http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/dems-f09.shtmlThe Bush administration’s fiscal year 2008 budget continues the administration’s policy of tax cuts for the rich and attacks on social programs for working and poor people, but its centerpiece is a massive increase in the military budget—not only for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also to fund a permanent increase in the size of the Army, Marines and Special Operations forces, and a host of major military procurement programs.
The budget includes $481.4 billion for the Department of Defense. This would be a 62 percent increase over 2001. When combined with a separate “Global War on Terror” supplemental request for $93.4 billion for fiscal year 2007 and $141.7 billion for 2008, the total military spending proposal soars to $716.5 billion, the highest military outlay in real terms since World War II.
The scale of military spending and the structural changes proposed clearly portend military actions for decades to come far beyond the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They reflect a foreign policy based on the use of military violence for the purpose of achieving US global hegemony.
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The general attitude of the Democrats to the budget was summed up in an exchange between Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz of Texas and General Pace. After expressing concerns that the budget did not provide sufficient funds for the replacement of equipment for units on the front lines, Ortiz asked, “Does this budget give you everything you need?” Pace replied in the affirmative.
At one point, after praising the new Africa Command as an “enormously important step,” Democrat Mark Udall of Colorado alluded to the massive anti-war sentiment expressed in the November midterm elections. “In a democracy,” he said, “there is a conflict between immediate passions and long-term strategic aims.”
Translated into plain English, this means the will of the people (“immediate passions”) will have absolutely no bearing on the pursuit of the “long-term strategic aims” of the American corporate-financial oligarchy.
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