There is a new normal in America: our government may shut down, but our wars continue. Congress may not be able to pass a budget, but the US military can still launch commando raids in Libya and Somalia, the Afghan war can still be prosecuted, Italy can be garrisoned by American troops (putting the “empire” back in Rome), Africa can be used as an imperial playground, and the military-industrial complex can still dominate the world’s arms trade.
In the halls of Congress and the Pentagon, it’s business as usual, if your definition of “business” is the power and profits you get from constantly preparing for and prosecuting wars around the world. “War is a racket,” General Smedley Butler famously declared in 1935, and even now it’s hard to disagree with a man who had two Congressional Medals of Honor to his credit and was intimately familiar with American imperialism.
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Just remember: In the grand bargain that is war, it’s their product and their profit. And that’s no bargain for America, or for that matter for the world.