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u.s. military
'Up in Arms': Ben & Jerry's Co-Founder Launches New Campaign Against Bloated Pentagon Budget
"If we take half the money budgeted for the Pentagon and invested in the things people need and want," said Ben Cohen, "the American Dream can become a reality again."
Jun 14, 2025
Joined by retired military officers and national security experts, Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen on Thursday launched a campaign targeting the nearly $900 billion Pentagon budget and the $100 billion spent on nuclear weapons and "to get our country to start funding the American Dream instead of the death of millions of people."
Standing near Union Station in Washington, D.C. beside a towering sculpture showing what $100 billion looks like, supporters of the Up in Arms campaign—a planned four-year public education and advocacy project "to bring common sense to the Department of Defense and the country's budgetary bottom line"—chanted, "Money for the poor, not nuclear war!"
"There will be no peace, there will be no security, until we start using our resources to provide for the needs of our people at home and around the world," Cohen said at the event. "And we have the money to do it, at no additional taxpayer expense. If we take half the money budgeted for the Pentagon and invested in the things people need and want, the American Dream can become a reality again."
The peace group Ploughshares, which moderated a press conference for the launch of Up in Arms, said that the faux-$100 billion installation could be the tallest protest structure ever erected in Washington, D.C.
"This is a structure that represents the $100 billion that our country spends each year on nuclear weapons," Cohen said while standing in front of the tower and embracing Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of the peace group CodePink. "Fifty percent of that is for a whole new generation of nuclear weapons."
"Ice cream not bombs!" Benjamin said next. "Ice cream not nuclear weapons!"
The $100 billion figure includes spending on modernizing the nuclear arsenal, supporting its infrastructure, and addressing legacy issues like nuclear waste.
"Congress could make it easier for Americans to buy homes and save on gas or they could tackle the opioid epidemic–but those are clearly NOT their priorities," Up in Arms says on its website. "We have all the money we need to create a good life for all Americans. For half the money we spend on nuclear bombs, we could stop poisoning kids with lead, provide funding for public schools, and make childcare affordable."
Former U.S. military officers-turned-peace defenders Dennis Laich, Lawrence Wilkerson, Ann Wright, Karen Kwiatkowski, William Astore, and Dennis Fritz, as well as FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and former CIA officer Ray McGovern, are taking part in the Up in Arms campaign.
"We're here today to say we don't want our money spent this way, we want our money spent… on things that keep people alive, not on things that kill people," said Wright, a former U.S. Army colonel and current member of the Eisenhower Media Network and Veterans Against Genocide.
"We're up in arms and down on these damn nuclear weapons," she added, "and We the People have to be able to go to each one of these congresspeople and say, 'We don't care how much money you're getting from all of these companies that make a killing out if killing with these nuclear weapons.'"
Laich, a former U.S. Army general also with the Eisenhower Media Network, noted that the U.S. military budget "is larger than the next 10 countries combined, and what do we get for it?"
"Since World War II, we tied in Korea, we lost in Vietnam, we won the first Gulf War, we lost in Iraq, and we lost in Afghanistan," he said. "They always say we have the greatest military on earth; I don't buy it."
President Donald Trump is proposing a record $1 trillion Pentagon budget for fiscal year 2026 while backing legislation that would dramatically slash spending on vital social programs in order to fund a massive tax break that would overwhelmingly benefit the rich and corporations.
On Friday, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons—which earned the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for spearheading the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—published an analysis showing the world's nine nuclear powers spent a combined baseline $100 billion on their arsenals last year, an 11% increase from 2023. The United States alone accounted for well over half of that amount.
Cohen is a longtime anti-war activist. Last month, he was arrested after disrupting a Senate hearing, shouting, "Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the U.S." as he was hauled off by police.
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Those Who Would Be King
Trump’s June 14 spectacle isn’t just a parade; it is a flagrant exploitation of the military for personal and political gain, something we, who fought in America’s unnecessary and immoral wars, know so well.
Jun 13, 2025
After implementing significant budget cuts across various federal programs, including eliminating some 83,000 jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, 20,000 of which were filled by veterans, President Donald J. Trump plans to spend an estimated $45-96 million for a parade on June 14 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States Army, and concurrently his 79th birthday. With a massive display of America’s military might, this event, according to the parade’s official website,“is designed not only to showcase the Army’s modern capabilities but also to inspire a new generation to embrace the spirit of service, resilience, and leadership that defines the United States.”
Trump has yearned to immerse himself in such a display of military extravagance no matter the expense and inconvenience to the public ($16 million additional in damage to Washington’s streets, the closure of two major airports, etc.) since witnessing France’s impressive Bastille Day celebrations during his first term. Much to his dismay, however, his plans were abandoned after pushback over cost and logistics from D.C. officials and opposition from then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Not unexpectedly, the current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, never one to thwart Trump’s wishes and illusions of grandeur, enthusiastically supports the parade.
It is a waste of money that could better be used to restore much needed funds for healthcare, housing, pensions, and giving our troops and their families the best care possible.
Interestingly, for whatever the reason, in hyping the parade, Trump fails to acknowledge, nor does he have similar plans to showcase, the modern capabilities and the “spirit of service, resilience, and leadership” of America’s other military branches that also celebrate their 250th Anniversary later in the year, the Navy in October and the Marine Corps in November. One may speculate that this omission may have something to do with their anniversaries not coinciding with Trump’s birthday.
Despite the optics of this parade falling on Trump’s birthday,event organizers insist that there is no connection between the two events. However, one must consider this claim in tandem with other measures that have characterized Trump’s reign of terror in the White House. His flurry of presidential orders is clearly intended to reinvent the presidency by vastly expanding his authority, powers, and the deference accorded to the Office he holds. Basically, he is attempting to reinvent the presidency as something that resembles a dictatorship rather than the democracy it has traditionally been in American history. And what better to accomplish this than a parade to celebrate the military and the weapons of war, an event befitting other megalomaniacal world leaders and dictators like Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, Joseph Stalin, and Adolf Hitler.
Further, given the myriad incidents of flagrant animosity and disrespect Trump has exhibited toward the military in the past, i.e., his disparaging the parents of Humayun Khan, an army captain killed during the Iraq War; his characterizing soldiers who died defending this Country as losers and suckers; his refusing to visit, while in France, the graves of American service members killed during World War I because it was raining; his not wanting to be seen with wounded veterans because “it doesn’t look good for me;” his mocking of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain for being shot down and captured during the Vietnam War; his calling the military officials with whom he had worked “some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met in my life,” etc., one can understand why many veterans (and nonveterans alike) are skeptical of the organizers claim that this parade is intended to honor soldiers and veterans and celebrate America’s Army.
Many of us who served in the military, who shed our blood and sanity for this country, certainly remember. War never goes away and is with us for the remainder of our lives. But we who know the truth about war do not celebrate its horror and tragedy. Those of us who can, labor to live with it. Tragically, as indicated by the 18 veterans who commit suicide each day, many could not.
Many march to remember, others to forget.
But for those who truly know war
and suffer its consequences,
no ceremony or parade is necessary
as the memories,
the images of war,
and the faces of our comrades wasted in battle
visit us each night in our dreams.
Nor do the ceremonies and parades
help us to put to rest
the turmoil of a life interrupted
and devastated by war,
or to forget the killing and the dying.
Such ceremonies and parades accomplish nothing,
save to allow those who make war easily
or distance themselves from its insanity and horror
to feign support and appreciation
and to relieve their collective guilt
for immoral war and crimes against humanity.
Nor do ceremonies and parades
honor, educate, inform, or lessen the burden of loss.
Rather they celebrate and perpetuate
the myth of honor and glory,
and “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
I shall march no more—Camillo Mac Bica
This isn’t just a parade, therefore, it is a flagrant exploitation of the military for personal and political gain, something we, who fought in America’s unnecessary and immoral wars, know so well. It is an authoritarian display of power, and another means for Trump to celebrate himself and to expand his authority. It is a waste of money that could better be used to restore much needed funds for healthcare, housing, pensions, and giving our troops and their families the best care possible. Therefore, we must not remain silent. We must act, raise our voices in outrage, defy the ambitions of those who would be king, speak the truth about war, and not allow others, especially pretenders and posers, to misrepresent and mythologize that which they know nothing about.
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Trump Is Following in the Footsteps of the Worst Traitor in US History
It makes perfect sense that the current chief betrayer of the ideals of our nation would brag to a group of American soldiers that he’s going to rename a military base after Robert E. Lee.
Jun 13, 2025
Robert E. Lee killed more Americans than Hitler. More than Khruschev. More than King George III, Ho Chi Mihn, or Kim Il Sung. He killed more Americans than we’ve lost in every war since the American Revolution, combined. He was the largest mass murderer of Americans in our nation’s history.
General Lee was not a good man: He was a morbidly rich oligarch who not only bought and sold enslaved human beings but delighted in whipping and torturing them.
Three of the 200-plus enslaved people he held at his plantation—Wesley Norris, his sister Mary, and their cousin George Parks—escaped and were captured in nearby Maryland. The report in the March 26, 1866 edition of The New York Daily Tribune, quoting Wesley Norris at length, tells us all about Lee’s proclivities:
He then ordered us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mr. Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and give us 50 lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but 20; …
Gen. Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to “lay it on well,” an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with [excruciatingly painful saltwater] brine, which was done.
Fearing President Abraham Lincoln might end slavery in America, Lee raised an army and tried to use it to end democracy in the United States; he thus committed treason in a way that exceeded even Benedict Arnold’s wildest fantasies. His war killed almost 750,000 men, women, and children, all Americans.
No American has ever betrayed or visited as much violence on this country as severely as did Robert E. Lee.
And so, when Lee lost the war that he’d started against us, the federal government seized his slave plantation and turned it into a cemetery for the Civil War dead. It’s today named Arlington National Cemetery.
So, perhaps it makes perfect sense that the current chief betrayer of the ideals of our nation, convicted felon and Putin toady Donald Trump, would brag to a group of American soldiers that he’s going to rename a military base after Robert E. Lee.
Even more shocking, in what’s an astonishing indictment of how our educational system has deemphasized civics in the years since Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both took an axe to civics education, the assembled soldiers cheered the news that Lee’s name would again desecrate a military facility.
Trump then went on to repeatedly lie to our soldiers, falsely claiming that:
- He won the 2020 election, which he told them was “rigged and stolen;”
- He sent the National Guard into Minnesota “and I saved it” during the George Floyd protests, when in fact it was Gov. Tim Walz who did so;
- He defeated ISIS “in four weeks”; it took two years to liberate the ISIS caliphate;
- “Nobody wanted to join” the military under former President Joe Biden, a blatant lie;
- Countries like “Congo” dumped their prisoners and people from their mental hospitals here, saying, “Their countries would bus them or drive them right to our border and say, ‘Go in there. If you ever come back, we’re going to kill you;’”
- He’d brought water to LA during the fires when in fact he’d just ordered a field flooded in Northern California, screwing up water allocations for agriculture; and
- Echoed Hitler when he called Los Angeles protesters “animals” and “a foreign enemy.”
And even more disgusting than that, Trump was nakedly using those soldiers he was lying to as political props to massage his own ego and provide a made-for-Fox-“News” clip, as Military.com pointed out yesterday:
Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump's recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male. One unit-level message bluntly said, “no fat soldiers.” [emphasis added]
This is the exact opposite of the instructions to keep the military nonpartisan that President George Washington gave future generations in his farewell address:
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.
The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.
That the Secretary of Defense, “Kegger” Pete Hegseth, would not just allow but intentionally facilitate such an offensive display of partisanship is particularly troubling when compared to the military’s actual policies in Directive 1344.10, put into place years ago to respect Washington’s advice:
In keeping with the traditional concept that members on active duty should not engage in partisan political activity, and that members not on active duty should avoid inferences that their political activities imply or appear to imply official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement, the following policy shall apply:…
A member of the Armed Forces on active duty shall not: …
Participate in partisan political fundraising activities, rallies, conventions, management of campaigns, or debates, either on one’s own behalf or on that of another, without respect to uniform or inference or appearance of official sponsorship, approval, or endorsement…
Attend partisan political events as an official representative of the Armed Forces…
This is a lawful general regulation. Violations of paragraphs 4.1. through 4.5. of this Directive by persons subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice are punishable under Article 92, “Failure to Obey Order or Regulation.”
When Trump blurs this line designed to keep our military nonpartisan, he’s imitating the behavior of dictators like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who cultivate personal loyalty within the military, rather than respect for constitutional processes.
Trump’s and “Kegger’s” move is apparently designed to test whether rank-and-file troops will go along with his political agenda and to build a foundation for future actions in which military force can be used domestically to defend his regime rather than the Constitution (e.g., suppressing protests, enforcing disputed election outcomes, defending the suspension of elections, etc.).
This is deeply dangerous to any democracy, which is why such behavior is not allowed by the military or executive of any other advanced democracy in the world. When military loyalty becomes politicized, the risk of coups, unlawful orders, or martial law rises dramatically.
Which—given the fact that Trump’s already tried once to stage a coup against the United States—makes this all the more alarming.
But Trump didn’t stop there. He next attacked the media filming the event, saying to more applause from the troops:
And for a little news, for the fake news back there, the fake news, ladies and gentlemen, look at them, look at them, aye yai yai, what I have to put up with. Fake news. What I have to put up with.
In fascist regimes, the press is always one of their first targets, typically labeled as “enemies of the people,” blamed for national problems, and ultimately silenced or co-opted. Trump using such rhetoric normalizes contempt for independent journalism among armed agents of the state while it suggests the possibility of state-aligned force being turned against critical media or dissenters.
Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Putin’s Russia, and more recently Orbán’s Hungary all followed this script. By repeating it, Trump is conditioning our soldiers to follow him rather than the Constitution and the law of the land.
He even brought along a vendor of Trump merchandise in violation of military policy, including MAGA hats, T-shirts, and cards that read, “White Privilege Card: Trumps Everything.”
Historically, when democracies have slid into dictatorship, there’s a moment when the military is required to choose sides, the press is cast as a threat, and loyalty to the regime is demanded and rewarded, rather than loyalty to the law.
We’re there now. Today.
Every American, particularly those who’ve served in the military, should be outraged by Trump’s fascist performance in front of our troops. That the only senior active duty military officer who spoke to the press did so anonymously (he said, “This has been a bad week for the Army for anyone who cares about us being a neutral institution; this was shameful.”) is a damning indictment of how far away from American values we’ve let Trump drag our country.
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