David Stockman

If there was ever a moment that laid bare the utter stupidity and futility of Washington’s Empire First policy it surely is the smoking ruins of Syria that emerged last week. The latter was the desultory culmination of Washington’s 13-years-long effort to destroy the legitimate government of Syria on the grounds that Assad was a … Continue reading “A Case of the ‘Empire First’ Folly In Spades”

About 17 years ago the insufferable former general, Wesley Clark, reported on a talk he once had in the Pentagon: “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” Well, it took several … Continue reading “The Syrian Fiasco”

Well, you can say this much about the Donald’s off-the-wall pick of Fox’s weekend news commentator, Pete Hegseth, for Secretary of Defense: At least it wasn’t a hard-core neocon like House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala), Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) or the horrid Senator Tom Cott0n of Arkansas. Better a cheerleader for patriotism and … Continue reading “Trump’s Hegseth Caper and the Delusion of ‘Peace Through Strength’”

This is part 2 in a series.    Read part 1 here. The Indispensable Nation meme originates not in the universal condition of mankind and the nation-states into which it has been partitioned. Instead, it stems from an erroneous take on the one-time, flukish and historically aberrant circumstances of the 20th century that gave raise to giant totalitarian states in Hitler’s … Continue reading “Living With Wilson’s Folly Over 100 Years Later”

Like the case of Rome before it, Empire is bankrupting America. The true fiscal cost of the national security budget is now upwards of $1.3 trillion per year (counting veterans expense and international operations and aid), but there is no way to pay for it. That’s because the 78-million strong Baby Boomers are in the … Continue reading “The Folly of Empire and the Albatross of Debt”

Someone should tell the European ruling elites to take a long jump off a short pier. Their endless whining about the Ruuskies and Putin is just plain pathetic because – It’s not justified – Russia bears no hallmarks of an expansionist imperial power. The Russia-Ukraine conflict is none of western Europe’s business – since its … Continue reading “The Ukrainian Border War Folly”

This is part 3 of Washington DC: The Unaffordable and Unnecessary War Capital of the World.  Read part 1 and part 2. The pivot from Republic to Empire circa 1949 remains evident even today – fully one-third of a century after the Cold War ended and the Soviet Empire was swept into the dustbin of … Continue reading “The American Empire Is Crumbling Under Its Debt”

This is part 2 of Washington DC: The Unaffordable and Unnecessary War Capital of the World. Since WWII was arguably the nation’s last “good war”, an illuminating way to measure the folly that has unfolded during the seven decades since then is to unpack the cost of veterans disability compensation and medical care by cohort … Continue reading “The Staggering and Lingering Costs of American Wars”

Ultimately, there is no mystery as to why the Forever Wars go on endlessly. Or why at a time when Uncle Sam is hemorrhaging red ink a large bipartisan majority saw fit to authorize $95 billion of foreign aid boondoggles that do absolutely nothing for America’s homeland security. To wit, Washington has morphed into a … Continue reading “Washington DC: The Unaffordable and Unecessary War Capital of the World”

The clusterf*ck in the US House of Representatives this past weekend is surely the final straw. The dreadful grip of the UniParty on national security policy has finally produced sheer madness in a single package. To wit: $95 billion of foreign aid boondoggles that do not benefit America’s homeland security in the slightest. An extension … Continue reading “The UniParty’s Day of Infamy”