A Theft from The Poor

Former President Dwight Eisenhower warned decades ago of the “potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power” implicit in a permanent military industrial establishment. He described high levels of arms spending as “a theft from those who hunger and are not fed” amid an ever-present threat of war, with “humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” His words of caution were ignored as military spending continued to rise and Washington found itself mired in the quagmire of Vietnam and now in endless war in the greater Middle East.

Martin Luther King, Jr. saw the Vietnam War as an enemy of the poor and opposed it as such. The government would never invest the necessary funds to help those in need, he said, as long as Vietnam continued to draw people and skills and money like “some demonic destructive suction tube.” King spoke of the structural linkages of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism, “the triple evils” he called them. He gave moral meaning to his analysis when he famously said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

David Cortright. “The US National Budget is a Theft from the Poor.” Keough School of Global Affairs. February 23, 2021.