US Military Spending Has Nothing to Do With Defense, It’s Offensive, Anti-War Activist Says

US anti-war activist and journalist David Swanson has accused Washington of warmongering, as its military spending “has been more than the next 9 or 10 or 11 countries on the list put together,” or more than about 150 countries put together, if looking from the bottom of the list.

David Swanson told Sputnik that members of the US Congress are responsible for escalating wars around the globe, with the US having by far the largest military spending. The peace activist accused US congressmen of lining their pockets on military purchases. Swanson suggested the idea of introducing a bill on cutting military spending every year by $100 million, but complained that it would never pass all voting stages. "It’s not defense spending, it’s an offensive spending," he stated, accusing pacifist members of Congress of simply passively voting "no" on military budget increases. According to the activist, such lawmakers show no initiative in pushing bills to cut spending.

His comments come following another military spending increase, raising it to $842 billion, proposed by the Biden administration on March 23. This is 13.4 percent higher than last year's request.

"When you put the United States and its military allies and hosts of its bases and its weapons customers together, well, it's a vast majority. It's way over three quarters of global military spending… You have Congress members openly bragging about how they're going to profit from the stock of weapons companies, just as they're escalating wars and absolutely shamelessly and refusing both parties in happy agreement to bring to the floor any bill that would ban stock ownership and trading by Congress members," Swanson explained.

The author of the book Leaving World War II Behind also accused the mainstream media of lying that all these wars and arms purchases are inevitable and people just can't do anything about it. He proposed various ways to change the status quo, calling for people to resist it and protest across the US to stop aggressive wars. The journalist suggested learning from the Europeans, “we can do what's being done to our shame and embarrassment in much greater numbers in Rome and London and Paris,” he argued.

"Well, we can use and promote independent and foreign media outlets. We can spread around shows like this one and others that allow voices that aren't allowed in the US corporate media. We can generate our own media. We can infiltrate the US corporate media with letters and phone calls and protest in lobbies. We can do what's being done to our shame and embarrassment in much greater numbers in Rome and London and Paris. We can we can protest US wars and military spending," the activist said, listing a few measures that could be used and calling on people to do what they can.

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