Perhaps now that the military phase of the war on Iraq is winding down, the use of emotionally laden "support the troops" propaganda appeals can be put behind us, and serious efforts to reign in the obscene levels of US military spending, and dramatically curtail the dominance of US civil society by the Defense Dept/Pentagon, the intelligence community, and the corporate interests benefiting from that political and social dominance, can begin in earnest again.

I was reminded again of this profound need to end militarist domination of US society with the passing of the 2003 Bush administration budget this week, once again with more money being given to the military (around 52% of the total US budget) than to all domestic concerns combined.

Another trigger was that, for the first time since 9/11, the World Bank is balking at the Bush administration's demands for increased spending on the US global militarism agenda in it's so-called war on terrorism, at the expense of the entire developing world. This week, the World Bank challenged the automatic assumptions of the Bush administration, that the World Bank would fund Iraq's post-war reconstruction, at the expense of much poorer, much needier post-conflict nations, such as Afghanistan and Rwanda. As of yesterday, the World Bank's position was that without international agreement, and UN support in the form of a Security Council resolution, the World Bank would not involve itself in the Bush administration's post-war reconstruction of Iraq.

The evaporation of the post-Cold War "peace dividend" does not seem newsworthy anymore. But it should certainly be news that since the end of the Cold War there has been a dramatic proportional increase in US military spending compared to welfare, environmental protection, worker safety, education, and such. This shift in government priorities toward the military and away from civilian services merits a headline article, yet the US media, despite the budget battles this week, and this weekend's meetings in Washington DC of the World Bank/IMF, are ignoring the story altogether.

In addition, the scale of the US military budget results from US global activity, and American globalization thus appears in rather different light when the US budget's priorities are taken into account. Could US global militarism be an important part of America's global identity? The benign guise of US globalization represented by American "world business" is certainly more attractive and well-publicized; but the US budget indicates another reality.

So when the mainstream media begins demonizing the anti-globalization protesters in Washington this weekend for the IMF/World Bank meetings, I think it is important for those who opposed the war on Iraq to remember a few salient points about US global militarism and it's imperial reach:

1. Militarists in the U.S. have funded and assisted in the rise to power of the very "enemies" they now claim the US will engage in a perpetual war with (like Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein), at the expense of civil society's needs in the US and around the globe.

2. Militarists are often poor strategists, and the war on Iraq may well create a much greater terrorist backlash threat to US and global security than previously seen.

3. Militarists are not necessarily promoting defense of the US homeland at all, but rather, as many disarmament intellectuals have long argued: the policies of the big technology/big science "Defense Department" are geared less to "defensive" measures than offensive ones, linked to imperial ambitions, such as the war on terrorism (to replace the Cold War and justify the obscenely bloated military spending that is now endangering the fabric of US civil society itself)and the imperialist "manageable conflict" wars, like Iraq and Afghanistan.

4. Militarism threatens democracy in the U.S. and around the world. It further promises to intellectually co-opt ever more of the formerly pro-democracy intellegentsia to support militarism and militarist solutions. The Gulf War co-opted one group, the Kosovo conflict another. Now, the war on terrorism is helping militarists in the U.S. in their campaign to further reduce expenditures in needed areas like housing, healthcare, mass transportation and environmental renewal. A McCarthy-like hysteria has gripped the entire US government and mainstream media (not just the Bush administration), as we have witnessed in the passage of the US Patriot Act, the detention of foreign nationals without trials, etc.