War is immensely profitable; that's why there is so much of it. It's the only domestic industry to speak of. All the rest have been outsourced. War constitutes almost the entire GDP of Afghanistan while enriching the corrupt Karzai and his henchmen. War is immensely profitable to Pakistan too - $2 billion a year profitable. Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing and other defense contractors would see their profits sag if it weren't for their lucrative contracts from the Defense Department. Although war is essentially the only domestic industry, we're still dependent for parts for cruise missiles and smart bombs from China. Senator Bernie Sanders had to actually introduce a piece of legislation to get the Smithsonian gift shop to stop stocking busts of Washington and Jefferson MADE IN CHINA! While the US pours billions of dollars down the rathole of war, other countries are using their resources to build up their infrastructure, provide free education to their citizens, free health care and a decent quality of life. THe US is drowning in debt precisely because it has squandered its resources on its war economy. Where other countries have built bridges, the US has destroyed bridges. The destructive power of the US is second to none while its politicians squabble over whether or not to provide a few crumbs for the poor.
And as for the countries we have expended so much blood and treasure on, they essentially say to us: "don't bang your ass on the door on the way out." Are they grateful? No. Are they glad we came? No. They use us for the money that we bring with the wars we fight. Our "puppet" leaders such as Karzai want the long green so they go along with our ridiculous assertions of bringing them freedom and democracy, and then they ridicule us when the gravy train runs out. Today President Obama gave a very rational explanation of his troop withdrawals from Afghanistan. It was very precise and rational, almost mathematically tautological. We will bring out so many now, so many next year, so many the year after that etc. And as our troops stand down, their troops will stand up? Where have I heard that before? At least we can't be accused of cutting and running. However, President Obama said nothing about withdrawing the money from Afghanistan. That's what I want to hear. Like, for instance, we withdraw $200 million per week (of the $2 billion per week we're spending now) followed by another $500 million per week next year etc. Withdrawing troops is almost irrelevant if we are continuing to spend the same amount of money there. The American people want the money withdrawn as well as the troops with the money being spent at home instead of over there. But there was nary a word about who's going to pay all those Afghani soldiers who are standing up as ours stand down (hint: it's us) or who's going to keep on paying all those expensive private contractors about whose prescence there's not even a mention. And when the money gravy train dries up, all those Afghani soldiers just might switch sides if the other side offers to pay them. Or maybe they might do it anyway just for the hell of it. If anyone thinks they are loyal to the corrupt Karzai, they have another think coming. And just as soon as American money dries up, Karzai himself will be off to his Swiss villa and his Swiss bank account: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! As the US leaves Afghanistan they will probably be treated to the same refrain: don't bang your ass on the door on the way out!
The US has spent $1.3 trillion on two wars in the past decade while ballooning the national debt. And all this has done is to give the US the reputation as an overlord and an occupier in most of the developing world. Karzai freely calls the US an occupier and doesn't mind criticising us to his heart's content. The same is true of Pakistan. With friends like these we don't need enemies. We give Israel between $2 and $3 billion in aid each year despite the fact that they don't host any of our military bases. Instead we put bases in places like Bahrain and other Arab dictatorships. We give Egypt $2 billion a year despite the fact that there are no military bases there either. It's simply a bribe for their good behaviour in not attacking Israel. Meanwhile, we starve the American people, throw them out on the streets, cut unemployment aid to the bone, deny poor people health care and do everything we can to increase the homeless population. Charity begins at home yet we throw billions at foreign dictators in an attempt to control and rule the world. We think we can buy the rest of the world off, and all it's doing is bankrupting us here at home.
A smart policy regarding terrorism would be to declare that we will hunt down terorists wherever they are found using our intelligence resources and take them out wherever they are found using drones and SEALs. Please note that this would cost very little compared to an invasion of a sovereign nation using ground troops. This policy was actually carried out with regard to the killing of bin Laden. Let's execute the same policy with regard to al Zawahiri, al Quaeda's new number 1. We have satellite imagery of everywhere on the globe combined with the ability to monitor cell phones and bank accounts. We don't need full scale invasions followed by nation building. Terrorists can launch an attack from anywhere on the globe. It's ridiculous to believe that an attack could only come from Afghanistan or Pakistan, and, therefore, we must stay there on and on and root out all the Taliban. Terrorists don't need the Taliban or Afghanistan or Pakistan. They can strike from anywhere and we can take them out anywhere. Why don't we confine our attention to the kind of raids that killed bin Laden that don't require invasions and occupations or bribes paid to dictators? You go in, you take out the target and then you go out. Mission accomplished without a lot of money being expended. And save billions in "foreign aid."
On Monday, the United States Conference of Mayors made that connection explicitly, saying that American taxes should be paying for bridges in Baltimore and Kansas City, not in Baghdad and Kandahar.
The mayors’ group approved a resolution calling for an early end to the American military role in Afghanistan and Iraq, asking Congress to redirect the billions now being spent on war and reconstruction costs toward urgent domestic needs. The resolution, which noted that local governments cut 28,000 jobs in May alone, was the group’s first venture into foreign policy since it passed a resolution four decades ago calling for an end to the Vietnam War.
And in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, said: “We can no longer, in good conscience, cut services and programs at home, raise taxes or — and this is very important — lift the debt ceiling in order to fund nation-building in Afghanistan. The question the president faces — we all face — is quite simple: Will we choose to rebuild America or Afghanistan? In light of our nation’s fiscal peril, we cannot do both.”
Demonstrators describing themselves as “angry jobless citizens” said they would picket the Capitol on Wednesday to urge members of Congress to use any savings from Mr. Obama’s troop reductions to create more jobs. The group sponsoring the demonstration, the Prayer Without Ceasing Party, said in a statement on Tuesday that it was “urging the masses to call their congressmen and the president to ensure that jobs receive a top priority when the troops start returning to America.”
Spending on the war in Afghanistan has skyrocketed since Mr. Obama took office, to $118.6 billion in 2011. It was $14.7 billion in 2003, when President George W. Bush turned his attention and American resources to the war in Iraq.
The increase is easy to explain. When Mr. Obama took office, he vowed to aggressively pursue what he termed America’s “war of necessity” (Afghanistan) and to withdraw from America’s “war of choice” (Iraq). He has done so; the lines on Iraq and Afghanistan war spending crossed in 2010, when the United States spent $93.8 billion in Afghanistan versus $71.3 billion in Iraq, according to the Congressional Research Service.
If the US, which has a greater Defense budget than all the rest of the world's countries combined, does not wake up and realize that it is more important to build a strong domestic society at home than it is to try and control the world, the US will end up a hollowed out, bankrupt country approaching Third World status - the only developed country to descend to that level. And it is all because of our value of spending far more on war than on domestic tranquillity. It is all about the fact that we have kowtowed to corporations which a few short years ago contributed 30% of Federal revenues and now contribute 7%. It is all about political power which now has little relationship to the wishes of the people and is more and more a handmaiden of rich corporate interests whose lobbyists actually write most of the laws and whose tax lawyers spend their days figuring out how little their employers have to pay in taxes. And capital gains are taxed at a low, low 15% instead of 29% which was the rate in much of the 1990s. The tax burden, therefore, is shifted to the working stiffs, and the upper 1% gains a fortune.
While we create job programs in Afghanistan, we eliminate them at home:
“Do we really need to be spending $120 billion in a country with a G.D.P. that’s one-sixth that size?” asked Brian Katulis, a national security expert at the Center for American Progress, a policy group with close ties to the Obama administration. “Most Americans would be shocked to know that we’re spending that kind of money for jobs programs for former Taliban, and would wonder where are our jobs programs for Detroit and Cleveland?”
In 2010, Congress — at the Obama administration’s request — set aside $100 million to support programs in Afghanistan aimed at moving former insurgents off the battlefields and into the country’s mainstream economy. Those efforts — similar to what the Bush administration did in Iraq — have yet to bear much fruit; the 1,700 fighters . who have enrolled in the reintegration program represent only a fraction of the estimated 20,000 to 40,000 Taliban insurgents, The New York Times reported Monday.
US priorities are totally out of whack. The reason why so many of the world's other developed countries are doing so well and provide so many benefits to their citizens is precisely because they spend so much less on war. The war economy of the US combined with preferential treatment for the wealthy in terms of tax cuts is precisely why the quality of life in the US is aiming towards its nadir. Public anything is to be eliminated with the privatization of every function of domestic life. Public schools are to be eliminated in favor of private schools. Public health care is to be eliminated in favor of the privatization of health care. More and more perks and privileges are to be heaped upon the already wealthy. Private wealth is to replace public wealth. Infrastructure is allowed to crumble because this mostly affects the public while the private wealthy can spend their way around any crumbling infrastructure. Other countries still have the arcane notion that the country's worth has something to do with the welfare of the majority of its people. The US is only concerned with the welfare of its wealthiest citizens.
Republicans in Congress, while having failed to impose their neocon values of privatization and tax cuts for the rich on other countries, are going all out to at least impose those values on its own citizens making the US the bastion of the war economy and favoritism towards the wealthy and large corporations. This combined with a totally dysfunctional political system in which money rules is making the US a country which is totally out of step with the rest of the world and is sacrificing its people on the altar of war.
