Hegseth isn't the architect of this conflict - that might be Benjamin Netanyahu - but he's the chief cheerleader, the face of the chaos and carnage. He's been unrepentant about the U.S. blowing up an Iranian school, and he refused to walk back a statement that the American military would allow 'no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.'
Hegseth stated, 'A quagmire my generation served in a quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan. Years and years of nebulous missions and utopian national building that led us to nothing.'
Trump's proposed military budget would mean a spectacular jump; it would be 42% above this year's budget and two-thirds bigger than Joe Biden's last Pentagon budget.
While he has been more reluctant than some presidents to put US troops in harm's way, Trump has dismissed checks on his use of military force, saying, "We're just gonna kill people." As US forces continue to engage in illegal attacks on boats in the Caribbean and with the growing threat of direct US military intervention in Venezuela, you might be wondering, "What happened to Trump's promises to avoid foreign military entanglements?"
The recently released budget documents offer new insight into the extent of the US military's defense of Israel and also the weapons that American forces used during their extensive bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities in June. One document requests $498.265 million in funding to replace the US Army's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile interceptors that were "expended in support of Israel."
"Over the last 60 years, the United States has spent more than $350 billion on efforts to develop a defense against nuclear-armed ICBMs. This effort has been plagued by false starts and failures, and none have yet been demonstrated to be effective against a real-world threat... Missile defenses are not a useful or long-term strategy for keeping the U.S. safe from nuclear weapons."
