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We Can’t Afford War
“General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts,” began the MoveOn.org attack ad against Gen. David Petraeus back in 2007, after he had delivered a report to Congress on the status of the war in Iraq. George W. Bush was president, and MoveOn was accusing Petraeus of “cooking the books for the White House.” The campaign asked “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” on a full-page ad in The Washington Post. MoveOn took tremendous heat for the campaign, but stood its ground.
Three years later, Barack Obama is president, Petraeus has become his man in Afghanistan, and MoveOn pulls the critical Web content. Why? Because Bush’s first war, Afghanistan, has become Obama’s war, a quagmire. The U.S. will eventually negotiate its withdrawal from Afghanistan. The only difference between now and then will be the number of dead, on all sides, and the amount of (borrowed) money that will be spent.
Petraeus’ confirmation to become the military commander in Afghanistan was never in question. He replaces Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who resigned shortly after his macho criticisms of his civilian leadership became public in a recent Rolling Stone magazine article.
The statistics for Afghanistan, Obama’s Vietnam, are surging. June, with at least 102 U.S. and NATO deaths, is the highest number reported since the invasion in 2001. 2010 is on pace to be the year with the highest U.S. fatalities. Similar fates have befallen soldiers from the other, so-called coalition countries. Petraeus is becoming commander not only of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, but of all forces, as the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is run by NATO.
U.S. troops, expected to rise to 98,000 this year, far outnumber those from other nations. Public and political support in many of those countries is waning.
Journalist Michael Hastings, who wrote the Rolling Stone piece, was in Paris with McChrystal to profile him. What didn’t get as much attention was Hastings’ description of why McChrystal was there:
“He’s in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies—to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany’s president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him.”
The whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.org, which received international attention after releasing leaked video from a U.S. attack helicopter showing the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and a Reuters cameraman and his driver in Baghdad, has just posted a confidential CIA memo detailing possible public relations strategies to counter waning public support for the Afghan War. The agency memo reads: “If domestic politics forces the Dutch to depart, politicians elsewhere might cite a precedent for ‘listening to the voters.’ French and German leaders have over the past two years taken steps to preempt an upsurge of opposition but their vulnerability may be higher now.”
I just returned from Toronto, covering the G-20 summit and the protests. The gathered leaders pledged, among other things, to reduce government deficits by 50 percent by 2013. In the U.S., that means cutting $800 billion, or about 20 percent of the budget. Two Nobel Prize-winning economists have weighed in with grave predictions. Joseph Stiglitz said, “There are many cases where these kinds of austerity measures have led to ... recessions into depressions.” And Paul Krugman wrote: “Who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.”
In order to make the cuts promised, Obama would have to raise taxes and cut social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Or he could cut the war budget. I say “war budget” because it is not to be confused with a defense budget. Cities and states across the country are facing devastating budget crises. Pensions are being wiped out. Foreclosures are continuing at record levels. A true defense budget would shore up our schools, our roads, our towns, our social safety net. The U.S. House of Representatives is under pressure to pass a $33 billion Afghan War supplemental this week.
We can’t afford war.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
- Posted in
50 Comments so far
Show AllQuiz for Amy: "who behaves more 'macho' McChrystal or Obama"?
And this is our same Congress that is "reluctant" to act on fixing our public schools. The goal is simple. Kill off all forms of affordable public education and eventually shove more kiddies into militarized obedience schools. After that, it's only a matter of sending these young adults away into wars or into jobs where they're overworked with less pay. Brilliant scheme to prevent populist uprisings. Marie Antoinette and Adolf Hitler would be gloating today.
I keep waiting for mass resignations of the officer corps from the Pentagon, citing their love of country and the willingness to sacrifice themselves for the good of the nation. The Pentagon, with its endless wars, its insanely expensive weapons systems, its biological warfare experiments, is killing the USA, figuratively as economic parasites, and literally as deaths arising from unaffordable health care, from unrepaired infrastrucure, and from climate change catastrophes.
Quitting the field would seem to be contrary to their oath stating, "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..." I expect more people in uniform to do so. We have had many refuse orders to deploy, but I fear this is not enough. Those who have taken correct action do not seem to be getting enough support from the rest of us.
Wouldn't quitting be fulfillment of their oaths to defend the US Constitution? The oath was not to support and defend the Pentagon, nor the military industries, nor their own careers. Our officers are supposedly patriotic men and women who care deeply about the good of the nation and are supposedly ready to sacrifice themselves for the good of the nation. Well, the good of the nation calls for massively reduced military spending, and an immediate end to foreign wars. The USA actually has no need for massive defense forces. Our geographic, demographic, and economic size, and our location between Canada and Mexico leave us with no realistic threats, other than those that we hallucinate ourselves into imagining. Thus, we did scare ourselves to death by imagining that Cuba, Nicaragua, or even Panama or Grenada would invade and conquer us. But look at a map and notice how obviously stupid were those fears. The readiness of the American public and its Pentagon to destroy the USA is amazing. It is one of the wonders of the world.
Serious Citizens, there is "NO!" Constitution. It is merely a dam piece of paper.
The wars will continue, unabated whether "we" like it or not.
It's all apart of "The Grand Chessboard." If you haven't yet read it do so.
There's a malevolent plan which has been in place for years, and we're not going to stop it.
Don't hold your breath, Serious Citizen. It's a lucrative career in certain respects, and they will rationalize why they stay in, follow orders, etc.
“Who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again... cities and states across the country are facing devastating budget crises. Pensions are being wiped out. Foreclosures are continuing at record levels."
The choice is this: Bread. Or bullets.
You can attend to the needs of your own population, or continue to slaughter civilians who happen to occupy land on top of the resources coveted by the corporations.
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
Galenwainwright: Well said! I'm in total agreement.
Well said.
"Today we could have had a new hospital in our community. Instead, we spent the $200 million on the unending and unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tough luck for us." –(Visiting Professor)
–And 70% of the people would cheer the war over the hospital!
The answer to your query as to why there is never any need for a 'public relations strategy' in America.
I love the bumper sticker: So direct and simple, and elegantly exposing so many lies.
A gun on the President and Congress? "What else but fear" ... I wish we knew, but greed for money and power seems a big part of the insanity and lying.
STOP the war(s) NOW. We are at the point that funding these wars is ruining this nation - economically, socially, and spiritually.
STOP the Military Industrial Complex that has prevailed in this nation and that President Eisenhower warned us about many years ago.
I like 'Visiting Professor' a news report of my dreams:
Having said that, at least we have Amy Goodman out there trying to give us the skinny on the crimes our government commits in name of the American people while accepting directions from corporate America.
Add a gas tax to pay for this war and you'll see the public rise up calling for an end faster than you can say "fill 'er up".
Yellow stickers are easy (especailly when it's someone Else's kid), green currency is hard.
artemix June 30th, 2010 11:19 am
As Mary Daly told us "all war is war against women" and the woman inside of men. This becomes more literally true with each passing decade. Now it doesn't even involve risk to the killers. They can play big bad soldiers while sitting at a computer setting off machines to kill innocent women and children. McCrystal recently said that they have killed a lot of people most of them not a threat. So this policy is only making many more enemies for the US. But that may be the point for policy makers who declared the long war that won't end in our lifetimes. It makes a lot of money for Blackwater and Halliburton. As General Smedley Butler told us "war is a racket". and then there is "war is the health of the state".
So the state and its oil, military industrial complex goes on warring and making lots of money for the corporations who in turn feed the politicians and the only mystery is why do the people let their lives and energies and common wealth be consumed by this. One reason is too many keep believing the lies told by the military corporate state to rationalize their murderous but highly profitable racket. Liberals never want to admit that government rules by brute force. So all over the planet women are raped and women, children and other innocents are killed for this macho disgusting racket. And we are trained from birth to think the military is some protector. Even the peace movement now can't start a speech without the obligatory support for the troops.
The cutting of domestic programs will have its greatest effect on women and children who are the poorest sectors of our economy and doubly so if they are black or brown. The entire charade of male authority needs to fall. Surely the recent collapse of the economy and the disaster in the Gulf show the masters have no answers for anything relevant to life on earth.
Perhaps Derrick Jensen is right the sooner we face the truth that we are ruled by force (that is always validated as long as it goes from high status persons to lower) the sooner we can figure out what we will do about it.
Artemix: The shaman of Peru (and all across South America) say that a return of THE (Divine) feminine is in progress after 5000 years of masculine domination. They refer to the U.S. as a masculine/ized culture... their version of "Mars rules." They also believe that the mountain chains are like gigantic snakes, and these are now in a process of awakening (or agitation) that will involve immense earth changes.
Edgar Cayce, Ruth Montgomery, Gordon Michael Scallion, Mary Summer Rain, Yogananda, Sun Bear, and others have spoken about these earth changes and tied them to human activity. Even the Bible sets up the premise that when people stray too far from Divine law (and order), natural events come to disrupt their lives and catalyze collective wake-up calls.
We are on the cusp of such a transition.
"We can't afford war."
Wrong. We cannot afford to not wage war against the war-state and corporate welfare that has overtaken government and civilian life alike. It is not enough to call out the warmonger and corporate "evil-doers" in our midst but to organize and boycott their agendas as greatly as possible. During the Nazi Germany era Jews and quite a great many others were camped in concentration camps, tortured, gassed and exterminated. But now in the U.S. the great period of mass marginalization has been set in motion for a growing faceless multitude which will be left out of the gentrified gated communities in America. It will be a nearly invisible protracted process of growing poverty, despair, suicides and debilitating depression much as the ongoing wars for empire are rendered almost unaccounted for by the mainstream media. Third World Country U.S.A. is here. If you find yourself fallen out of favor with the gated community mindset of new Americana just take a peek south of the border to Mexico for a glimpse of the kind of economic disparities absent of a social safety net that is headed this way.
adnoseum: A friend of mine spent a week in Stockton, California, out in the Central Valley, visiting, about two weeks ago. He said everywhere he went, strangers approached him for spare change, a dollar, food, literally begging for money or something to eat, going so far as asking him to use his credit card to purchase something for them.
60 Minutes did a segment on Stockton last year or the year before on all the foreclosures in that city. It's gotten worse since then.
The swindlers and shysters made sure that got our money from the political prostitutes in Wash. D.C. and the death and destruction industries keep getting lucrative contracts as well as the ever increasing amount of blood money for waging war on this planet, erroneously called the "defense budget," at the Pentagon.
Watch Manufacturing Consent
It takes some time and action on mute, but it's very worthwhile.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/118171/manufacturing-consent
The American people are extremely gullible, complacent, & easy to milk. The ruling elite are just making the most of their opportunities. Progressive media (ie: Wikileaks) and their supporters could play a major role in some badly needed major reforms.
As they say, the truth will set us free. When most Americans know the horrible truths about the military industrial complex, they won't want to finance it, they'll want to abolish it.
999999999999999999
"So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word "victory" when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible..."
The Runaway General..., Rolling Stone, Michael Hastings
999999999999999999
"The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects... the object is not victory... but [perpetual war] to keep the very structure of [our deception & greed based, imperialist, oligarchical] society intact."
George Orwell
==================
"We can't afford war".
Amy--who is this "we" you are referring to?
If you mean the overwhelming majority of the US (and world) working population, then this is obviously correct.
Unfortunately, the financial oligarchy cannot NOT afford war--it's the big ace up their sleeve.
Time to start fully exploring diverging class interests?
"Unfortunately, the financial oligarchy cannot NOT afford war..." –(eyerag)
–Correct.
As long as America is left standing there will be war as it is the only thing it can still do.
Or even wants to do.
There is no evidence that America wants to do anything else except refine its economic rapacity and make its death technology more abjectly efficient and mortifying.
Spending the money elsewhere would be tantamount to a suicidal self immolation for the ruling elites. It is utterly absurd to believe that this would come about in an act of beneficent voluntarism and social largesse; nor will it come about through the mandated directives of a dysfunctional and pathetic 'Democracy.'
And besides, America is beyond the point where a polite, self administered contrition is even remotely sufficient. In fact, it would be an obscenity, were it not an impossibility to begin with. There will be no quarter given.
95% of Americans could be against these serial wars and still the wars would continue inexorably, without respite–even metastasizing in their malignancy.
Yet that little political delirium would be like snow in Hell.
In America, the numbers either directly or tacitly supporting war are always likely to rise rather than fall.
But then for America war is not about numbers on either side of the equation. Any equation.
Such is the spirit, the metastasis of the American demiurge. Like a paroxysm of organism, things proceed as they must and as only they can.
In essence it like a collective insanity. Man has always been a SOCIAL creature. Studies have show amongst primates that when a foundling seperated from the Society it grows Anti-Social and ill. It becomes mentally unstable.
In another topic they speak of eating disorders like anorexia and orthorexia nervosa. These are not the result of Genetics but are "learned behaviours" wherein the individual develops a mental condition due to the society in which said individual resides.
Eating disorders because the food is seen as poisened, or because being underweight is seen as normal. It no great stretch to suggest a people always under surveillance will see more paranoia.
Nor is it to suggest that a society where "War is the health of the state" , one where violent military force is used against peoples the world over for what is in essence entire lifetimes and where the economic system promotes competition to better oneself at the expense of a neighbor (dog eat dog) leads to segments of that population growing mentally ill.
War is an illness, a cancer on the body of the state and of the citizens of that state. The way the United States "treats" this illness is more weapons and more war.
The fact that not everybody gets anorexia nervosa also indicates that there IS an underlying biological/genetic predisposition to it. Societal and environmental factors are only part of the reason why people develop such disorders. For example, if a relative (either close or distant) of a given person has or has had an eating disorder, chances are that the person will also develop the same kind of eating disorder.
What's going to stop them from printing up all the $ that they want?
"Gee...sorry honey, but I can't afford to buy you another war this year."...(American ethics and morality meter continues to climb toward the top of endangered species list)..."sweetie...yes sugar buns...could you pour me some more chamomile tea, I want to read these articles and compare just what kind of return on investment we can make between subsidizing Global Oil Corp with the killing of people in Africa and Iraq and keeping the parks open in Detroit...hmm...how do you feel about it? Half a dozen of one, 6 of the other?...yeah, it's a close one, but for some reason I'll go with the parks"(sip, sip...ahhhh...zzzzzz).
Doesn't the military use up almost half of all our oil supplies? So the wars (occupation and genocide) over oil is still about keeping the war machine going - same problem that Hitler had...
Entirely apt.
Miggy,
Indeed.
One of the largest reasons why Americans have become so complacent about the occupations and their costs is because the mainstream media has learned its lesson from Vietnam and that is not to put too much of a human face on the occupation of Afghanistan by showing how military aggression takes its toll upon its victims and that would be both the Afghans and the soldiers who get blown up by the Afghans who are defending their country against the United States. It would seem that the strategy for the corporate media is to keep the American public as uninformed as possible. The less exposure that they have to human suffering the less likely that Americans will feel any rage toward their government concerning the fiasco in the Middle East. A prime example of out of sight=out of mind.
Black is white; up is down; war is peace; Homeland Security; War on Terror, Clear Skies Initiative, Healthy Forests, compassionate conservative...
Perception is reality and ours has been intensively stage-managed for a long time. When the truth gets in the way of profits, we know which one wins.
The "wars" are only hastening the fall of the United States.
There are a few other inconvenient truths we really haven't been paying attention to, in part because they have been actively hidden from us. You've probably heard of some of them. We are facing a confluence of crises: Environmental, Economic, and Energy Shortages. The fact that all of this is coming to a head in the near future is no accident- just the inevitable natural consequences of human behavior. Check out, "Crash Course," and Chis Martenson on Youtube for the most complete description of why this is all coming down at this moment in history and what we might expect to see in the course of the next decade. You NEED to see this.
And stop funding Israel.
In the 65 yeaars of my life the USA has never been out of war or trying to start one. Dwight D. was right about the military-industrial complex. All we have to do now is add the medical-industrial complex. We will never be without a war/s that we are forced to pay for nor a free country without industrial execs robbing us blind. And we thought the robber barrons were stealing our rights, wealth and country!
You're absolutely on target, Amy! And now the Repugs (or GOP
[Greedy Old Parasites] and Tea partiers are up in arms about the terrible deficit that the country is in to the point that they don't want economic reform, they don't want any government regulation of the finance industry, health care reform, extension of unemployment benefits and other such so-called "socialistic" actions. How often do they need to be reminded that our country had a balanced budget before te Cheney/Bush regime took over and expanded our warring ventures (after first enabling a false-flag event on 9/11 to get things going; whether or not it was a LIHOP or MIHOP event), and then giving those vast military ventures special
fund status outside the regular budget as though it could hide the toll they were taking on our nation's balance sheet.
Repugs, Demons, they are all the same, owned by the corporations. Vote No D, No R. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me thirty times and no wonder you think I'm an idiot.
Ironblood,
Well stated.
Hmmm....George perhaps you should look at the Democratic Party too.
The Dems are as filthy as the Repugs--they are one in the same.
Bring America Back !!!!
**Yes, and Gatekeeper Amy knows well we cannot afford any
more skyscrapers being demolished in lower Manhattan, like
Building Number 7, World Trade Center, for example !
**Except, that Larry Silverstein can well afford it, and
guess which skyscraper has been completely re-built, and
re-modeled already at Ground Zero ??
**The Saloman Brothers Building holds the key.
i admire ms goodman' writings including this one, partially. and i write partially because she, regretably, put her emphasis on the war that IT BECAME EXCLUSIVE PROPERTY OF THE US or THE US EMPHASIS IS TO CUT THE DEFICIT BY 50% BY 2013, etc items that have no merits at all on conduting wars if we led to believe the advertised standings of the US in the world.what is missing is: whatever happened to the bragging about the high moral charecters of the US poeple.or their just wars against aggressors. could it be that they were never there to begin with? or their substantial war powers and materiale has created a level of arrogance that didn't exit before(you wish),or their economic need led them to force their war to grab from poor nations their natural resorces( industrial diaminds or heavy metals or their oils or or)that enticed them to sweeten it as so-called preventive wars?
Silly me, I was hoping that day one the president who was against this war from the start would end our occupation in essence saying "F U" to the bush admin, but instead he has expanded it.
Information Clearinghouse lists the following figures on their home page:
Cost of War in Iraq & Afghanistan
$1,011,645,608,309
Just imagine what the United States of Oil could have done with that tidy sum of money if it had chosen to invest on its people instead?
$7 billion a month in Afghanistan?
Erstwhile, the "Merican" people seem to enjoy the facist iced cake.
Good article! I would wholeheartedly agree with cuttting not just the war budget in Afghanistan, but also Iraq!
As to MoveOn, where are they now? As of late they have become one of the president's more vocal cheerleading squads, conveniently ignoring his policy to expand the war.
The anti-war movement must reorganize and begin pressuring Congress and the president to end both wars! If it takes shutting down D.C. for a day, then so be it!
We put an end to the aggression in Vietnam not through politicians, but despite the politicians through mass struggle! It's time to use old, but proven tactics!
The Chinese and the contractors are "winning" the war.One financing terrorism and the other profiting. The Chinese see the USSR. History.