Weapon sales unite Washington’s warring political parties

While they can’t agree on much else, everyone in Washington seems committed to enriching military contractors at the cost of human rights and lives

Yesterday, a remarkable weekend session in Congress saw Democrats and Republicans finding common cause as they passed a military spending bill that will lavish over $61 billion on weapons contractors supplying Ukraine, as well as Israel and other allies, such as Taiwan. The House passage of this bill is significant for many reasons.

Not long before, two recent resignations among House Republicans had tipped the House closer to partisan equipoise, at the same time that the far right flank of the GOP mounted yet another attack on a Republican Speaker of the House in retaliation for his cooperation with Democrats.

I wrote last year that Johnson’s ascension to the Speakership would portend only escalating chaos, and also that weapons sales are the one thing that consistently bring together Democrats and Republicans despite their seemingly constant acrimony.

I really do wish I were proven wrong more often.

The surveillance law recently extended by Congress and signed into law by Biden was originally passed in the 1970s to prohibit precisely the activities that it has since been amended to allow.

Washington’s dedication to militarism

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson received support from both Republicans and Democrats to pass the military spending bill, which over 110 Republicans—a majority of the GOP caucus—opposed. The bipartisan dedication to war and weapons sales that enabled that vote is Washington’s most consistent pattern.

This disturbing collusion of supposedly opposed political parties not only fleeces the American public and degrades human rights around the world, but also undermines national and global security. The war in Ukraine has been a boondoggle since well before it ever started, prompted by a 2014 coup supported by Washington that put in place a right wing Ukrainian government.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was far from unprovoked. In fact, it was effectively invited by NATO’s attempted eastward expansion, which crucially violates a “cascade of assurances” made to Russian leaders dating back to 1990.

In that context, continuing to arm Ukraine is more similar to the CIA’s long and disturbing pattern of funding and training right wing terrorists than anything resembling support for a legitimate government defending itself from international aggression. Expanding the time horizon beyond the news cycle reveals that, as has often proven the case, it is Washington initiating aggression in violation of international law.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Nothing about that advances security. Instead, Ukraine and Russia have each lost roughly half a million lives, while Washington continues to treat Ukrainians as expendable “cannon fodder” in the service of advancing Washington’s geopolitical interests. Of course, Ukrainian leaders have welcomed Washington’s support, while reports of their battlefield progress and prospects have tended to paper over a more harsh reality. 

Militarism undermining the rights of Americans, not just lives abroad

Beyond the military spending advanced by the House this weekend, the corporate political parties in Washington also recently came together to extend and expand unconstitutional government spying in spite of bipartisan rhetoric about respecting constitutional rights.

I’ve dedicated decades of my life to challenging the mass surveillance apparatus, starting years before the Snowden revelations proved to the world that the longstanding concerns of advocates were more well founded than gullible journalists—spoonfed lies by self-serving government sources and tech companies profiting from government contracts—were willing to admit.

The surveillance law recently extended by Congress and signed into law by Biden was originally passed in the 1970s to prohibit precisely the activities that it has since been amended—first in 2009, and then again in the past few weeks—to allow.

Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1987 with good reason: a multiyear congressional investigation in the 1970s discovered wanton lawlessness across agencies including the FBI, CIA, and Defense Department. Yet, in the years since then, particularly in the wake of the 9-11 attacks of 2001, Washington has embraced a vision of authoritarian government omniscience surrounding communication, with devastating consequences for freedom of expression, journalism, and public transparency.

Ironically, despite Trump taking public aim at the intelligence agencies, many of his supporters in Congress voted to extend and expand Section 702, empowering the very same agencies that he claims are marginalizing Americans.

Ironically, so did many Democrats in Congress, even while braying about the threat to democracy that Trump represents should he regain the White House and recognizing Biden’s self-inflicted political wounds stemming from his support for the continuing Israeli genocide in Gaza.

The hypocrisy of these figures—on both sides of the partisan aisle—can not possibly be overstated.

Bipartisan attacks on basic constitutional rights

Despite the opposition to military spending by some Republicans in Congress, it would be a mistake to think that the party meaningfully opposes militarism, or the authoritarianism it invites. In fact, the very same ranks of Republican policymakers have also embraced radical assaults on basic constitutional rights.

And Democrats have joined them.

For instance, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) recently encouraged vigilante violence towards protesters, just weeks after former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) invited FBI investigations of her political critics.

Paid subscribers can read a further section about how GOP infighting offers theater more compelling than any productions on either Broadway or Hollywood.