Frida Berrigan on “Democracy Now” radio:

“Israel’s relationship with the United States is unique in a number of ways. And one of those ways is that essentially the United States provides 20% of the Israeli military budget on an annual basis, and then about 70% of that money that is given from the United States, from U.S. taxpayers, to Israel is then spent on weapons from Lockheed Martin and Boeing and Raytheon. Most other countries don’t have that sort of cash relationship, where they go straight to U.S. corporations with U.S. money to buy weapons that are then used in the Occupied Territories and against Lebanon.”

In short,Â the U.S. is paying forÂ Israel’s brutal invasion of Lebanon — andÂ American war profiteers are making piles of money. It isÂ militarism as an economic system, what one might call “war capitalism” — which is, in reality, totally state-controlled and politically determined,Â as farÂ fromÂ the system of free enterprises as a nation could possibly get, short of Lenin’s “war communism.”Â