Barrington M. Salmon - Recent protests by members of US Congress over the Biden administration launching unauthorized airstrikes is about a struggle for power rather than curbing militarism, Black Alliance for Peace Coordinating Committee member Netfa Freeman told Sputnik
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th November, 2021) Barrington M. Salmon - Recent protests by members of US Congress over the Biden administration launching unauthorized airstrikes is about a struggle for power rather than curbing militarism, Black Alliance for Peace Coordinating Committee member Netfa Freeman told Sputnik.
On Thursday, more than 30 US lawmakers sent a letter to President Joe Biden expressing their concern over conducting military strikes in Syria and Iraq without congressional approval.
"The letter was signed by only 30 members of Congress who will continue to support military spending. They don't care about the pervasiveness of the US presence and warmongering around the world," Freeman said. "It's a debate about the war powers of the president... warmongering reduced to legal terms."
The letter, he added, also fails to deal with all aspects of America's involvement in conflicts across the planet.
"Congress' position is that is that if a war is not declared by them, then they're not at war," he said. "Since the US left Afghanistan, all we've heard is that for the first time there is no war that the US is involved in, but there's war all over the place because the US is using proxies, special forces and drones. America is in a constant state of war against humanity."
Freeman, an analyst at the Institute of Policy Studies and an organizer with Pan-African Community Action (PACA), also took issue with Congress preparing to approve a $778 billion defense budget while legislation on social spending stalls.
"We need a people-centered human rights agenda and education that can tie the contradictions of haggling over insufficient funds for the 'Build Back Better' bill but be unconcerned with unfettered pentagon spending," Freeman said.
Little changes, said Freeman, because America is an oligarchy where the system rules.
"What exists now is a settler colonist, imperialist paradigm," Freeman said. "What ordinary people want is never on the table. People are wholly uninformed and can't connect dots which may lend itself to the status quo."
