News Release

Shutdown and Military Budget; Tillerson Calls for Perennial War on Syria

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Fox News headlines a story: “Immigration, military spending are key issues in bid to avert government shutdown.”

BuzzFeed reports: “Tillerson Calls For Indefinite U.S. Military Presence In Syria To Remove Assad.”

IVAN ELAND, ieland at independent.org, @Ivan_Eland
Eland is senior fellow and director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute. His books include Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy.

His pieces include “Trump should be fighting ISIS, not Syria,” written last year for CNN, in which he warned of continued involvement in Syria.

Eland also recently wrote the piece “Busting Upward the Military Budget,” for Consortium News, which states: “Of the $700 billion, about $640 billion is the Pentagon’s base budget and another $60 billion dollars is allocated to fight simultaneous wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. This whopping amount exceeds last year’s $619 billion, thus flouting the ‘sequestration’ spending caps in the 2011 Budget Control Act. …

“Apparently, when conservatives tout slimming down government, they don’t seem to think the Defense Department is part of the federal bureaucracy.

“The idea is preposterous that a country which alone accounts for about half the world’s defense budget needs more money to keep the readiness of its forces high and to rebuild a military that has been depleted by long, senseless wars in the Middle East and South Asia. The Defense Department is already slathered with over $600 billion a year and just needs to reallocate some of its funds to improve readiness and conduct rebuilding.”