Articles by Phyllis Bennis

Source: The Nation

As the president-elect promises to increase military spending, we must reflect on what comes with war.

About 54 cents of every discretionary dollar in the federal budget goes to the military. And that’s been true for a very long time. Despite his claimed opposition to current wars, President-elect Donald Trump has promised to end limits on Pentagon spending, increase the size of the US military, and even to expand the US nuclear arsenal. Military budgets will likely go up over the next four years, not down.

Now more than ever it is important for us to remember what past wars have cost—all the costs. George W. Bush’s Iraq War continues today, though US military involvement is different and it’s morphed into the “global war on terror.” And the costs continue to rise. read more

Source: The Nation

The left is profoundly divided over the conflict, but we should at least agree on a set of principles to end it.

We need a powerful movement demanding an end to the war in Syria. The United States and to some extent the global antiwar movements remain largely paralyzed. There are some campaigns responding to specific congressional and other war moves, with some particularly good work against US support for Saudi Arabia. But as a movement, we seem unable to sort through the complexity of the multi-layered wars raging across Syria, and unable to respond to our internal divisions to create the kind of powerful movement we need to challenge the escalating conflict. read more