Portside

Reader Comments: Trump 2.0; Resistance 2.0; Thankful for Farmworkers; Another Woman Dies in Texas; U.S. Military Spending vs Other Top Countries; New Directions In Labor Politics; Cartoons; and more....

The United States has not seen a widespread nuclear disarmament movement since the early 1980s. A new one is desperately needed — but with a twist.

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan by leveraging concerns about women’s rights under Taliban rule. Women’s rights will never be achieved through military occupation and bombing.

The war in Afghanistan wasn’t a failure. It was a massive success — for those who made a fortune off it. Instead of a nation, what we really built were more than 500 military bases — and the personal fortunes of the people who supplied them.

Israel’s arms and security industry, an intrinsic part of the apartheid regime...is also shaping the coercive dimensions of states everywhere, bringing the politics and methodology of occupation to other countries and regimes.

"The Pentagon and the military industrial complex have been plagued by a massive amount of waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement for decades," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "That is absolutely unacceptable."

Maybe this time we can finally ask whether trying to prop up a dying empire actually makes us -- or indeed the world -- any safer. This is the best chance in a generation to start that conversation.

"There are, in fact, an impressive number of people who could legitimately fill those jobs and question the dominant perspective on foreign policy and national security."

Will fear, exaggerated threats, and pork-barrel politics be enough to keep the Pentagon and its contractors fat and happy, even as the urgent priorities of so many of the rest of us are starved of much-needed funding?

What, then, has been the actual influence of the military veterans now in Congress on this country's war policy?