In late 1861, Union soldiers in Bloomfield, Missouri, found the local newspaper’s office empty and decided to put it to good use. Stars and Stripes covered the activities of the three Illinois regiments. Their commander in chief, of course, was US president Abraham Lincoln.

Over time, the paper gained direct funding from the military, but with supposed “editorial independence,” and a mission “to provide first-hand reporting from bases around the world and unbiased, credible news to America’s military.” Those who worked in uniform abroad through two world wars and after, often not in a position to visit a newspaper stand or receive news via TV or radio, could read Stars and Stripes (I read it in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm).

On August 21, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth fired the paper’s publisher, editor-in-chief, and a top reporter after they publicly commented on Department of Defense “interference” with the newspaper’s “independence.”

Once again, Abraham Lincoln — or at least the aircraft carrier named for him — played a central role as Hegseth whined over the paper’s coverage of complaints from deployed sailors’ families concerning the material and mental health situation aboard that vessel.

The firings aren’t really as sudden as they might seem to those not following closely over time.

The first Trump administration floated a plan to shutter Stars and Stripes, but backed down after a “bipartisan” backlash. With Hegseth at the helm in Trump’s second time around, DoD rages frequently against “woke distractions” in its reportage, firing its ombudsman in May for noticing that attempts to change it into a “morale booster” instead of a news outlet are “contrary to the news organization’s mission.”

So, here’s the thing: Who pays the piper, calls the tune.

Stars and Stripes is largely funded by, and its operations and distribution are almost completely enabled by, the US government. “Editorial independence” may sound like a wonderful idea, but there’s always been a leash. We’re just watching the leash get shorter.

Thankfully, the collar at the end of that leash only strangles Stars and Stripes.

These days, even troops aboard ships at sea and at remote firebases in hostile territory have far greater contact with the outside world, most of the time, than even civilians at home enjoyed 50, let alone 150, years ago.

Cell phones. Email. Web access. Zoom. It’s not 100% there, 100% of the time, but neither was Stars and Stripes.

Pete Hegseth can cry if he wants to. He can throw himself on the floor and threaten to hold his breath until he turns blue. The troops will get still their news, whether he likes it or not. They’ll get the kind of coverage they want to get, not just the kind he wants them to get.

And because all that technology runs two-way, they can also REPORT the news they want covered without consulting him first as he obviously expects Stars and Stripes to.

The military news coverage, and consumption, of the future will look a lot more like WikiLeaks than like Stars and Stripes.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“Our national debt just hit 40 TRILLION DOLLARS!” some guy tweeted on August 19. “This is bad. Congress needs to get spending under control and BALANCE THE BUDGET. Americans deserve better.”

That does sound like a good idea. But coming from US Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), it’s just hot air.

A “Readers added context they thought people might want to know”  below the tweet informs us that “Scott voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act which raised the statutory debt limit by $5 trillion and is projected by CBO to increase deficits by $3.4 trillion over 10 years.”

That vote is not an outlier.

Over the course of Scott’s relatively short career in the US Senate — he took office in 2019 and is now in his second term — he’s voted for trillions of dollars in deficit spending, especially military spending.

Since Scott took office, the US government’s debt has gone from $16 trillion to $40 trillion.

His party has controlled the US Senate throughout his tenure, and the House of Representatives for about half of that tenure.

Not one thin dime gets borrowed or spent unless the both the House and Senate pass a bill, and the margins are often close enough that one or two votes — including Scott’s — decide the outcome.

Scott’s perennial “someone should do something!” tweets on the debt might be good politics, but even a cursory look at his actions demonstrates that he’s someone NOT doing something.

If he was serious on the subject, he’d introduce a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution, and predicate all his future votes on whether or not the Senate and House have approved that amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. If they haven’t, he votes against spending, full stop.

Which, frankly, would be better politics than all the whining about a problem he continually chooses to be part of.

Let’s consider the first three words of his latest tweet: “Our national debt.”

“Our?”

If he means the debt run up by the US House of Representative, US Senate, and president, well, yes, there’s the problem.

But in reality, he’s using that word in an attempt to rope the rest of us into responsibility for his poor financial decisions.

He and 535 other politicians borrowed that money. You didn’t. I didn’t. Nor did we co-sign his loan applications.

It’s not “our” debt, even though he’s promised his creditors to beat the payments on it out of us in the future.

Yes, we’ll suffer when — not if — the US government defaults. And Rick Scott will have been one of the authors of our pain. But that doesn’t make it “ours.”

Any member of Congress who postures about the “national debt,” but pretends it’s “our debt” while constantly voting to increase that debt and failing to support — in action, not just words — a balanced budget amendment is gaslighting his or her constituents.

I’m not optimistic about the political future, but conditioning your votes on a balanced budget amendment sponsorship/support pledge from the candidates isn’t a terrible idea.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“President Donald Trump’s decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea,” Matthew Lee and Ben Finley write for the Associated Press, “does not just slight a longtime ally but raises broader concerns about the security interests of the United States in Asia and elsewhere.”

Trump’s reason for supposedly, and in unspecified ways, downsizing the annual “Ulchi Freedom Shield” exercise is that South Korea has been insufficiently supportive of his  war against Iran. That doesn’t seem like a very good reason … but there ARE good reasons, and it’s a tiny move in the correct direction of drawing down US military entanglement on the Korean Peninsula.

The history, in brief:

After World War 2, Korea — which had been occupied by the Japanese — was split into two states. In the north, a Soviet/Chinese-backed communist regime under Kim Il Sung held power, while the south  was ruled by a US-backed  fascist regime under Syngman Rhee. Each side wanted to invade, conquer, annex, and absorb the other’s territory, but the US held Rhee back from doing so and Kim beat him to the punch.

The resulting war technically goes on to this very day, although it’s been in a tense state of ceasefire since 1953. More than 35,000 American troops, hundreds of thousands of South Korean, North Korean, Chinese, and Soviet soldiers, and millions of civilians died to reach that stalemate.

North Korea remains “communist” in name and pageantry while actually embodying absolute , quasi-religious monarchy under the Kim dynasty’s third generation.

South Korea is theoretically a “democracy,” but mostly just a big state capitalist enterprise operating under military protection from, and advantageous trade deals with, the US . The US spends $5-6 billion per year to support 80 military bases and 27,000 deployed US troops, and has now been doing that much or more for 80 years.

Interestingly, the AP story quotes Dan Fried, an official in George W. Bush’s administration, to the effect that “there is no American interest I can see” in reducing US military commitments to South Korea.

But in 2004, Bush himself proposed a much bolder plan than small cuts to joint military exercises. He wanted, he announced, to completely withdraw US forces from the Korean peninsula over the course of ten years.

Granted, Bush made that proposal under duress after rushing to New Mexico when his campaign learned that Libertarian Michael Badnarik was polling at 5% in the state, that Democrat John Kerry had scheduled a speech of his own there, and that New Mexico’s electoral votes might hang in the balance. He needed an olive branch to the growing anti-war movement, and quickly dropped the plan once he was re-elected.

But it was a good idea then, and it’s a great idea now.

American taxpayers have been throwing blood and treasure at South Korea for most of a century even as it has become an economic powerhouse that competes with US producers, and that commitment also feeds into US entanglement in every regional argument involving not just the Koreas, but China, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, etc. It’s a raw deal for America.

South Korea possesses abundant means to provide for its own defense , especially since Kim Jong-Un  certainly understands that even success at military conquest of a population twice the size of the one he already rules would eventually bring his own regime down.

I hope that President Trump will continue on, and accelerate ambitiously along, this course. The US armed forces should stand down in South Korea. Whether the South Korean regime stands up in their place, and if so in what ways, isn’t a matter for the US regime to decide. Bring the troops home.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY