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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

$4-$6 trillion for war...and a decade later we're being frisked and strip-searched at airports
Posted by Jill | 6:04 AM
Given all the current government talk about austerity, and how the elderly will just have to give up their Social Security because the government stole it all to pay for war and tax cuts, you'd think that the costs of the so-called "War on Terror" would at least be mentioned.

For thirty years, "government spending" is a term that in the minds of all too many Americans is the same thing as saying "Welfare for lazy people", despite the fact that defense, Social Security, and Medicare make up over three-quarters of Federal spending. And yet no one except Rand Paul is even looking at defense spending.

Here we are, almost a decade into Afghanistan and seven years into Iraq, with no end of our involvement anywhere in sight. We are not one iota "safer", and not one of the so-called fiscal conservatives is even addressing the cost of these wars:
"Another four years of war—at the current rate—we’re talking about 2400 more coalition and American soldiers dying, thousands more Afghans killed, and a price tag of about a half trillion dollars,” said Matthew Hoh, a former US Marine who resigned his Afghanistan post in protest last year and now serves as director of the Afghanistan Study Group. And the question remains—what does this sacrifice buy us?  How does this benefit the US? How does it impact Al Qaeda? How does it help stabilize Pakistan? How is any of this worth it?"

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes now estimate the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will reach $4 to $6 trillion. There have been approximately 2,200 US and coalition casualties in Afghanistan, and tens of thousands of Afghan civilian deaths.  The Christian Science Monitor reports that “softening” the 2011 and 2014 deadlines “could add at least $125 billion in war spending—not including long-term costs like debt servicing and health care for veterans."

[snip]

According to the Congressional Research Service, the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan account for 23 percent of the combined budget deficits since 2003. The Republicans' hypocrisy here is venal. If they were indeed serious about shrinking the deficit in a responsible way this war is one area where they would focus needed attention. Certainly those concerned with the budget and rebuilding our economy can agree that these resources could be put to better use at home.

If these wars were doing anything to keep us safe, it might be possible to justify the cost. But it seems that Americans are as frightened as they've been at any time since the 9/11/01 attacks, we are subject to security theatre at airports that is designed to reinforce that fear while our luggage gets loaded onto planes by Goddess-knows-who, and we keep playing a game of catch-up with a few thousand terrorists who seem able to simply nail together two things that have never been nailed together before and bring us to our knees. Positive steps such as fortified cockpits and passengers who now know that being passive with onboard terrorists no longer means that no one gets hurt minimize the chance of another 9/11-style attack. Everything else is whack-a-mole: Richard Reid tries to light explosive in his shoes, so we have to take off our shoes. Someone else tries to make a bomb out of liquids, so we can only take as much shampoo and moisturizer as will fit in a baggie. A guy tries to light powdered explosive in his underwear, so we have to search elderly people wearing depends and cancer survivors' ostomy bags. Someone hides explosives in printer cartridges and so we ban the shipping of printer cartridges. Whoever finances these penny-ante tactics is laughing at our foolishness.

Because the fact is that we don't know what the hell we're doing. Not in our conduct of war (in which today we find out that a high-level Taliban "leader" with whom we've been negotiating is a fake), not in our air security operations, not in how we handle the economy.

Yesterday was the 47th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I was eight years old then, and while I remember the impact of that event, I also remember that it was a time when Americans were about looking forward, about the future and its potential. The Kennedy assassination was a wake-up call that there was a dark underbelly in this country, but still -- we went to the World's Fair in 1964 and attended exhibits called "Futurama" and "Avenue of Progress" and "Wonder Rotunda" and looked ahead into a future of continued innovation and prosperity.

Forty-seven years later, we are a nation of frightened, medieval-thinking people who deride people who actually live in caves while we behave as if we do, with legislators who say we don't have to do anything about climate change because God wouldn't allow the effects of global warming. We have potential presidential candidates who participate in rituals banishing witchcraft and who think behaving like a high school mean girl is the way to power. Educated people are regarded as "elites" and ignorance is valued as symbolizing "real Americans." Sixty-five years ago we vanquished the Third Reich and the Japanese emperor in four years and now we haven't been able to defeat terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq in nine.

And now cannibalism is being lauded on national television as symbolizing good old American ingenuity.

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Thursday, November 11, 2010

Yes, Veterans Day....
Posted by Jill | 7:21 PM
Bob Marley:




Edwin Starr:


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Saturday, August 21, 2010

The takeover of our government by the military and the corporations is complete
Posted by Jill | 9:12 PM
Don't let even the great Rachel Maddow's reporting this last week from Iraq fool you; we are still an occupying force in that country, and billions of dollars that could be paying for Social Security, Medicare, health care, teachers, and infrastructure are still going into the pockets of companies like Blackwater and Halliburton

David Sirota:
As the Associated Press reports, there was lots of happy talk about the end of combat in Iraq this week throughout the national media, as various media outlets stumbled all over themselves in a desperate (and rather blatant) attempt to pitch the news as a reprise of the famous Vietnam withdrawal imagery. The problem, of course, is that there are still tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq -- and, according to the New York Times, the Obama administration is "planning to more than double its private security guards" there (Blackwater anyone?).

That's the story cable news doesn't want you knowing, because it gets in the way of reporters efforts to pretend to be documenting some sort of iconic military history -- when, at least at this moment, it looks like they may be promoting a new version of George W. Bush's infamously misleading Mission Accomplished/"end of major combat operations" declaration back in 2003 -- a typical form of spin that simultaneously reassures a war-weary public and obscures a permanent-war reality.

Now, sure, there is a story in the U.S. government changing it's own official story about Iraq. That's definitely newsworthy and even, perhaps, encouraging because it may ultimately mean the fulfillment of President Obama's campaign pledge to actually, really end the war (and I hope and pray this is, in fact, the case). That is, it may preview a true phased withdrawal and a future of genuine change, rather than just a never-ending game of semantics about the difference between "combat" troops and "military advisers" (a game of semantics, by the way, that notoriously marked the Vietnam occupation and its use of military "advisers").

But for any media outlet to pretend that a change in official policy and rhetoric is akin to the end of the war is arguably as misleading as the "March to War" coverage that led us into this conflict in the first place. And I say that because of what the military itself is telling us not in the glamorous high-spotlight national media, but right here at home where troops and their families live.

Notice today's dispatch from the Colorado Springs Gazette, which has been all but ignored by the national media:
In a matter of days, the seven-year-old Iraq war will officially have a new name: Operation New Dawn. At Fort Carson, however, the new day brings few changes.

In a news conference on post Thursday, representatives of the 4th Infantry Division discussed the future of Fort Carson's infantry soldiers, saying that current and scheduled deployments will resume as planned.

"Our mission has not changed," Maj. Joe Bethel of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team said.


Endless war. Endless unaccountable money being funnelled into these wars. Blank checks for Blackwater, cat food for America's elderly and failing schools for America's children and no jobs for Americas working-age citizens.

Does it really matter anymore who we elect, when one party loves endless war and the other one is so terrified of being labeled weak that they enthusiastically go along? Does it really matter who we elect when BOTH parties are just champing at the bit to make sure people work busing tables at Fuddruckers until they drop dead because they've been pushed out of their living wage jobs? Does it really matter anymore? Or do we just sit and watch it all fall apart?

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