“Military leaders have raised serious concerns about the Trump administration’s forthcoming defense strategy,” the Washington Post reports. “The critiques from multiple top officers … come as [US defense secretary Pete] Hegseth reorders U.S. military priorities — centering the Pentagon on perceived threats to the homeland, narrowing U.S. competition with China, and downplaying America’s role in Europe and Africa.”

I’m writing this on the morning of, and you’ll presumably read it after, a meeting Hegseth and Trump have called with the US military’s general and flag officers, supposedly to harangue them about something called the “warrior ethos,” which mostly seems to involve endorsing, and unquestioningly executing orders to commit, war crimes rather than prosecuting such crimes.

Hopefully the meeting will instead be dedicated to explaining three facts of reality to those generals and admirals.

Fact #1:  Any “national defense strategy” that’s actually about national defense would indeed involve “centering the Pentagon on perceived threats to the homeland, narrowing U.S. competition with China, and downplaying America’s role in Europe and Africa.”

Fact #2: In a time of massive government deficits and debt, re-centering “national defense strategy” on, you know, “national defense” instead of constant, dangerous, and expensive military adventurism around the globe makes financial sense. Current US “defense” spending  officially hovers at just below, and likely actually exceeds, $1 trillion per year. Cutting that by 80-90% would still provide a robust “national defense,” while reducing the economic damage government spending in general does to the people living in the nation in question.

Fact #3: The military is the employee, not the employer. It’s not a general’s or an admiral’s job to define the overall “national defense strategy.” It’s a general or admiral’s job to execute the lawful orders he’s given by the civilian government.

For the most part, Trump, Hegseth, and US military leaders openly disdain the “lawful” part of Fact #3 … but the proposed “national defense strategy,” if it’s as described, would tend to reduce opportunities for lawless military conduct. Fewer troops in fewer places would have fewer opportunities to commit (or be ordered to commit) war crimes.

Unfortunately, it’s probably not as described. We almost certainly won’t see the cuts in military spending or the reductions in foreign adventurism the description implies.

“Mission inflation” lobbying from both military commanders and corporate welfare queens dependent on large weapons orders and other military contracts may have to change things up, but they’ll find ways to keep their gravy trains on the rails.

On the civilian government side, foreign entanglements are go-to excuses for more of the taxing, borrowing, and spending politicians love, and also provide useful distractions from domestic policy failures and popular discontent.

The only way to get the US Department of Defense (or is it War now?) out of our wallets and off our necks is to discard the idea of political government itself. We should treat Washington, DC the way the Scipio Africanus the Younger treated Carthage.

But meanwhile, we should welcome even the slightest reorientation of US military policy toward “national defense” rather than foreign meddling.

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.

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On September 25, a federal grand jury indicted former FBI director James Comey on charges of making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding (by making that false statement) in 2020.

The false statement? The word “no,” in answer to the question of whether he had “ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation.”

The “someone else” is former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, himself fired for those unauthorized disclosures … and for lying about them.

The claim of a known liar that someone else lied seems like a pretty weak prosecutorial rede. That explains why DOJ prosecutors reported no probable cause to seek the indictment. US president Donald Trump bullied their boss, US Attorney Erik Siebert, into resigning, replacing Siebert with a sycophant (Lindsey Halligan) who could be counted on to follow Trump’s orders.

BUT!

Comey himself is also a known liar. That’s not speculation. It’s not an open question, it’s a confirmed fact.

In 2020, Comey told Congress that he didn’t know about Hillary Clinton’s plans to link Trump to Russia using disinformation — “that doesn’t ring any bells with me.” Subsequently declassified documents established that he had been briefed on Clinton’s plans by then CIA director (and former Communist Party member, and also known liar) John Brennan.

Comey also told Congress that he had only briefed Trump on the “salacious” parts of the infamous “Steele Dossier” (part of Clinton’s disinformation campaign). Again, subsequently declassified memos establish that he discussed the entire dossier, in depth, with Trump.

In fact, perhaps the only time Comey was very truthful was in 2016 when he more or less admitted that Clinton had committed crimes by negligently exposing classified information through her illegal use of a private email server, but wouldn’t be prosecuted because, well, she was Hillary Clinton.

It seems like Comey’s tenure was mostly lies. So pardon me if I decline to break out even the world’s smallest violin for his current legal problems.

On the other hand, it’s also true that this prosecution has nothing whatsoever to do with the alleged lie in question.

It’s partly about Donald Trump’s desire to “get” Comey for having proven insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump.

It’s mostly about Trump’s need for distractions from his close personal relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein.

So, OK, prosecute Comey.

And release the Epstein files.

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.

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The Producers at the Muny in 2008. Photo by Meetmeatthemuny. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

“The White House budget office,” CNN reports, “is telling federal agencies to prepare plans for mass firings in the event of a government shutdown …”

Programs that these fake “shutdowns” don’t normally affect would “be targeted for sweeping reductions in force that could permanently eliminate jobs that are deemed ‘not consistent’ with President Donald Trump’s priorities.”

The headline characterizes Trump’s latest move as a “threat” intended to encourage Democrats to capitulate, and dissident Republicans to get back on side, in the latest fight over government spending.

Threat?

Maybe to Democrats who can’t bear the thought of any reduction, in any government function, ever.

Maybe to Republicans who have pet programs they know would be affected by “reductions in force.”

The rest of us should reply as Br’er Rabbit did to Br’er Fox’s threat to cook him and eat him: “Oh, Br’er Fox, I don’t care what you do with me, so long as you just don’t throw me in that briar patch over there.”

The two wings of America’s single-party state, and their pet media, treat the threat of a “government shutdown” as existential, and spend a lot more time trying to pre-emptively apportion blame to each other than trying to do a deal.

In reality, these “shutdowns” are pure Hollywood magic, all special effects — “no animals or bureaucrats were harmed in this production.”

Supposedly “non-essential” government operations shut down, raising the question of why, if they’re not “essential,” taxpayers subsidize them in the first place, and making it clear that “non-essential” actually means “provides the best material to elicit public notice.  “You can’t visit your favorite museum … THIS week.”

When a deal gets made, all those “non-essential” operations re-open, complete with turning the government employees’ time off into a retroactive paid vacation.

And the “spending exceeds revenues, guess we have to borrow!” can gets kicked down the road some more.

Trump’s “threat” is that instead of temporarily shutting down some “non-essential” fat, he’ll carve some real meat off the federal government bone.

Good! Do it!

For once, let’s see how small the federal government can get before anything “essential” actually stops happening.

My guess is that if a black hole opened up beneath the District of Columbia and sucked the entire federal government into non-existence, we’d suffer a very short period of re-adjustment before most people realized we’re better off that way.

Please, Br’er President, anything but the briar patch!

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.

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