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Defense Budget Bloated

By VVAW

The soon-to-be approved defense budget is bursting at the seams--a record $100.1 billion, a sum that is, for the average person, hard to comprehend. The cutbacks in the same overall budget are easily understood though. Education, health, food stamps, and even a recent veto of a national daycare plan for working parents, point to one overwhelming fact. The US ruling class is actively pushing and building for another war. They want the working class to "tighten out belts" and foot the bills while they pile up the profits from a war economy.

Behind all this "concern" about national defense is the hard fact that the US and the Soviet Union are in a neck and neck battle to see who will control the world's markets and resources. Since the defeat in Vietnam, the US capitalists have been losing their grip on the world while the rulers of the Soviet Union, capitalists themselves, are putting the moves on one country after another. Extending the and of "friendship and socialism" the USSR, no longer a socialist country, is holding the club of exploitation and economic domination behind their backs, ready to bring it down on any country that gets out of line with them.

The question of whether the US is #1 or #2 in the world militarily has taken up a good deal of time in the media lately, especially with all the electioneering going on. Time after time we're reminded that the Soviet Union is armed to the teeth and growing more "superior" every day. But number one or two, it's clear that both superpowers are dedicated to ripping off whatever they can from other countries around the world. And in the US there's a good reason why the rulers want to whip up enthusiasm for war.

War has always been a prime mover of the US economy. Factories crank up production, politicians promise more jobs and better days ahead, workers bust their backs and send their children off to war, and the profits soar--right into the pockets of the rich. They get the big big bucks, and the people get the shaft. All because they have to expand their markets, their resources, their potential workers in other countries; it's that or collapse.

The defense budget jump, the massive cutbacks in social programs, the election year politicians spreading war hysteria for the rich who line their pockets--all these factors cry out that the country is gearing up for war. As veterans, we've seen this song and dance before, and for many people the bitterness and stench of Vietnam are still with us. Being used and then discarded taught us that we'll be damned if we sit by and see our families be used up in anther war for profit.

If the rich of the US and the rulers of the USSR want another war, let them carve each other up. The working people of both countries will be better off without them. We say, "We Won't Fight Another Rich Man's War."