Confronts a Craven Congress
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Louts pressing false claims, faux principled types seeking to score successes against clearly useless targets. Jules Hurst, in trying to discharge the duties of the comptroller, had some news for members of the House Armed Services Committee: the Iran War had drawn $25 billion from the coffers of Freedom Land which, for the budget wags, amount to the entire budget of NASA for a year. It was further explained that most of that coin went on munitions. The top Democrat on the Committee, Rep. Adam Smith, exuded relief. “I am glad you answered that question. Because we’ve been asking for a hell of a long time, and no one’s given us the number.”
This fun bit of arithmetic did little to clear any cobwebs. A figure of $11.3 billion had been swerving in and out of the Pentagon as a measure of the first six days of the war, suggesting that the assessment for the committee was just some spreadsheet jigging. The truth may well lie in another country, as it often is when it comes to defence matters.
Whatever he might have thought of the war so far (dare one ask?), the begging bowl antics of the US Secretary of Defense (War) Pete Hegseth were evident in fronting up to the House Armed Services Committee. This is budget time, and no other power on Planet Earth spends on its armed forces like the United States. When trying to make a case before what might be loosely called representatives of the people of the US imperium, one must, at least, make an effort. In testifying in support for the administration’s proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 budget for the Pentagon, some $1.5 trillion was advised. In his recorded statement, Hegseth had the following justification: “The 1.5 trillion budget will ensure that the United States continues to maintain the world’s most powerful and capable military as we grapple with an increasingly complex threat environment across multiple theaters.” There might come a time when such cretinous terms as “complex threat environment” are defined, but don’t count on it.
The projects mentioned are toy fripperies of enormous cost. They include, for instance, the Golden Dome For America, a white elephant anti-missile shield promising more perforation than solid cover. Then there is the celebrated “revitalization” of the “Defense Industrial Base in general and our shipbuilding, aviation, and drones in particular. We are investing in the next-generation F-47, and shaping end strength to match the evolving threats faced by our Nation.” It would be far better were Hegseth to tinker with the illiteracies and simply suggest that the US imperium, more than anything else, is doing its best to evolve into a satisfyingly terrific threat of its own, to ally or foe alike.
The Iran War should have been splashed across Hegseth’s official submission (the country is only mentioned in passing as a way of scolding NATO allies who “could not be relied upon to support our nations operations against” it). The conflict, currently in the purgatory of a ceasefire, got an airing in the verbal tussling. “As we sit here today, Iran’s nuclear program is exactly what it was before this war started,” posed Smith. “They have not lost their capacity to inflict pain. They still have a ballistic missile program. They’re still able to blockade the Strait of Hormuz.”
Such observations did not interest Hegseth. He preferred to see the enemy within. “The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans.” Rep. John Garamendi of California received a smiting after using such forbidden terms as “quagmire” when referring to the conflict, further adding that the intervention had presented a “political and economic disaster at every level.” These points were so dully obvious as to let go, but Hegseth was all snarls. “You call it a quagmire, handling propaganda to our enemies?” he choked in patriotic phlegm. “Shame on you for that statement.”
Hegseth’s mental frontiers remain those of Fox News, where he foraged in the dustbins and trash reserves of speculative copy and heated news cycles, research and evidence being a secondary matter. The US campaign in Iran, lacking shape, form and completion, was still “an astounding success”. There was little prospect that this conflict would, unlike those pursued foolishly by previous administrations, “go on for years and decades.” “Don’t say,” he growled in response to the lawmakers, “‘I support the troops on the one hand, and then a two-month mission is a quagmire’… Who are you cheering here? Who you pulling for?” Certain questions were scoffingly dismissed as “clickbait” moments.
The Democrats on the committee were prodded into action, and no more impressive for that fact. “You reserve more words and more vitriol to condemn Democrats than you did for [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin combined,” cried Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania. “It’s pretty telling to me that you decided to use your words and your time for that.” Rep. Salud Carbajal of California remarked that Hegseth was “the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to incompetence.” Yes, but what of it?
Hegseth is exquisitely correct on all three assumptions on the Democrats, though not for the reasons he assumes. They have been unpardonably reckless, unforgivably feckless and reliably defeatist at virtually every turn – when it comes to responding to the Trump phenomenon. The Republic withers in crude neglect, but there is always time for gossip. Rep. Sara Jacobs of California took that least advisable of lines in avoiding the budget demands and focusing on Trump’s mental faculties, seeking grist for the rumour mill. The answer was accordingly tailored: the current commander-in-chief was, according to Hegseth, the “sharpest” and most “insightful” the Republic had had for generations. The Democrats, on the other hand, could boast the mentally depleted mind of former President Joe Biden and the clandestine hospitalisation of the previous Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin.
The Democrats, at the very least, can refuse to yield to the extortionate, lunatic demands made by Hegseth and the Pentagon for military pursuits best unmade and never undertaken. The business of the United States is business, and it follows, money. Cut the money supply, and, at the very least, leave the war mongers grumpy. Along the way, Trump’s opponents might find their mislaid backbones.
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