This is What Happens When Neocons Run the Show

By Michael Rectenwald, Special to The Kennedy Beacon

Hurricane Helene has severely impacted several states, including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. At least 137 fatalities have been reported and hundreds are missing across six states. The death toll is sure to rise, as Asheville, NC, remains under water and inaccessible. More than two million homes and businesses across the U.S. Southeast are without power and communication outages remain widespread, with Helene causing an estimated $100 billion in damages.

President Biden signaled that he expects to receive an emergency spending package from Congress. However, according to Congressional aides and House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, Congress is unlikely to return from its pre-election break to advance a bill.

Meanwhile, over the past week alone, the Biden-Harris administration approved military aid packages for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan totaling over 17 billion dollars—with $8.7 billion earmarked for Israel, $8 billion for Ukraine, and $567 million for Taiwan.

This is what happens when the neocons hold our country’s purse strings. Quick refresher: according to the Cambridge Dictionary, political neocons believe that their country (in this case, America) “should use its military power to become involved with or try to control problems in other countries.” In many parts of the world, this is precisely what the U.S. under a Biden-Harris regime has been doing.

We are told that the new aid for Ukraine comes as part of the 95 billion-dollar package bundled for the same three recipients of U.S. foreign military aid in February 2024, $61 billion of which was set aside for Ukraine. But it appears to add $8.7 billion to the $14 billion already appropriated for Israel. And it comes as an addition to the cost of maintaining U.S. ships, troops, and fighter jets deployed to the Middle East. The Pentagon announced on Monday that it would also send more troops and fighter jets, only one day after Biden told reporters that no more U.S. troops would be sent.

The $8 billion to be sent to Ukraine, we are told, had already been approved prior to the devastation wreaked by Helene, but the timing of the aid approval could not have been worse. And Biden’s apparent insouciance has infuriated critics, who noted that he remained at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach during the height of the crisis over the weekend.

Biden’s own remarks have only added fuel to the fire. When asked by a reporter on Monday, September 30, “Are there any more resources the federal government could be giving them [Helene’s victims]?,” the first word out of Biden’s mouth was “No.”

In light of the sluggish response to Helene, such foreign military aid represents the complete betrayal of American taxpayers, who struggle with crushing inflation, record credit card debt, an overwhelming influx of immigrants, rampant crime, and now the wreckage from a major hurricane. Let us not forget that FEMA allocated a mere three billion dollars for the victims of the wildfires in Maui, despite the total destruction of the historic town of Lahaina. 

Furthermore, the reckless foreign military spending puts the world at risk for World War III, even a nuclear conflagration. When a North Korean official sounds more reasonable than your own “leaders,” then you should recognize that your foreign military aid policy has gone off the rails.

Make no mistake, this deficit foreign military spending comes from fiat money generated by the Federal Reserve and loaned to the federal government at interest. Thus, it exacerbates inflation, increases the national debt, and adds to the tax burden of American taxpayers. If not for the unfettered creation of fiat currency out of thin air, this outsized military spending for foreign nations would be impossible.

And how is this money being spent?

The war in Ukraine is most likely a lost cause for NATO and “the West.” Even the Pentagon finally admitted that the war will only end with negotiations, not with a Ukrainian victory. That’s after the U.S. has forked over 175 billion dollars to Ukraine in military and other aid. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died, and millions more have become refugees.

The other victim of the wars is the American people. Although we have not been bombed out of our homes, our country is in tatters. We are robbed endlessly for wars and proxy wars. Whatever the U.S. government is supposed to do, namely, serve the interests of its people, it does the opposite. It serves the supposed interests of other nations. The economic policy of the United States is America Last. 

If U.S. foreign policy was not run by neocons, America would be able to adequately address domestic crises and the world would be more prosperous and stable.

 Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., is a Former Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale College and Former Professor of Liberal Studies and Global Studies at New York University. At the 2024 Libertarian Party convention, Rectenwald came in second behind Chase Oliver for the Libertarian nomination for U.S. president. 

*Special thanks to Lori Price of CLG News for sourcing.