Military-Industrial Complex Ensures Americans War Will Go On Despite Gov’t Shutdown

By Matt Agorist

The United States government’s mission of spreading empire, destabilizing peaceful countries, and violent regime changes will not be hindered by the government shutdown. Our fearless rulers have ensured Americans that the military-industrial complex will be just fine—despite not paying the soldiers.

On Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence encouraged troops to focus on their missions and ensured them that they will be just fine even though their paychecks won’t come in next week.

Although military personnel remain deployed and on the job, they won’t be paid unless Congress votes to compensate them.

“We’ll get this thing figured out in Washington,” Pence said early Saturday as he greeted US servicemen in Ireland shortly after the government shutdown. “Stay focused on your mission,” he said.

“We have soldiers that are headed down range to Kuwait for six months in a critical theater to serve the country, and yet because of Democrats in the Senate, they have anxiety about their pay,” the US Vice President said playing partisan tactics as he addressed the non-partisan military.

Pence then took to Twitter to lambast Democrats for their role in the shutdown—ignoring the fact that both equally repugnant sides are at fault.

While many bureaucracies will suffer as a result of the shutdown, the warmongers made sure to let everyone know that the programs “that keep us safe” will not be affected.

As the report read on the DoD’s website, the Defense Department will continue its mission to defend the people of the United States, American allies and U.S. vital interests around the world during the government shutdown that began at midnight, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis said in a memo.

“We will continue to execute daily operations around the world – ships and submarines will remain at sea, our aircraft will continue to fly and our warfighters will continue to pursue terrorists throughout the Middle East, Africa and South Asia,” the secretary said. “While training for reservists must be curtailed, active forces will stay at their posts adapting their training to achieve the least negative impact on our readiness to fight.

“I recognize the consequences of a government shutdown,” Mattis wrote. “You have my personal commitment that the department’s leadership will do our best to mitigate the impacts of the disruptions and any financial burdens to you and your families.

“Steady as she goes – hold the line. I know the nation can count on you.”

Just before his signature, Mattis wrote “Stay alert.”

Fret not free world, the United States failing to fund itself will not hinder their ability to drone bomb villages in Afghanistan and Yemen and sell weapons to terrorist Saudi Arabians.

While many people in the United States will fear this government shutdown, those of us who see the state as the leviathan police state that it has become will welcome it.

This shutdown also serves to illustrate another very powerful point. While every other bureaucratic function in the country will cease to open tomorrow, the war machine will march on.

As Randolph Borne wrote in 1918, after World War I.

War is the health of the state.

It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties. The minorities are either intimidated into silence, or brought slowly around by subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them really to be converting them. Of course, the ideal of perfect loyalty, perfect uniformity is never really attained. The classes upon whom the amateur work of coercion falls are unwearied in their zeal, but often their agitation, instead of converting merely serves to stiffen their resistance. Minorities are rendered sullen, and some intellectual opinion bitter and satirical. But in general, the nation in wartime attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war. Other values such as artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed, and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State, are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them.

Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project, where this article first appeared. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Facebook.