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The first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration have come and gone. While somewhat exaggerated, that milestone is normally considered the honeymoon period for any new president. Buoyed by a recent election triumph and inauguration, he’s expected to be at the peak of his power when it comes to advancing the biggest, boldest items on his agenda.
Antiwar.com Original
Originally posted at TomDispatch.
Strange, isn’t it? Our secretary of state emphatically claims that China has been acting “more aggressively abroad” and behaving “increasingly in adversarial ways.” No, he insists, we’re not exactly at the edge of a new cold war or planning, in the style of the last century, to “contain China.” All this country is doing is “uphold[ing] this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to. Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we’re going to stand up and and defend it.” Ah, you remember that “rules-based order,” don’t you? The one this country has sponsored in this
At $750 billion-plus, the Biden administration’s proposed budget for the Pentagon plus work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy is at one of the highest levels since World War II – far higher than the peaks of the Korean and Vietnam wars and the Reagan buildup of the 1980s.
The dirty little secrets of the Pentagon in the Biden era (DoD photo by Lisa Ferdinando)
President Joe Biden listens as Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks to Department of Defense personnel, with Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 2021.
TomDispatchMay 11, 2021
The first 100 days of President Joe Biden s administration have come and gone. While somewhat exaggerated, that milestone is normally considered the honeymoon period for any new president. Buoyed by a recent election triumph and inauguration, he s expected to be at the peak of his power when it comes to advancing the biggest, boldest items on his agenda.
NationofChange
Joe Biden s first 100 days were a Pentagon prize.
The first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration have come and gone. While somewhat exaggerated, that milestone is normally considered the honeymoon period for any new president. Buoyed by a recent election triumph and inauguration, he’s expected to be at the peak of his power when it comes to advancing the biggest, boldest items on his agenda.
And indeed, as far as, say, infrastructure or pandemic vaccination goals, Biden has delivered in a major way. Blindly funding the Pentagon and its priorities in the stratospheric fashion that’s become the essence of Washington has, however, proven another matter entirely. One hundred days later and it’s remarkable how little has changed when it comes to pouring money into this country’s vast military infrastructure and the wars, ongoing or imagined, that accompany it.