Progressives are rightly mobilizing in force against war with Iran. Preventing another war is certainly imperative. In addition, we must recognize it is past time to end the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With a foreign policy that is increasingly synonymous with war, will profit-minded Pentagon contractors and a politicized military leadership win another year of pointless world domination, as if it’s all a big game of Risk?
Pentagon contractors saw their stock prices — and their CEOs’ stock holdings — spike after the Trump administration courted war by killing Iranian military commander Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. And those same contractors checked a major item off their Christmas lists in early December with the bipartisan passage of a military spending bill that provides another year of funding for endless war and another year of champagne-popping profits. The Pentagon spending deal was made just days before The Washington Post published a harrowing account of how military leaders covered up the failure of the war in Afghanistan, painting the clearest picture yet of how the military has misled the public for nearly 20 years.
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