Habits of a perennial hawk

Still shot from a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter attack on civilians in Baghdad made public by Wikileaks.

On December 17 with almost no public or media attention, the House of Representatives passed legislation that commits an additional $725 Billion in FY2011 to military and war spending. According to the National Priorities Project, Hawaii’s tax payers have already spent more than $3.6 Billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone since 2001.

Now, with virtually no debate, dissent or discussion, this additional sum was approved overwhelmingly by both Democrats and Republicans including Kauai's Congresswoman Rep. Mazie Hirono (Rep. Djou did not vote). Then, three days before Christmas, the Senate approved the bill unanimously. This vote makes it clear that the U.S. Government, together with an under-ambitious and under-funded media, unable or unwilling to report matters of grave importance, and a citizenry too distracted, dislocated, and disinterested to voice its concern, have successfully made funding America’s endless war programs and policies a non-issue.

In spite of the ongoing economic woes of our nation, this state and its local communities, Americans seem unable to make the connection between our government's insatiable appetite for war and military spending and the self-evisceration of our own society. Even as we continue to neglect our nation’s physical infrastructure, forfeit opportunities to advance and lead in innovative technologies that can face the challenges of climate change, energy and food crises, and poverty here in the U.S., our government shows itself to be a perennial hawk with both its left wing and right wing flapping in unison to ensure the country’s largest corporations, defense contractors, lobbyists and wealthiest minority are continuously grossly over-funded while we, working class tax payers, are left to fight over scraps, expected to accept less and less each year while even our so-called “progressive” representatives in Washington support unspeakable amounts of money for war without so much as a word of explanation to the people who voted for them.