War can be profitable, especially for defense contractors

OPINION:

A version of this story appeared in the On Background newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive On Background delivered directly to your inbox each Friday.

In the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel, American politicians have lined up to see who can suggest the most aggressive response to the barbarity unleashed upon Israeli men, women and children.

That’s laudable. No one should accept or normalize war crimes like beheadings or the desecration of bodies.

Moreover, Israel has always been a sturdy ally, and Israel deserves our support. Indeed, the attacks — which were no doubt encouraged if not sponsored by the Iranians — were a conscious attempt to disrupt the trajectory in the Middle East toward peace and stability that has been carefully curated by American leaders for almost 50 years.

It also goes without saying that no one should try to profit from the war crimes perpetrated by Hamas. Similarly, no one should try to profit from Russian war crimes.

Unfortunately, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was careless enough to point out in recent remarks that “a significant portion of [funding to Ukraine is] being spent in the United States in 38 different states, replacing the weapons that we sent to Ukraine with more modern weapons. So, we’re rebuilding our industrial base.”

He’s probably right. War can be profitable, especially for defense contractors.

Just a few days before Mr. McConnell’s remarks, President Biden proposed combining spending — more than $100 billion in total — for the Ukrainians and the Israelis (and a token sum to defend our own border).

Maybe it seems old-fashioned, but given that Mr. McConnell’s remarks that made the subtle part obvious — that American companies and their lobbyists are cashing in from the war in Ukraine and now want to expand that profit center to a new war in the Middle East — perhaps it would have been better if Mr. Biden had waited a few days or even indefinitely postponed combining the funding into one big defense spending bonanza.

The United States has no plan to end the war in Ukraine. Nor does Israel have a plan — at least not one it has shared — as to what victory over Hamas looks like.

Israel does not particularly need the cash. It already has the largest military in the Middle East, except for Saudi Arabia. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, the United States has given it $130 billion in military assistance.

Asking American taxpayers to write more and bigger checks for either effort seems to be spending money under false pretenses, as well as asking them to make unwise open-ended commitments.

If you want to commit to killing people overseas indefinitely — for whatever reason — without a plan or even the intention of coming up with a plan to end that killing, the American people deserve a clean vote on that.

If you want to support or modernize or improve our defense industrial base, we should have a clean vote on that. Otherwise, all we are doing is supporting war profiteers for no apparent reason.

Finally, if you want to spend $100 billion on overseas causes, you should at least have the common courtesy to offset that spending by reducing spending elsewhere. Mr. McConnell has noted that defense contractors stand to make a wheelbarrow full of cash on Ukraine funding. Good for them.

Given all the great things that the war in Ukraine is doing for the military-industrial complex, how about if we reduce defense spending by $100 billion?

Don’t hold your breath.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times and was previously a deputy assistant for legislative affairs for former President Donald Trump.