Veterans For Peace opposes Michele Flournoy as Defense Secretary.
As veterans who have served in multiple wars, we have a long political memory. We know Biden supported wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and dozens more conflicts and drone strikes that flew under the radar. His gathering team promises only more of the same.
The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) recently published "Should Michèle Flournoy Be Secretary of Defense?" which details a long list of reasons to be opposed to Flournoy being nominated. Fluornoy's nomination should be understood as Biden "stick(ing) his middle fingers in the eyes of Americans who are fed up with endless wars and ongoing militarism."
- In 2002, Fluornoy moved from Pentagon and National Defense University posts to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an influential think tank funded by Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin Corporations.
- In 2007, she co-founded the Center for a New American Security, number two in war profiteer funding and went from there to be Obama's under secretary of defense for policy.
- After that, she went to Boston Consulting Group, helping it grow its military revenue 2,000% in three years and currently sits on the Booz Allen Hamilton board.
- She opined in the Washington Post that Trump was correct to raise military spending
The list could be much longer. And Fluornoy is not alone in the forming Biden administration when it comes to feeding the war machine. Antony Blinken, nominee for Secretary of State, served as staff director for then-Senator Biden's Foreign Relations Committee during the two-day hearing in 2002 that pumped for the invasion of Iraq.
We realize that overcoming the influence of the Military-Industrial Complex on U.S. foreign policy and national budgets is a tall order that only a mass movement of the American people can change.
We believe the key to growing that movement is to lift up the many needs our people and our planet have if we are to secure a better life, or indeed, the continuation of life. Those needs can all be met by shifting the trillions now spent on war, death and ecocide into the things the vast majority of Americans need and support, like health care, education, mass transit, child care and good jobs.
As veterans, we know that Congress, on both sides of the aisle, have continued to vote for war and support policies that are dangerous and deadly to people all over the globe and our families and communities. Veterans For Peace continues to support an end to war, while also strategically pressuring all administrations to pick candidates and pass legislation that gets us further to that goal. If we use every opportunity we have to advance our mission, one day we will have a government that prioritizes peace as much as they do war.
As we continue educating and agitating for these changes, opposing Michele Fluornoy's nomination is important to signal to this new administration that veterans do not want policies and individuals that continue our endless wars.