This blog is dedicated to progressive and liberal thought. It also discusses new technology, how technology affects privacy and developments in Russia, China, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Rightardia fully supports the rights of workers to organize, the feminist movement, and all Americans regardless or ethnicity, sex or gender.It uses humor, satire and parody to expose conservative thought for what it truly is: BS! Rightardia contributes to the DNC, DCCC, DSCC and MoveOn.Org.
Showing posts with label military-industrial complex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military-industrial complex. Show all posts
President Barack Obama recently suggested that America’s wars had cost $1 trillion. Reuters suggested that Obama is not being forthright:
Staggering as it is, that figure grossly underestimates the total cost of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S. Treasury and ignores more imposing costs yet to come, according to a study released on Wednesday. The final bill will run at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion
We agree with DI. The life cycle cost alone of the Iraq War was predicted to be $ one trillion during the Bush presidency once the cost of veteran's care was factored in.
It gets worse. Many economists have suggested that 90 per cent of the national debt has been caused by a series of rarely successful wars the US has started since World War 2.
Who has benefited by the is war mongering largess? That would be the military-industrial complex or the defense industry,
Rightardia knows that Muammar Qadaffi is an eccentric person who has done many bad things. but did the US really need to engage itself in another middle eastern war?
Rightardia suspects Obama is more conservative than many Americans suspect.
Americans need to stop the military control of the US democracy, believes professor of law at Northwestern University, Bernardine Dohrn, the former leader of the radical American anti-Vietnam War organization Weather Underground.
“We have grown up in an era of American exceptionalism. The last 70 years, where the US somehow has not bound by the other laws of history, but of course we are bound by these laws.”
Dohrn says that while the hundreds of American military bases abroad constitute a great danger to the world, the militarization at home after 9/11 is also quite significant.
She assures that as veterans of the recent American wars return home, the anti-war movement grows only stronger.
“There is no question that the American people oppose the Iraq war, continue to oppose it and think that we should leave. They oppose the escalation in Afghanistan… and they already oppose the Libyan war.”
It is true that like any other empire, the American hegemony probably declines but its military power remains very strong and that is a “tremendous danger, because you can turn everything into a military opportunity instead of social and human opportunity.”
Wars and the occupation of three countries by the US have certainly brought suffering to the rest of the world, believes the peace activist. She says that is despite the fact such wars cannot be won whatsoever and everybody knows that.
Bernardine Dohrn says people voted for Barack Obama as a peace president – who only brought more military operations abroad, so let’s have an end to this.
The death of Bin Laden should be a moment when we say: yes, America now withdraw from occupation.
The decline of the American economy is becoming particularly apparent with the tremendous acceleration of the income gap in the US over the last decade, making an uprising similar to the situation in the Middle East quite possible in the United States.
“Most of us are getting poorer. A tiny handful, less than one per cent of the population is getting extravagantly wealthy,” Dohrn points out.
“Demilitarizing the entire American economy is our last hope,” Bernardine Dohrn concludes, agreeing that, “In the war on terror the US is also a terrorist.”
Rightradia agrees with Dohrn that the military adventurism needs to stop. Many of the discretionary budget of the federal government goes to defense and these defense dollars benefits a small elite of conservative corporations.
The US produces neatly half of the arms in the world.
The US has been providing a military umbrella to both western Europe and the Middle East. This is one of the reasons the EU and Israel have thrived.
At the turn of the century, the US became a creditor nation because we were selling arms to belligerents in Europe. We have now become the world's biggest belligerent.
Talk about a Republican Sacred Cow: Defense spending! You can be sure the GOP will get in a civil war about defense spending. The country club Republicans love those military-industrial subsidies.
President Barack Obama promised a reset of relations with the rest of the world, greater international cooperation and a recall on George W. Bush’s so-called cowboy diplomacy.
But as the 112th Congress prepares to take their seats after a Republican sweep the US House, it may approve a record setting military spending bill.
The US House has already passed a $725 billion military budget with no debate, the largest single military spending bill in world history.
The numbers, by any stretch, are staggering.
If there is one issue that the both major political parties in the United States agree on it’s the need to decrease federal spending to reduce the national debt.
Even the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen allotted to the problem.“The biggest threat we have to our national security is our debt," he said.
The Federal government's debt is now stands at $13.8 trillion and is projected to hit $20 trillion by the end of the coming decade. This means every American holds more than $10,000 worth of America’s debt.
However, the largest portion of the country’s federal budget is hardly ever questioned. Congressman Jim Moran told RT: “We’re not going to cut the defense budget in half.”
The country’s military budget, now at $725 billion dollars, has become a price tag of epic and historic proportions.
It’s the largest military budget ever! It includes $159 billion dollars for America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst
According to tribal Yemeni tradition, if a dispute has been resolved peacefully, any dagger that has been drawn cannot go back into its scabbard unless it tastes blood. Traditionally, an animal is slaughtered to satisfy its thirst and restore its holder's honour.
Since the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact without a single shot, let alone nuclear warheads, being fired, the 'Greater Middle East' region has been turned into a real theatre of war.
From the Gulf war in 1991 through to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, from Somalia in 1993 to Yemen in 2010, and through Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US military has gone to great lengths to demonstrate its strategic capacity to act in faraway places and to prove its ability to guard and advance US and Western interests.
In no time, military means and out-right war and occupation replaced diplomacy and international law.
In return, the Pentagon's budget has almost doubled from the level it was before 9/11 to surpass the combined military expenditures of all the countries of the world, all under the guise of the 'global war against terror'.
Alas, the costly failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and other countries have demonstrated that the Muslim world is far too stubborn to be offered as a sacrifice in the pursuit of global leadership.
Tribal vs. state identities
Since then, the devastating wars of terror that have taken place in the shadows of accelerated globalisation have weakened state structures and institutions and reinforced tribal and sectarian identities. Regimes not directly affected, took preventative measures by strengthening their grip on power through increased security and tribal alliances.
The US and its regional allies have empowered and financed tribal leaders, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, to defeat unrelenting Islamist opposition or nationalist insurgencies, just as America's enemies have tried to gain the support of tribes for their cause against the "foreigners".
Washington followed in the footsteps of the UK, which boasts extensive experience of tribal politics in its former colonies, to arm and finance tribal leaders to fight its war in Iraq under the guise of "The Awakening" or ''The Sons of Iraq".
Likewise in Afghanistan, where the US built on its long experience with the northern tribes in the 1980s to regain the initiative against the Soviet supported regime in Kabul.
In the process, salient - and not so salient - tribal power has been empowered in all the areas of conflict in the 'Greater Middle East' by undemocratic leaders. Yemen, Libya, Jordan, Palestine and, even failed states like Afghanistan and Somalia, have witnessed the emergence of tribal loyalties and power.
The Intelligence Daily puts the national defense budget in perspective. It is expected to hit almost $1 Trillion dollars in 2010:
The U.S. spends more for war annually than all state governments combined spend for the health, education, welfare, and safety of 308 million Americans.
Economist Joseph Stiglitz and finance authority Linda Bilmes offered these statistics in their book, The Three Trillion Dollar War:
“The Pentagon’s budget has increased by more than $600 billion, cumulatively, since we invaded Iraq.” With its 1,000 bases in the U.S. and another 800 bases globally, the U.S. truly has become a “Warfare State.” Today, military-related products account for about one-fourth of total U.S. GDP. This includes 10,000 nuclear weapons. Indeed, the U.S. has lavished $5.5 trillion just on nukes over the past 70 years.
Who benefits form all od this defense largess? That would be the conservative defense industries.
