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Wars Sending US into Ruin
U.S. President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America's economic health.
In fact, it's another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug - debt.
More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying tanks.
Washington's deficit (the difference between spending and income from taxes) will reach a vertiginous $1.6 trillion US this year. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and Japan, to which the U.S. already owes $1.5 trillion. Debt service will cost $250 billion.
To spend $1 trillion, one would have had to start spending $1 million daily soon after Rome was founded and continue for 2,738 years until today.
Obama's total military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes Pentagon spending of $880 billion. Add secret black programs (about $70 billion); military aid to foreign nations like Egypt, Israel and Pakistan; 225,000 military "contractors" (mercenaries and workers); and veterans' costs. Add $75 billion (nearly four times Canada's total defence budget) for 16 intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees.
The Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far), will cost $200-250 billion more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama's Afghan "surge" of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion - more than Germany's total defence budget.
No wonder U.S. defence stocks rose after Peace Laureate Obama's "austerity" budget.
Military and intelligence spending relentlessly increase as unemployment heads over 10% and the economy bleeds red ink. America has become the Sick Man of the Western Hemisphere, an economic cripple like the defunct Ottoman Empire.
The Pentagon now accounts for half of total world military spending. Add America's rich NATO allies and Japan, and the figure reaches 75%.
China and Russia combined spend only a paltry 10% of what the U.S. spends on defence.
There are 750 U.S. military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 service members stationed abroad, 116,000 in Europe, nearly 100,000 in Japan and South Korea.
Military spending gobbles up 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of tax revenues. During the Bush administration, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - funded by borrowing - cost each American family more than $25,000.
Like Bush, Obama is paying for America's wars through supplemental authorizations - putting them on the nation's already maxed-out credit card. Future generations will be stuck with the bill.
This presidential and congressional jiggery-pokery is the height of public dishonesty.
America's wars ought to be paid for through taxes, not bookkeeping fraud.
If U.S. taxpayers actually had to pay for the Afghan and Iraq wars, these conflicts would end in short order.
America needs a fair, honest war tax.
The U.S. clearly has reached the point of imperial overreach. Military spending and debt-servicing are cannibalizing the U.S. economy, the real basis of its world power. Besides the late U.S.S.R., the U.S. also increasingly resembles the dying British Empire in 1945, crushed by immense debts incurred to wage the Second World War, unable to continue financing or defending the imperium, yet still imbued with imperial pretensions.
It is increasingly clear the president is not in control of America's runaway military juggernaut. Sixty years ago, the great President Dwight Eisenhower, whose portrait I keep by my desk, warned Americans to beware of the military-industrial complex. Six decades later, partisans of permanent war and world domination have joined Wall Street's money lenders to put America into thrall.
Increasing numbers of Americans are rightly outraged and fearful of runaway deficits. Most do not understand their political leaders are also spending their nation into ruin through unnecessary foreign wars and a vainglorious attempt to control much of the globe - what neocons call "full spectrum dominance."
If Obama really were serious about restoring America's economic health, he would demand military spending be slashed, quickly end the Iraq and Afghan wars and break up the nation's giant Frankenbanks.
128 Comments so far
Show All"what neocons call 'full spectrum dominance.'"
And I call full rectum . . .
The blood on Obama's hands and now his arms will soon be equaled by the mountain of debt he continues to grow with abandon.
I think there is a "don't ask, don't tell" joke in there somewhere but I just can't quite put my finger on it... ;-)
nah - just a load of shit.
however - your reading has merit.
i call it "full rectum incompetence."
So, the obvious answer is that this is intentional.
If the 'powers that be' wanted to 'fix' things, it would look quite different.
And YES regarding full spectrum dominance. That is a fact. It has been stated, as such.
The u.s. is in line to be a 'third world' nation. And the only employment will be military or surveillence. Isn't it obvious that is how things are moving?
To pretend this is all incompetence or a few rogues, etc. is to be so entranced with assumptions about america and american exceptionalism as to be out of touch with reality.
This war budget turns out to be nearly 30% of the total budget of $3,800,000,000 (which doesn't I think cover non-discretionary spending which adds nearly 2 trillion to the total reducing the ratio of Pentagon to TOTAL budget to 1/6 or 1/7).
Let's go with the nearly 3 bucks for every 10 tax dollars as it is easier to explain and more frightening to the public.
Gary
“Budget: A method for going broke methodically”
-- unknown
"... 3 bucks for every 10 tax dollars ..."
Look at the forecasted deficit, probably closer to 40% of the budget due to very rapidly decresing tax revenues. I calculate it at "3 bucks for every" 6 tax dollars. It could be stated that the entire sum used to finance the US Empire and its wars is borrowed--that the rest of the world is paying for the USE and its bloodlust. Several years ago, I made the observation that if the world wanted peace all it had to do was quit loaning the US Empire the monies to break the peace.
For example, if the Chinese get incensed due to USE arms sales to Taiwan, then they could easily stop such sales by refusing to buy USE debt. While it's clear that our Imperial politicos don't listen to us folks, we ought to try lobbying those countries purchasing US debt by telling them bluntly to stop fueling war that threatens their own national security.
Gary, your budget is 3 zeros short. Understandable at these astronomical type numbers.
It doesn't take weapons to make war. People from all sides of the political spectrum are capable of creating wars and creating peace. I was campaigning tirelessly for Ralph Nader the year before last but not a single peace group wanted to give Ralph a chance. They said that we should have "faith" that Obama will turn things around and give us peace. So where's that turnaround? Yeah, that's what I thought.
How many of you who voted for Obama will vote for him again should you read this article? How many of you will vote Republican if they trick you into believing that they will reduce the Pentagon budget if they come to power? How many of you will show your support for independent progressives such as Nader and Mckinney?
I think you're hinting that neither party can be trusted. You'd be right.
We will definitely vote only for HONEST MINORITY CANDIDATES.
The defense and security budgets are massively out of control, but no one dares to touch these sacred cows. People are to fixated on the entitlement programs, which are comparatively easy to fix, but would require tax increases--there's a third rail issue right there. I would rather see Obama in there right now than Bush, Cheney, Palin, or McCain, but if Obama is being stiff-armed on very modest reforms by Republicans and Tea Party Know-Nothings, how far do you think a real socialist or libertarian would get?
The trouble is that every business and institution in this country becomes a special interest with a claim on Federal revenues and a constituency on Capitol Hill. We are just spectators, when this whole government is supposed to be about us.
Jeff, this government has never been about us.
It took us long enough to notice---but since we have noticed, why should it continue?
The military budget should be cut to one tenth it's present size. Nobody earning under $250,00.00 should pay taxes. Single payer health care. Nobody should be homeless. Corporations are not people. No person, corporation, or any other entity may contribute to the any political campaign including his/her own. Public financing of all campaigns. There will be no laws prohibiting the sale of any drug. Withdrawal of all troops stationed abroad, with our apologies.
Do this and everyone will be safe and secure. Don't want to? Profits to be made? Bummer.
Obama isn't being "stiff-armed" by anyone other than himself. Tommorrow, he could announce the immediate rollback of the entire US Empire, while resubmitting the Pentagon's budget. TOMMORROW.
Reminds me of a sign above the bar at Tommy's Joint in San Francisco.
"Free Drinks Tomorrow!"
And if Obama did what you want how long would he last? An assasination, a coup de'etat?, a resignation. Maybe a MLK like statement about how he was willing to give up his life for his country. Does Margolis think we live in a Democracy?
America had a MIC coup d'tat on November 22, 1963, ever since then the defense budget ( which is really the offensive war budget for the MIC) has been off the table and treated like a sacred cow. Any President that attempts to slash it would be signing his death warrant.
I agree, Paul, but the MIC nevertheless felt they needed another coup d'état at the turn of the millennium, and thus we got the stolen election of 2000, followed by phase II of the coup on 9/11/01, reinforced by phase III in the stolen election of 2004. By the 2008 election, the levers of power were so firmly in the hands of the military-financial axis that they could put their money on the younger horse and still keep the death-ship sailing smoothly. Until when? Until the next coup, when even all pretense to civil rights and open discussion are suppressed? All it would take would be another "terror attack," which we're being told could already be in the offing.
Clovis I agree, most progressives know that it is not if, but when, there will be another false flag, but my hope would be that this time many Americans will not be fooled again. The good news is more and more Americans are realizing the false flag of 911 and back in 2002 when I mentioned this, many people called me a nut case and many other pejoratives as most said that the government would not kill almost 3,000 of its own citizens and when I would mention that they killed about 55,000 during the Vietnam war which was based on the false flag in the Gulf of Tonkin it seemed to fall on deaf ears, but now more and more people seem to be waking up.
"but my hope would be that this time many Americans will not be fooled again."
Be careful with that hope stuff, Paul.
This is in fact something to cause people more worry.
Those in power well know that another event on the scale of a 9/11 may be seen as a "false flag". Therefore they will conclude that in order to sell it to the public as an attack by "Terrorists" , the next 9/11 will have to increase in magnitude some 20 times over.
I think you're quite right. It's the nature of that possible attack that has me worried. I think a nuke attack is out, it would be a horrible thing but honestly that wouldn't kill enough people and it would be too limited in damage caused. A nuke would also be too hard to pin on a group of people who supposedly are striking from caves. Chemical warfare also has the limitation of not enough damage and not likely to come from a 'cave dwelling' source'.
No, a far more likely 'next next Pearl Harbour' would be a biological attack. Foot and mouth disease spread to the cattle and pigs in the overcrowded conditions they're raised in would be devastating to the economy, but wouldn't kill that many people. Unfortunately using any other method of bio-warfare would generate quite the huge death toll. Worse, when using biowarfare the effects of the attack cannot be contained in any one nation's borders, it would be a global attack. And if the us 'elite' was caught using that form of war against the world, then the nukes would indeed fly.
Howz this scenario?
What struck me in September 2001 was that, in spite of the error about the perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing just a few years before (when many figured that 'them Arabs done it.'), government spokespersons immediately used the words 'act of war.' to describe what was happening in NYC and at the Pentagon. I thought it odd that they did not wait to find out more about the attacks before deciding it a crime, or an act of war.
I concluded that there was a good chance that somebody with lowly designs was watching the reaction to the Ok City bombing, and filing away info on it for future use in America.
In the same way, I now think that the anthrax incidents, that came into the public view, then, mysteriously disappeared, were never adequately addressed. My paranoia (which almost never lets me down) says to me that someone with dark designs was looking at the anthrax incidents as a trial run of some kind.
they can also use that as an excuse to encamp entire communities or populations or if need be "classes" and also "persons of interest"...but under changing justifications for every case such as:
"for health reasons - to prevent the spread of disease"...
"for preventing street crimes and looting" in the case of even worsened economic times
"to ensure neighborhood safety" ..
it can be anything any security underling or "adviser" or "consultant" can dream of...
and for a country that is already long-obsessed with 'safety' and 'security'...
it will be a very easy sell:
SAFETY ...we are protecting you...please comply....
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over,”
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany
1897-1945
----------------------------------
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same for any country."
Herman Goering to Gustave Gilbert at Nuremberg, 18 April, 1946
---------------------------------------
The only thing that has changed is the billion$ spent on psy-ops to be sure that they are ever more effective, and the sheeple more easily led.
If you are not busy combing your state for real progressive candidates to run in the up coming Democratic primaries,you will be conceding the November elections to the tea baggers and the far right wing fringe of the Republican party. It is time to pull the plug on the right wing Republicans and the center right corporate Democrats who are both driving this country to ruin. It should be clear by now that everything Obama is doing is nothing more than warmed over supply side economics. Everything for big corporate intrests, nothing but lip service for the American People. Senator Dodd sounds more and more like a lobbyist everyday, and Max Baucus wants to do to the jobs bill what he did for the healthcare bill.
You can be sure that any person that receives the support of the Democratic party has been hand picked by Rahm Emanuel for their pro corporate loyalties. Let's face it, if either the republicans make any gains or the Democrats hold on to power in November, the country as a whole will probably never be able to recover! It is time to knock off as many corporate Democrats as we can in the primaries so as to turn this country around in November.
If you are not sure of you'r Congresspersons' or you'r Senators' voting record on critical bills you can Google "Progressive Punch" and search it's data base for the voting records of all Congressmen and Senators.
"U.S. President Barack Obamageddon calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America's economic health."
Mr. Obamageddon is determined to bankrupt this nation. Once bankrupted, Social Security, Medicare, and every social safety net can be renegotiated just like the GM bankruptcy and the unions.
This is his plan. He hates Americans. And most voted for it.
"This is his plan. He hates Americans."
I think not. Your country is so far down the road to economic collapse that there is no turning back. He's simply kicking the can a little further down that road of no return.
he does?
try this one:
"Richard Perles corporate adventures"
shorrock/the nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030421/shorrock
what about these guys?
We simply cannot afford to continue these entitlement programs. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid need to be terminated. Otherwise we won't be able to continue invading and occupying mineral resource rich countries. It is, after all, simply a matter of priorities.
your sense of sarcasm and irony is Brilliant!
Like the headlined article on climate change sceptics being funded by ExxonMobil, this is also from an non-American paper, which 99.9% (SWAG) of the American people will never see. US papers and media outlets are primarily interested in keeping on the gravy-train of corporate ads, political and otherwise, so will never rock the status quo by revealing the depth of the caca that America is in. But you all know that already!
Guns or butter?
The vainglorious illusion of empires is that they can get the butter with guns, as well they can... for a while. But it all must come to an end: unsustainable.
I agree.
We need to pay attention to President Eisenhower's dire warning about the potential danger of an overpowering Military Industrial Complex. He states in the following excerpt from his farewell speech . . .
--------------------------
"The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight."
-----------------------
It seems as though we are totally disregarding the dire warning contained in this President's grave and prescient statement!!!! How are we doing as "an alert and knowledgeable citizenry???"
Our current path is leading nowhere but to total fiscal breakdown!!!
Read "Z1" and "Martian Bachelor". They're correct. Now is the time for every enviro- group, women's group, anti-poverty workers, unions, etc. to stage locally-based, grass roots campaigns for EVERY office, local, state and federal. Massive citizens' efforts to work around the inevitable media blackout... Leafletting at intersections and at malls, door-to-door outreach, banners on freeway overpasses. Hell, with all the separate groups out there, we definitely have the numbers! No charismatic leader to assassinate, discredit or ignore, just a basic slate that reflects Americans' real concerns: Slash "Defense" spending and transfer the money to a WPA-style green energy/conservation campaign that provides jobs and clean domestic energy, end the Drug War and homelessness, Democratic control of the money system (end the Fed, fund state banks), MediCare "E", sustainable agriculture... Contact already-organized groups, coordinate with them, pick candidates, and run them all, from the school boards to the Senate, on one slate to maximize your impact. Instead of 100 groups trying to do 100 (admittedly worthwhile) things to mitigate the effects of the Ruling Cliche, let's all work together to remove them from power. What else are you going to do for the next year?
You mean, you want another community organizer elected? Look what happened to Obama, a community organizer turned conniving war criminal Uncle Tom.
Once someone from any environmental group, or women's group, anti-poverty workers, unions, etc. gets elected, they're corrupted and bought by lobbyists. Human nature won't change. Greed and money speak louder, always. Humans are rotten sorry to break the news.
"More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying tanks."
Funny Margolis accepts this Reaganesque interpretation of the fall of the USSR. Gorbachev denied it then and denies it now. The fall of the USSR had to do with internal contradictions within its economic system, not with excessive military spending made necessary by the United States arms expenditures. I won't give Reagan (or Carter, for that matter) credit for destroying the Soviet Union through bloated military budgets.
Those internal contradictions were (at least partly) caused by spending 50-60% of the nations gdp on its military. It wasn't the only reason that the ussr fell, neither was military spending the only reason the Roman, the British, the French or the Spanish empires fell. But spending so much money on something that gave such little return did not help those empires to survive in the end. Nor will spending twice what the rest of the world spends on weapons keep the usa 'safe' from those who actually mean to do harm to the usa. If Bin Ladin is a real person, and not another E. Goldstein, then his plan to bring about the end of the usa by small attacks is working wonderfully. You've bankrupted yourselves tilting at the Al Queda windmill. Well done, Don Quixote lives again!
You're quite right to say that it wasn't the west that brought about an end to the ussr through excessive spending on our militaries. The sov's did that to themselves, because they were (justifiably?) paranoid about someone else attacking them. The Russians have had a very long history of being invaded, when you talk to them they don't always start with the 20th century either. They've still not forgotten what happened when Genghis Khan crossed the Steppes a few centuries ago. They know that the state of Kievan Rus was founded by Viking invaders back in the 800s.
Some argue that the United States military spending under Reagan actually impeded regime change in the Soviet Union. You might want to read this point of view by Blum in Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/blum06072004.html
thank you for the link, drosera.
i believe that whatever happened to the USSR - it was already on the way to dissolving anyway. the USA and reagan merely tipped the balance to accelerate it by coaxing the Soviets to enlarge their commitment in afghanistan...which was in its own way a ruthless and malicious kind of behavior , since the soviets were hardly convinced themselves that , with their own internal problems and economic mismanagement, expanding themselves to hold on to another country was simply untenable...but as some former russian military commanders had said: they were trapped into a situation where they could not also afford the afghan crises to spill over into russia - thus having to "go in".
I do not recall which former nixon cabinet member it was who said:
the "soviet threat" was something the USA officials had always exaggerated "for public consumption"....
just as they do NOW about the terrorism threats...
just as they are already drumming up guns of war against iran as (as of yesterday, by another US official)
"the greatest single threat to the world is Iran's nuclear bombs"....
as IF they had evidence of both capability and intent...just like they behaved with against iraq.
the pattern here is clear in history...
whether it was concerning the rivalry and intent to be the "lord empire" against the Spanish empire or germany or japanese or china or russia - or other countries that the USA has actually invaded and stolen land from (such as mexico)...
it is the USA that is the world's main provocateur to entrap regions to give the usa an excuse "for public consumption" to invade, conquer and "re-order" according to ITS imperial designs.
that much is clear. it is a pattern that spans time since against the Native indians - and place .
The "Cold War" may have started out as a way Churchill invented to keep America and Western Europe together after WWII, but it quickly became an excuse to continue enormous military expenditures. It laid the foundations for the present militarized America and, at its end, the combined forces of the arms industry, the Pentagon, and a Congress beholden to military expenditures, saw to it there would be no "peace dividend." Most Americans, in poll after poll, believe we are not overspending on the military--so the victory of the MIC is complete.
and when the "cold war" was over - triumphantly declared by the west in fact, as a way of self-congratulation ....to borrow your superb phrase:
"it quickly became an excuse for NATO expansion"
which is now Deep into ..............uh........
asia.....far away from "north atlantic".....
duh!
Eric Margolis has been pointing all of this out for years, and clearly his work is not done.
One small quibble: "Future generations will be stuck with the bill."
I don't think this is exactly right, since it implies that those in the next few generations will pay it. Certainly, future generations may be presented with the bill, but it is unlikely that they will pay it, because the bill will exceed the value of the nation's production and assets (i.e. it will be bankrupt, which it may technically be at present anyway). OTOH, future Americans may indeed pay the bill the same way one pays a restaurant tab in lieu of money -- washing dishes. Future generations of Americans will likely see the tables turned and find themselves enslaved in the same way as present 3rd world workers. We see the beginnings of this already.
The "wars" (for those of you that choose to call them that)are lining the pockets of the rich. It has nothing to do with America, jobs, or terrorism. It's just about money. It really is a simple as dollars.
The leaders of America are using her as a whore. They take what they want and give back nothing. They walk on a red carpet, stained that way from the blood of thousands. The lies and manipulation are completely out of control.
While most of America has been blinded by the fog of the "health care reform" (A VERY LOW LEVEL AND INSIGNIFICANT ISSUE COMPARED TO THE LOSS OF LIFE) only a few have stayed focused on the REAL issue which is the "war" and always has been.
While American zombies droned on about the stupid health care, Obama was able to expand the entire Afghanistan operation right under your noses.
>>>>>The leaders of America are using her as a whore. They take what they want and give back nothing.
At least a whore gets paid for her services. What do we get besides a good reaming?
The Clap.