WAR! What is it good for?
About $3Tn for the last one since that day in 2003, when Donald Rumsfeld told the American people that the "limited" action we would be taking in Iraq would cost no more than $60Bn. Funny how quickly things can get out of hand – isn't it? Also funny how quickly we forget the mistakes of the recent past:
Rumsfeld, 2/7/03: “It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”
Cheney, 3/16/03: “I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months“
Q: If your analysis is not correct, and we’re not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?
Cheney: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.[Meet the Press, 3/16/03]
No one goes to war for "bad" reasons. No one goes to war expecting to lose, either. We had great reasons to go to war in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Beirut, Libya, Panama, Iraq I, Somailia, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Philippines (yep, in 2002, we sent 1,200 troops), Iraq II…
Let's face it, our NORMAL state of affairs is to be at war, not at peace. That's why the President's Discretionary Budget is 57% guns and only 1% butter (Food and Agriculture). When America meets a hungry person, we would rather kill them than feed them – it's a simple as that!
Look at that pie chart and think about how hard it is for us to find something to cut in our budget. Think of the time your "lawmakers" spend telling you how much water there is in Health Care (5%), Education (6%), Housing Programs (6%) and wasteful Scientific Studies (3%) but, if you cut ALL of those programs by 25%, you would only save 4% of the budget – less than we'd save by cutting the military by 8.5%.
So the decision should be obvious, right? Only it's not because cutting the military is out of the question. And it's kept out of the question by constantly finding a new reason to go to war. Again, LOOK at the chart – we have a WAR econcomy. We don't have an Education Economy, we don't have a Science Economy, we don't have a Government Economy – we have a WAR Econmy, plain and simple.
In fact, Veteran's benefits (5%) are kind of a war thing too, aren't they? And some part of that Government 6% is also related to war (the President himself is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces) so, if we add 5% for the Veterans the wars create and call 2% of the Government Spending warish – even if we pretend that NONE of the other budget items (Science, Education, Transportation, International Affairs) have ANYTHING to do with war – we're still hitting 64% war in our budget to 36% "other."
How did my Kennedy Generation, that founded the PEACE Corps (1961) end up marching off to 11 more wars in 50 years? In the past 12 years alone, US miliary expenditures have jumped from $325Bn in 2001 to $800Bn this year. To put that in perspective, the ENTIRE rest of the World (some of whom we're not even at war with!) spends $816Bn – TOTAL!
Europe spends $289Bn, China $122Bn, the whole Middle East has $82Bn and most of that is Israel and Saudi Arabia and scary old Russia has a $70Bn budget – not even 1/10th of what we spend. And that's just our STANDARD Military budget – the wars are EXTRA – kind of like when a corporation has a "one-time" expense on the books. Only our "one-time" expenses happen 11 times in 50 years and the last one lasted 12 years and cost us $3Tn…
War is a very profitable business and, now that it's such a huge part of our economy, there are those who have a vested interest in it's continuation. In fact, very obviously, their jobs depend on it! How many $100,000 lobbyists can LMT buy for $15M? 150. Well that's not too many as there's 535 Congresspeople but then there's 161 more from BA and 114 from GD and 74 from RTN and 127 from NOC and suddenly, just the top 5 guys are covering 535 Congresspeople with 626 full-time lobbyists. I wonder what would happen if Education or Science did that much lobbying?
Sadly, we'll never know because it's hard enough raising $500 from a bake sale to buy a new Bunsen burner for the science lab so we're a REALLY long way away from rasing $100,000 for a single Education lobbyist, let alone 626 of them. So it's 64% War and 6% Education for America – yipee!
Economically (for us), war is stimulus and despite the sequestration, companies like NOC, LMT, RTN, GD, etc. have been flying up ALL YEAR LONG – almost as if they knew we'd find some reason to go to war long before Syria became the primary target. Any war is a good war for our Defense Industry, as long as we begin firing off $1.4M Tomahwak Missiles at SOMEONE! On March 19th of 2011 – just that ONE day, we tossed 124 of them at Libya. That's $173.6M on just the consumables! I'll bet the local Tomahawk salesman got a fat bonus that quarter…
Before you know it, your "limited action" is a few Billion here and a few Billion there and, if we're really lucky – it turns into a full-scale war and suddenly we're spending more on War each month than we spend on Education all year or solar energy in 20 years. Because, in the end, it has nothing to do with oil or human rights – it's about money – the money that comes out of your pocket, goes to your Government and then to the Defense Contractors, who take more and more each year and, every once in a while, have to prove that they are "necessary."
