by Colonel (Ret) Ann Wright

[Photo Credit: Luke McCall/US Navy]

The U.S. “defense” budget is out of control, unsustainable, and absent of accountability. Now, the U.S. House of Representatives has agreed to a 50% increase in the defense budget to $1.5 trillion. The Senate must approve it and will consider the massive DOD budget when it returns from the August recess.

The Pentagon cannot tell the American taxpayer where past mega-funding went, as it has been unable to pass a financial audit as required by law -- something every other department of the federal government can do- nor will it be able to handle a budget twice as big as the previous year’s.

The 2027 $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request represents more than $9,000 per individual taxpayer. Americans are tired of seeing our tax dollars spent on needless wars, bombing campaigns, and military excess while our own communities struggle with the costs of health care, childcare, education, and infrastructure.

While the Pentagon, State of Hawaii, and various think tanks claim that the large U.S. military in Hawaii puts around $10 billion annually into Hawaiʻi’s economy, according to a new, exhaustive 2026 study “The True Costs of the U.S. Military in Hawai’i,” the actual economic impact for DOD spending is $7.2 billion, nearly 30 percent less. The report states that “dollar for dollar, military spending creates approximately 5.3 jobs per $1 million invested, compared to 12.3 jobs from the same investment in health care, education, housing, food production or energy efficiency.”

While massive construction projects at Pearl Harbor, including a $3.4 billion construction of a nuclear submarine drydock and a new multi-billion-dollar project recently announced for construction of new piers on Ford Island near the USS Utah to accommodate nine Medium Landing Ship-class vessels, put federal funds into the Honolulu economy, they are fleeting and do not result in long-term economic development.

Five years ago, thousands of persons on Oahu were injured in the Navy’s Red Hill jet fuel leak into the island’s drinking aquifer. Since then, while civilians on Oahu are asked to limit water usage due to drought conditions, the Navy has wasted 5 billion gallons of filtered water instead of diverting the water from Red Hill to a useful purpose, such as irrigating the military’s numerous golf courses, athletic fields and parks.

The ongoing biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval war practice brought 30,000 military personnel from 30 countries for short-term spending in the Honolulu/Waikiki areas but at an environmental cost to the surrounding oceans that is incalculable, with fuel pollution, destruction and sinking of ships and sonar practice that harms marine mammals.

Oahu is definitely a DOD “sacrifice zone” as it is a prime target for potential adversaries, as it was in World War 2.

Presidential administrations and the corporate weapons makers exaggerate threats to our national security which justify a huge U.S. “defense” budget, larger than the next eight nations (most of whom are allies) in the world combined, while American citizens lack health care, childcare and other basic needs.

The defense industry’s lobbyists team up with U.S. politicians, who receive campaign financing from the industry, to draft the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which sets military policy, the expensive weaponry to be purchased, and the overall military budget.

The industry takes the financial windfall and puts it toward stock buybacks, which increase the share price, making the rich richer; dividend payments for shareholders; multi-million dollar annual compensation packages for corporate executives; and the continual political graft through campaign contributions that keep the system greased for the rich.

The principal beneficiaries of the administration and corporate lobbyists’ practice of vastly overstating foreign threats are the Pentagon and senior retired military and civilians who occupy it and secure lucrative post-retirement employment with the military, weapons industries, and the Congressional network of good ole boys.

Unfortunately, these bureaucrats lack the courage to speak of their professional concerns about the mega-budget. Instead, they stay silent to protect themselves.

Government employees, including military officers, are fired for their gender or race, and few who were fired dare speak up regarding the dangerous negative impact of these firings on morale, discipline, and readiness of our military forces.

And very few have spoken up when the U.S. supports genocide in Gaza, extrajudicial murders in the Caribbean, or attacks on the Uniformed Code of Military Justice.

Despite being easily the most defensible of any nation (with two friendly, stable nations to its north and south and oceans on its east and west), its military budget is larger than the next eight countries combined.

Retired five-star General and President Dwight Eisenhower warned ordinary citizens sixty-five years ago in 1961 in his farewell address about the dangers politicians and the military-industrial complex pose for our country:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The courage required today is not to defeat an enemy abroad, but to confront one at home—the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex—and reclaim a government that serves the American people rather than the interests of perpetual war.

We need an investment in the people—not profit. What would you fund instead of war? Take our poll now!

Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves. She was also a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the U.S. government in March 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq. She is a member of Veterans for Peace, World Beyond War, CODEPINK: Women for Peace and the Eisenhower Media Network.

She has lived the past 23 years in Honolulu.