In his memoir "Chasing the Light," director Oliver Stone talks about America's angst over Vietnam:
"We were so proud, and then, when we couldn't achieve victory, we had to lie like we all do when we deny what we know is true — that we lost, and lost big-time, and all those technology-loving Pentagon warriors were at last revealed as failures, and those determined little Vietnamese had licked us."
Then why did we not try to avoid the same fate time and again?
In early December, the Quincy Institute, in concert with the Center for War and Society (San Diego State University), hosted Stone at the iconic USS Midway Museum to commemorate, in part, the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Gregory Daddis, director of the Center for War and Society and professor of military studies, got a chance to ask Stone not only about his own service as an Army infantryman (which later inspired his 1987 film "Platoon"), but about his own frustrations with the cyclical nature of American war-making, right up to Russia-gate, and today's current conflicts.
Top image credit: Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt speaks during 2023 National Action Network (NAN) Triumph Awards at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York on October 16, 2023 (lev radin / Shutterstock.com)
The Anti-Defamation League’s mission is to “stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all.”
But over the past year that mission has stretched to include defending some of the world’s biggest weapons companies from shareholder proposals calling for reporting on the human rights impact of their weapons, according to a review of SEC filings, proving itself an important ally for weapons and tech firms seeking to profit from sales of weapons technologies to Israel and avoid accountability for the ways in which their products are used on Palestinians.
The ADL’s battle with faith-based shareholder advocacy occurs alongside a majority of Americans now holding unfavorable views of Israel (an 11% increase since before the start of Israel’s war in Gaza), a time when efforts to hold weapons and tech companies accountable for their role in attacks on Palestinian civilians may find increasing support.
Last October, Investor Advocates for Social Justice (IASJ) — a group representing “investors with faith-based values who seek to leverage their investments to advance human rights, climate justice, racial equity, and the common good” — filed a shareholder proposal on behalf of Sisters of St. Frances of Philadelphia, calling for Lockheed Martin to compile a report on “the alignment of its political activities (including direct and indirect lobbying and political and electioneering expenditures) with its Human Rights Policy.”
“F-35s have been used repeatedly by Israeli forces to target Palestinian civilians in Gaza and are connected to apparent war crimes,” said the proposal. “Despite this, in June 2024, Israel signed a $3 billion deal with Lockheed to sell 25 F-35s to Israel.”
And in another proposal, filed on behalf of Francsiscan Sisters of Allegany NY in November, IASJ called for a similar report from General Dynamics, citing the company’s supply “...of artillery munitions and bombs to Israel, which have been reportedly used in attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, that may constitute war crimes, and, according to the International Court of Justice, may plausibly amount to genocide.”
“Although, in June 2024, UN experts called on companies to immediately end arms transfers to Israel, even if approved by State export licensing, or risk complicity in violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, GD continues to sell weapons to Israel,” said the proposal.
Last month, the ADL filed their own opposition to bothproposals and issued a press release accusing the proposals of being motivated by antisemitism and claimed the proposals contain “...deeply misleading and inflammatory allegations, accusing General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin of complicity in war crimes—and, in the case of General Dynamics, even genocide—due to their lawful defense partnerships with Israel.”
“These claims are false, defamatory, and part of a broader campaign aimed at delegitimizing Israel’s right to self-defense and existence,” said the ADL.
"We are confounded by suggestions that our shareholder proposals advance antisemitism,” IASJ told Responsible Statecraft. “IASJ condemns antisemitism, in all its forms, and recognizes that it poses a significant threat to the human rights of Jewish communities worldwide. As representatives of faith-based investors, we are committed to advancing the highest standard of human rights and the common good in our investors’ portfolio companies."
For much of the Gaza War, the ADL has combated shareholder advocacy pushing for human rights accountability at weapons and technology companies.
In November 2023, IASJ filed a shareholder proposal at RTX (formerly known as a Raytheon) calling on Raytheon’s board of directors to “...publish a report, at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information, with the results of a Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA), examining Raytheon’s actual and potential human rights impacts associated with high-risk products and services, including those in conflict-affected areas and/or those violating international law.”
“Raytheon’s products have been directly linked to human rights violations in Yemen,” said IASJ’s filing on behalf of School Sisters of Notre Dame Cooperative Investment Fund, a Catholic institutional investor. “The Company was most recently connected to 80 civilian deaths in a 2022 airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition, potentially amounting to war crimes. Raytheon also sells weapons to Israel, which are used to maintain the system of apartheid.”
IASJ followed its Raytheon proposal with a similar shareholder proposal on behalf of American Baptist Home Mission Societies in December 2023, calling for Amazon to conduct “an independent third-party report, at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information, assessing Amazon’s customer due diligence process to determine whether customers’ use of its products and services with surveillance, computer vision, or cloud storage capabilities contributes to human rights violations or violates international humanitarian law.”
The group highlighted Amazon’s work with governments “with a history of rights-violating behavior,” including, “The Israeli government’s ‘Project Nimbus,’ protested by Amazon employees, uses AWS to support the apartheid system under which Palestinians are surveilled, unlawfully detained, and tortured.”
The ADL urged shareholders to vote against both proposals, telling shareholders at bothcompanies that, “The proposal and supporting statement include language that is false and misleading, could embolden antisemitism in society, and we believe seeks to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.”
“Labeling Israel as an apartheid state risks blurring the lines between criticism of Israeli policies and feeding into antisemitic assertions which demonize the Jewish state and the Jewish connection to Israel,” the ADL told shareholders. “Moreover, falsely singling out Israel with a term linked to severe injustice and discrimination could embolden hostility directed against Jews in the United States and beyond. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), antisemitic incidents in the US have surged by 360 percent since October 7, 2023.”
While the ADL took particular issue with the use of “apartheid,” using the term to characterize Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as apartheid is in line with assessments made by prominent human rights groups, including: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s primary human rights group, B’TSelem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter who all highlighted the discriminatory systems of laws and restrictions on movement imposed on Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank.
The IASJ proposals at Amazon and Raytheon failed to win necessary support from shareholders and the ADL cheered its success, boasting of its shareholder advocacy that “focused on combating antisemitism & hate, supporting Israel, and addressing critical Tikkun Olam issues.”
General Dynamics’ shareholders will vote on the IASJ proposal at its board meeting today, May 7, and Lockheed’s shareholders will vote on May 9th.
The ADL did not respond to a request for comment.
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Top photo: credit Shutterstock. A 5% hike in US military spending would be absolutely nuts
A 5% hike in US military spending would be absolutely nuts
The Defense Department has not taken adequate measures to address “significant fraud exposure,” and its timeline for fixing “pervasive weaknesses in its finances” is not likely to be met, according to a recently released government report.
The Government Accountability Office conducted the report to assist the Pentagon in meeting its timeline for a clean audit by 2028. DOD has failed every audit since it was legally required to submit to one each year beginning in 2018. In fact, the Pentagon is the only one of 24 federal agencies that has not been able to pass an unmodified financial audit since the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990.
For more than two decades, the GAO has given over 100 recommendations on how the Pentagon can fix its financial weaknesses. Most cases are still open, with no progress satisfied other than a “leadership commitment.” Additionally, many of the thousands of identified deficiencies found in its 2018 audit remain outstanding.
Indeed, the GAO found that “to achieve a department-wide clean audit opinion by December 2028, the DOD needs to accelerate the pace at which it addresses its long-standing issues.”
GAO advises DOD to implement a fraud risk management system. From 2017 to 2024, the DOD reported $10.8 billion in confirmed fraud. While that number is small compared to the Pentagon’s budget over those years, “recoveries and confirmed fraud reflect only a small fraction of DOD’s potential fraud exposure,” the GAO says.
Examples of more egregious cases of fraud and abuse at the Pentagon — like the $52,000 trash can or the $7,600 coffee maker — have been well-documented over the years. But others are a bit more granular. The new GAO report noted that the Pentagon purchased a machine gun bipod component with subpar manufacturing standards because a vendor fraudulently edited paperwork to reflect a higher manufacturing score. Luckily, engineers caught the deficiency before the bipods entered the battlefield, but the incident could have placed soldiers in harm’s way.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised to return a clean DOD audit by the end of Trump’s administration, an outcome the GAO report and experts say is unlikely, barring significant changes.
Despite inadequate answers to these massive financial deficiencies, President Trump has ordered the Pentagon to increase its budget to over $1 trillion, up from the around $850 billion that the Biden administration requested for FY 2025.
“Congress set an ambitious deadline for the Pentagon to achieve an unmodified audit opinion in 2028, but there's little evidence to suggest the department can meet it,” says Julia Gledhill, Research Associate at the Stimson Center. “Lawmakers would be better off lowering Pentagon spending, which would help the department mitigate the risk of contractor fraud. With more limited resources, the Pentagon would have to tackle the issue head-on."
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Top photo credit: Hatay Turkey - February, 09,2023 : Aid is distributed to earthquake victims. (Shutterstock)/ BFA-Basin Foto Ajansi)
An overwhelming majority of voting-age Americans support providing humanitarian and food aid to developing countries, but they are more divided along partisan lines on other forms of U.S. assistance to nations of the Global South, according to new poll results released by the Pew Research Center.
The findings come as the White House last week released a “skinny budget” that proposed a nearly 48% cut to total foreign aid, including a 40% reduction in humanitarian assistance, for next year and signaled its intent to rescind nearly half the current year’s aid budget appropriated by Congress but not yet spent.
If successful, the administration’s plans would amount to a roughly 84% reduction in total U.S. foreign aid. It will now be up to the GOP-dominated Congress to decide whether and how much to approve the administration’s plans.
The new poll found that large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats and independents support providing medical-related and basic human needs aid, such as food and clothing, to people in developing countries. But supporting economic development projects and pro-democracy initiatives garner far less support from Republicans or Republican-leaning Americans than their Democratic counterparts. Under the administration’s proposed budget, those programs would be largely eliminated.
Remarkably, providing weapons and related assistance to foreign militaries receives even less approval from Republicans and Republican-leaning respondents, while a slight majority of their Democratic counterparts are more supportive. Democrats have historically been more skeptical of supporting foreign militaries since World War II than Republicans.
The poll, which was carried out with the participation of 3,605 respondents during the last week of March, also found major partisan differences on the questions of how much the United should engage in problems overseas and to what extent it should take account of the interests of other countries in conducting international relations.
Two thirds of Republican or Republican-leaning respondents agreed with the proposition that “we should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home,” as opposed to “it’s best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs.” Sixty-two percent of Democratic or Democratic-leaning respondents chose the latter statement as best representing their views.
And more than four in Democratic or Democratic-leaning respondents (83%) said Washington should “take into account the interests of other countries, even if it means making compromises with them.” A small majority (52%) or Republicans opted for the alternative proposition: Washington should “follow its own interests even when other countries strongly disagree.”
The survey was conducted after the administration of President Donald Trump and its Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, announced the virtual elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its transfer to the Department of State.
In early March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio followed up by canceling more than 80 percent of all USAID contracts after finding that they “did not serve (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.” The administration also moved to eliminate or drastically cut back other aid programs previously administered by the State Department itself, as well as some Congressionally mandated and federally financed non-governmental organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy. Many of these actions have been challenged in court.
Breaking down the numbers
In fiscal 2023, the last year for which statistics are fully available, U.S. foreign aid totaled $71.9 billion, or 1.2% of the total federal budget. That amount was more on average than the previous seven years, primarily due to the amount of monetary support provided to Ukraine ($16.6 billion), then in its second year of war with Russia. Of the total, military aid administered by the State Department – other U.S. military aid is channeled through the Pentagon — came to $8.2 billion, more than half of which was earmarked for Israel, Egypt, and Jordan.
Of the remainder, most of which was administered by USAID, $15.6 billion went to disaster relief and other humanitarian aid; $12.1 billion went to the battle against HIV/AIDS and other diseases; $2.3 billion was devoted to democracy and rule-of-law promotion; and $2.9 billion to “multi-sector” programs.
The latest poll results show strong support across both parties for medical and “basic needs” assistance. More than nine in ten Democrats or Democratic-leaning respondents (91%) said they supported providing medical assistance, a position shared by nearly either eight in ten Republican or Republican-leaning counterparts (77%). Taken together, 83% of respondents supported such assistance.
Providing food and clothing registered similar levels of support – 89% among Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents; 68% on the other side of the aisle. Combined, 78% of respondents said they support aid of this kind.
Other forms of aid revealed much greater partisan differences. On the question of economic development aid, eight in ten Democratic and Democratic-leaning respondents voiced their support, while only 46% of Republicans and those leaning Republican agreed.
Overall, 63% respondents favored providing development assistance. A similar breakdown applied to aid designed to “strengthen democracy.” In that case, 77% of the Democrat side said they supported it, while it had the support of only 45% of Republicans. Under the White House plan, however, those aid categories would be largely eliminated.
On support and aid to foreign militaries, just over half of Democrats and Democratic-leaners (51%) favored such assistance despite their history, particularly beginning in the late- and post-Vietnam era of the 1970s, of promoting legislation to condition such aid on human rights and related considerations. Only three in ten of their Republican or Republican-leaning counterparts favored providing “support and weapons to militaries in other countries.” Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Republicans have generally been more skeptical of U.S. military aid to Kyiv than their colleagues across the aisle.
The poll found the least support (34% overall) for what it called support for “art and cultural activities in other countries.” While a majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents (54%) said they support such initiatives, a mere 15% of Republicans agreed.
The administration’s proposed 2026 budget would roughly cut in half total foreign-aid spending as a percentage of the total federal budget to nearly 0.6%. According to a poll of 1,160 adult respondents conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation (PPC) in early February, solid majorities wanted to maintain or increase U.S. aid for humanitarian relief (56%), economic development (56%), global health (64%), education, the environment (65%), and democracy and human rights (60%) after being informed about those programs and assessing arguments both pro and con for each.
While a majority of Republicans surveyed in that poll favored cutting some programs, less than half of those supported either cutting them “somewhat,” a small percentage (11-20%) favored eliminating them.
“I would say the strongest message from the Pew survey – and the PPC survey – is that Americans of both parties are supportive of humanitarian aid and that there is no indication of a desire for a major reduction,” said Steven Kull, PPC’s long-time director who has polled American attitudes on foreign policy and related subjects for almost four decades. “Interestingly, this is the case even though Americans still grossly overestimate the amount of foreign aid the U.S. actually provides.”
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