Showing posts with label military spending. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military spending. Show all posts
From the It's-A-Dark-Cloud-That-Doesn't-Have-A-Silver-Lining Desk:
The House Appropriations Committee this week approved its $690.2 billion version of the fiscal 2020 defense spending bill, sending the measure to the House floor.
In good news, the panel adopted an amendment by California Rep. Barbara Lee to repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which opponents across the political spectrum have derided as a blank check for war. Lee's proposal would sunset the AUMF eight months after the spending bill becomes law.
For the record, total military spending is "budgeted" at $733 billion when contingency costs and nuclear-related funding are added.
A billion here, a billion there, etc.
There may be a door opening to opponents of military adventurism and unbridled military spending. Politico says that House Armed Services ranking Democrat Adam Smith from Seattle is poised to take over as chairman and likely give the Pentagon some heartburn.
The Washington state congressman has often decried his fellow lawmakers for ducking tough choices on the defense budget and big ticket military programs and has said he'll take a skeptical eye to historically high military spending enacted by Republicans over the past two years.
He's also made clear he'll beef up the panel's oversight of U.S. military operations abroad, including our support for the Saudi-led coalition battering Yemen, and work to roll back Trump's plans to modernize and expand the nuclear arsenal.
Stay tuned.
SNAFU
We spent $13 billion on a naval vessel that can't access its own bombs. "The $13 billion Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the U.S. Navy’s costliest warship, was delivered last year without elevators needed to lift bombs from below deck magazines for loading on fighter jets."
So tell me again how we can't afford Medicare for All.
The rest of the story:
U.S. Navy’s Costliest Carrier Was Delivered Without Elevators to Lift Bombs: Futuristic elevator’s ‘uncommanded movements’ among problems by Anthony Capaccio (Bloomberg)
Don't think we need a radical change in political leadership?
Consider this:
The US House of Representatives voted Thursday afternoon to approve the federal budget for the current fiscal year, including a record $695 billion for the Pentagon, the largest amount ever, and more than half the total. The budget passed by a bipartisan vote of 256-167, with majorities of both Republicans and Democrats supporting it.
Our Feckless Democrats
Ten Democrats thwarted the (albeit mild) effort of Sen. Bernie Sanders and his allies to tap the brake on the permanent war machine.
Note that the celebrated Alabama Dem Doug Jones is on this list of shame, so that was a big win. And look what the people of Rhode Island contributed to this defeat. The ten warmongers are
On the other hand, five Republicans voted for the bill -- Collins (Me), Daines (Mont), Lee (Utah), Moran (Ks) and Paul (Ky), so there's that.Menendez (NJ)
Coons (Del.)
Masto (Nev.)
Donnelly (Ind.)
Heitkamp (N.D.)
Manchin (W.V.)
Nelson (Fla.)
Reed (R.I.)
Jones (Ala.)
Whitehouse (R.I.)
The Long War
A new 'Costs of War' report published by Brown University's Watson Institute shows the actual costs incurred by the U.S. as part of its global 'war on terror' that widely contradicts the cost of war figures put together by the Pentagon in its report.
Some of the Costs of War Project’s main findings include:
370,000 people have died due to direct war violence, including armed forces on all sides of the conflicts, contractors, civilians, journalists, and humanitarian workers.
It is likely that many times more than 370,000 people have died indirectly in these wars, due to malnutrition, damaged infrastructure, and environmental degradation.
200,000 civilians have been killed in direct violence by all parties to these conflicts.
Over 6,800 US soldiers have died in the wars.
We do not know the full extent of how many US service members returning from these wars became injured or ill while deployed.
Many deaths and injuries among US contractors have not been reported as required by law, but it is likely that at least 6,900 have been killed.
10.1 million million Afghan, Iraqi, and Pakistani people are living as war refugees and internally displaced persons, in grossly inadequate conditions.*
The US has made an estimated 76 drone strikes in Yemen, making the US arguably at war in that country.
The wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad.
The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades with some costs, such as the financial costs of US veterans’ care, not peaking until mid-century.
US government funding of reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan has totaled over $170 billion. Most of those funds have gone towards arming security forces in both countries. Much of the money allocated to humanitarian relief and rebuilding civil society has been lost to fraud, waste, and abuse.
The cost for the Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan wars totals about $4.8 trillion. This does not include future interest costs on borrowing for the wars, which will add an estimated $8 trillion through 2054.
The ripple effects on the US economy have also been significant, including job loss and interest rate increases.
Both Iraq and Afghanistan continue to rank extremely low in global studies of political freedom.
Women in Iraq and Afghanistan are excluded from political power and experience high rates of unemployment and war widowhood.
Compelling alternatives to war were scarcely considered in the aftermath of 9/11 or in the discussion about war against Iraq. Some of those alternatives are still available to the US.
* Source: The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) (2015).
Some of the Costs of War Project’s main findings include:
370,000 people have died due to direct war violence, including armed forces on all sides of the conflicts, contractors, civilians, journalists, and humanitarian workers.
It is likely that many times more than 370,000 people have died indirectly in these wars, due to malnutrition, damaged infrastructure, and environmental degradation.
200,000 civilians have been killed in direct violence by all parties to these conflicts.
Over 6,800 US soldiers have died in the wars.
We do not know the full extent of how many US service members returning from these wars became injured or ill while deployed.
Many deaths and injuries among US contractors have not been reported as required by law, but it is likely that at least 6,900 have been killed.
10.1 million million Afghan, Iraqi, and Pakistani people are living as war refugees and internally displaced persons, in grossly inadequate conditions.*
The US has made an estimated 76 drone strikes in Yemen, making the US arguably at war in that country.
The wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad.
The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades with some costs, such as the financial costs of US veterans’ care, not peaking until mid-century.
US government funding of reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan has totaled over $170 billion. Most of those funds have gone towards arming security forces in both countries. Much of the money allocated to humanitarian relief and rebuilding civil society has been lost to fraud, waste, and abuse.
The cost for the Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan wars totals about $4.8 trillion. This does not include future interest costs on borrowing for the wars, which will add an estimated $8 trillion through 2054.
The ripple effects on the US economy have also been significant, including job loss and interest rate increases.
Both Iraq and Afghanistan continue to rank extremely low in global studies of political freedom.
Women in Iraq and Afghanistan are excluded from political power and experience high rates of unemployment and war widowhood.
Compelling alternatives to war were scarcely considered in the aftermath of 9/11 or in the discussion about war against Iraq. Some of those alternatives are still available to the US.
* Source: The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) (2015).
From the Won't-Be-Fooled-Again Desk:
It's outrageous that America is the only developed country that doesn't provide paid family leave. If you agree join Hillary's campaign today! -- Daily KosReally? That's the criterion we're supposed to use to choose the next president?
How about out-of-control military spending? Is that outrageous? What's she going to do about that?Banks too big to fail? Pretty outrageous, you'd think. Will Goldman Sachs let her do anything about them?
Economic injustice? Outrageous. She's a big populist now; what's her plan?
Surveillance State abuses: Outrageous. If she has a solution, it's a secret.
Her actions at State that helped to create outrageous messes in Afghanistan, Honduras and Libya. What will she do about them?
The chaos in Syria and Iraq: Outrageous. Does she have a fix?
More outrageous, even, than that America is the only developed country that doesn't provide paid family leave, outrageous as that is.
Who's counting?
Here's a factoid for you: Accounting for inflation, we have spent nearly as much on Afghan reconstruction as we did on the Marshall Plan.
Scutage: $738.8 billion
Buried in the Magna Carta is the forgotten word scutage, a feudal tax to pay for war. With America in decline because more than half its taxes are thrown away on military expenditures, scutage should be revived. It has the perfect onomatopoeic ring to it.
Time to kick out the War Party.
If neither major party candidates in races for Senate, House or Prez in 2014 and 2016 will commit clearly and unequivocally to slashing military spending, vote for a third party or independent who will. If there isn't one in a particular race, don't vote; your abstention in protest will mean more than your endorsement of Business As Usual. The only way to force radical change is the behave radically.
Want to know more about why the F-35 is a bad deal for America? Check out Brave New Films new video here.
Want to know more about why the F-35 is a bad deal for America? Check out Brave New Films new video here.
2012: Lets have a real debate in the California U.S. Senate race
The June 6, 2012 primary offers the voters of California a unique opportunity to stand against business as usual in Washington: with 24 candidates on the ballot for United States Senate, six of them Democrats, it's possible, at least in theory, that a unity candidate could win second place and the chance to debate centrist Diane Feinstein face-to-face in the run-off in November. 
Marsha Feinland of the Peace & Freedom Party would fill this role perfectly: she is articulate, personable, dedicated, and right (that is to say, Left) on the issues. It would be illuminating if, before she heads back to Washington to act in our name, our senior senator was required to explain her positions on such matters as international trade, military adventurism, immigration, homeland security and the bankster crime wave (she's for aggressively prosecuting Julian Assange for espionage, for example, but much less enthusiastic about putting financial crooks in jail), to say nothing of addressing unresolved allegations of corruption stemming from her days on a military appropriations subcommittee.With Democrats and Republicans divvying up the primary ballots, it might not take very high numbers to grab second place; it would certainly make for a livelier debate in the general election to have a representative of the 99% sharing the stage with Sen. Feinstein rather than another one-percenter like herself from the GOP.
Project VoteSmart's summary of Dianne Feinstein's key votes.
Marsha Feinland of the Peace & Freedom Party would fill this role perfectly: she is articulate, personable, dedicated, and right (that is to say, Left) on the issues. It would be illuminating if, before she heads back to Washington to act in our name, our senior senator was required to explain her positions on such matters as international trade, military adventurism, immigration, homeland security and the bankster crime wave (she's for aggressively prosecuting Julian Assange for espionage, for example, but much less enthusiastic about putting financial crooks in jail), to say nothing of addressing unresolved allegations of corruption stemming from her days on a military appropriations subcommittee.With Democrats and Republicans divvying up the primary ballots, it might not take very high numbers to grab second place; it would certainly make for a livelier debate in the general election to have a representative of the 99% sharing the stage with Sen. Feinstein rather than another one-percenter like herself from the GOP.Project VoteSmart's summary of Dianne Feinstein's key votes.
quote unquote: Eisenhower on militarism
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." -- Dwight David Eisenhower
Empire: Next stop - Yemen
Oil, you say?
Off we go on another excellent imperial adventure. The Pentagon says it notified Congress that it plans to spend $155 million on 4 Huey helicopters, upgrades to 10 Russian-made Mi-17 medium transport helicopters, and 50 Hummers (suitably armored? doesn't say),
as well as night vision goggles and transport aircraft for the Yemen Army to fight al-Qaeda. If there are fewer than 100 al-Qaeda militants in anarchic, kleptocratic Afghanistan, one wonders how many can conceal themselves in relatively orderly, republican Yemen (unlike Afghanistan, for example, Yemen actually has an army to equip).
A tip of the hat, btw, to Defense Industry Daily for keeping us up to date on the activities of our busy soldiers, whether they're hither or yon.
Off we go on another excellent imperial adventure. The Pentagon says it notified Congress that it plans to spend $155 million on 4 Huey helicopters, upgrades to 10 Russian-made Mi-17 medium transport helicopters, and 50 Hummers (suitably armored? doesn't say),
as well as night vision goggles and transport aircraft for the Yemen Army to fight al-Qaeda. If there are fewer than 100 al-Qaeda militants in anarchic, kleptocratic Afghanistan, one wonders how many can conceal themselves in relatively orderly, republican Yemen (unlike Afghanistan, for example, Yemen actually has an army to equip).A tip of the hat, btw, to Defense Industry Daily for keeping us up to date on the activities of our busy soldiers, whether they're hither or yon.
Resource: Defending Medicare
HandsOffOurMedicare.org is intended as the hub for a Campaign to Preserve and Protect Medicare. In an action similar to his designation of six conservative senators to craft a health care bill, President Obama has created a Deficit Commission to decide how to reduce the Federal deficit that is packed with conservatives: not surprisingly, the commission has put Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security on the chopping block, while ignoring the elephant in the room, military spending. On the site, you can email or call your congressmembers and tell them not to cut social programs. There is also a breakdown of Deficit Commission members and their support for cutting and/or privatizing Social Security and Medicare.
Saturday Catchup: 2010-07-17
Shticks and Stones
It's jobs, stupid: Nearly the entire deficit for this year and those projected into the near and medium terms are the result of three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession. The solution to our fiscal situation is: end the wars, allow the tax cuts to expire and restore robust growth. Our long-term structural deficits will require us to control healthcare inflation the way countries with single-payer systems do. So lets talk about balancing the budget. -- Deficits of Mass Destruction by Christopher Hayes (The Nation 2010-07-15).
Where is the guillotine when you need it?: In modern American life, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner stands out as latter-day Talleyrand, amazingly resilient and remarkably lucky -- despite presiding over or being deeply involved in a series of political debacles, he has gone from strength to strength. After at least eight improbably bounce backs, he might seem unassailable. But his latest mistake -- blocking Elizabeth Warren from heading the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- may well prove politically fatal. -- Tim Geithner’s Ninth Political Life by Simon Johnson (The Baseline Scenario 2010-07-15). Also, Elizabeth Warren Should be a Role Model in the Obama Administration Instead of a Pariah by Mark Karlin (BuzzFlash 2010-07-17).
There's plenty of good money to be made/Supplyin' the army with tools of the trade*: "Why is nobody talking about the Afghanistan adventure as a cause of our plunging recession? Or at least citing the 30-year-old endless war as a major contributory factor in wasting our money to 'nation-build' in the Hindu Kush while our own country falls to pieces on food stamps, foreclosures and child poverty -- one in five kids -- that would put the world's poorest nations to shame?" -- America: hooked on war and getting poorer by Clancy Sigal (Guardian UK 2010-07-13). (*Country Joe and the Fish)
Lucky for us, it can't happen here: From Mexico to Peru to the Philippines, armies have learned to portray themselves to beleaguered civilian leaders as the only chance to defeat the security challenges -- so long as the government agrees to the military’s demands for greater funding, more autonomy, and a larger role in politics. -- Military Rule 2.0: Why bother with a coup when there are better ways to take control? by Joshua Kurlantzick and Shelby Leighton (Boston.com 2010-07-11).
Hey, Wait a Minute!: We have a "fairness instinct," thinks Lixing Sun, a professor of biology at Central Washington University. And he may be right. He maintains that high on the roster of human propensities is a "Robin Hood mentality" that characterizes our species and qualifies as one of those "mental modules" that evolutionary psychologists consider part of our likely biological inheritance. If so, our fairness instinct goes far beyond the pleasure we take in romantic tales of medieval Merry Men adventuring in Sherwood Forest. Sun believes that despite the fact of our specieswide social and economic disparities -- perhaps in part because of them -- human beings are endowed (or burdened) with an acute sensitivity to "who is getting how much," in particular a deft attunement to whether anyone else is getting more or less than one's self. -- Biological roots of today's anger by David P. Barash (The Chronicle of Higher Education 2010-07-11).
Megagrammar: "The jumper colon is a paragraphical Red Bull, a rocket-launch of a punctuator, the Usain Bolt of literature. It’s punchy as hell. To believers of short first sentences -- Hemingway? -- it couldn’t get any better. To believers of long-winded sentences that leave you gasping and slightly confused -- Faulkner? -- it also couldn’t get any better. By itself this colon is neither a period nor a non-period… or rather it is a period and it is also a non-period. You choose." -- Colonoscopy: It’s Time to Check Your Colons by Conor J. Dillon (The Millions 2010-07-13).
No room for argument; very little for vermouth: If the news is driving you to drink, at least the libation in question can be the perfect martini: "First a note about substituting ingredients or tools. Don't. This method has been exhaustively tested and retested for excellence and the smallest variation can result in catastrophic and unintended consequences. See the 'butterfly flaps its wings and causes hurricane' metaphor from Chaos Theory. There is room for personal preference and improvisation in many things. This is not one of them. 'Oh, I love Bach's Fourth Brandenburg Concerto, but perhaps it should be just a touch slower.' 'I cropped Caravaggio's Crucifixion of Saint Peter along the top a bit to get rid of some of that icky dark area.' Begin by assembling the following materials and a clean, white towel at your work space. Turn off the television and eliminate other distractions. John Coltrane's First Meditations is appropriate music to work by. I cannot vouch for anything else." -- Perfect by Jim Coudal (Coudal Partners).
The first cut is the deepest: In attempt to reframe the debate over budget priorities, Reps. Barney Frank and Ron Paul have been tag-teaming across the country calling for dramatic cuts in military spending. Basing their critique on “Debt, Deficits and Defense: A Way Forward” (pdf), a study by the bipartisan congressional Sustainable Defense Task Force, they call for cutting the Pentagon’s annual “base”budget by $960 billion over ten years, an average annual reduction of roughly 17 percent below current spending levels. Defense spending accounts for more than half of the federal government’s entire discretionary budget. At a time when virtually every community in the country is facing critical budget shortfalls, defense spending has continued to grow. The Task Force’s report proposes cuts such as reducing the number of deployed nuclear weapons to 1,000 and cutting the number of submarines and missiles which carry them; cutting the total number of active duty members of the Army and Marine Corps to 50,000 below their levels before the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; cutting certain weapons programs including the Joint Strike Fighter, the V-22 “Osprey” tilt-rotor aircraft, and the total number of Navy aircraft carriers; and reforming the Pentagon’s health care and compensation systems. Regardless of the impact this or any other letter has on the deficit debate in Congress, the Task Force report insures one important thing: supporters of reduced military spending now have an answer to the question, “how do you cut Pentagon spending without undermining our nation’s security?” At a time when all areas of federal spending should be subject to the budget cutter’s knife, it can no longer be said, even within the mainstream debate, that it’s impossible to identify significant savings in the Pentagon budget. -- Pentagon Spending on the Chopping Block by Christopher Hellman (Yes! Magazine 2010-0715).
Maybe Asian tourists can be enticed to spend money in Billings on cow-tipping expeditions: According to both Montana Sen. Max Baucus and Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, ratifying the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement in Congress will be the most important thing our national legislature accomplishes in the next year. In the avenue of international commerce, our political leadership has no goals. They have empty ideals and failed methodology. They ingratiate themselves with organizations like Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in order to forward their own positions, but they provide nothing substantive and lasting to the people they represent. -- APEC and America's Dangerous Free Trade Deception by Craig Harrington (Economy in Crisis 2010-07-16).
Long live rock and roll:
Wanna be friends?: If these supernets continue to thrive and grow, they could fundamentally change the way we share information about the world and transform our notions of friendship and acquaintance. If so, the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace might just turn out to be the harbingers of a sea change in our social evolution, in the same way that the arrival of language transformed our ancestors. -- Why Facebook friends are worth keeping by Richard Fisher (New Scientist 2010-07-15).
Finally, a stupid (but very cold) party trick for a hot summer barbecue:
It's jobs, stupid: Nearly the entire deficit for this year and those projected into the near and medium terms are the result of three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession. The solution to our fiscal situation is: end the wars, allow the tax cuts to expire and restore robust growth. Our long-term structural deficits will require us to control healthcare inflation the way countries with single-payer systems do. So lets talk about balancing the budget. -- Deficits of Mass Destruction by Christopher Hayes (The Nation 2010-07-15).
Where is the guillotine when you need it?: In modern American life, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner stands out as latter-day Talleyrand, amazingly resilient and remarkably lucky -- despite presiding over or being deeply involved in a series of political debacles, he has gone from strength to strength. After at least eight improbably bounce backs, he might seem unassailable. But his latest mistake -- blocking Elizabeth Warren from heading the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- may well prove politically fatal. -- Tim Geithner’s Ninth Political Life by Simon Johnson (The Baseline Scenario 2010-07-15). Also, Elizabeth Warren Should be a Role Model in the Obama Administration Instead of a Pariah by Mark Karlin (BuzzFlash 2010-07-17).
There's plenty of good money to be made/Supplyin' the army with tools of the trade*: "Why is nobody talking about the Afghanistan adventure as a cause of our plunging recession? Or at least citing the 30-year-old endless war as a major contributory factor in wasting our money to 'nation-build' in the Hindu Kush while our own country falls to pieces on food stamps, foreclosures and child poverty -- one in five kids -- that would put the world's poorest nations to shame?" -- America: hooked on war and getting poorer by Clancy Sigal (Guardian UK 2010-07-13). (*Country Joe and the Fish)
Lucky for us, it can't happen here: From Mexico to Peru to the Philippines, armies have learned to portray themselves to beleaguered civilian leaders as the only chance to defeat the security challenges -- so long as the government agrees to the military’s demands for greater funding, more autonomy, and a larger role in politics. -- Military Rule 2.0: Why bother with a coup when there are better ways to take control? by Joshua Kurlantzick and Shelby Leighton (Boston.com 2010-07-11).
Hey, Wait a Minute!: We have a "fairness instinct," thinks Lixing Sun, a professor of biology at Central Washington University. And he may be right. He maintains that high on the roster of human propensities is a "Robin Hood mentality" that characterizes our species and qualifies as one of those "mental modules" that evolutionary psychologists consider part of our likely biological inheritance. If so, our fairness instinct goes far beyond the pleasure we take in romantic tales of medieval Merry Men adventuring in Sherwood Forest. Sun believes that despite the fact of our specieswide social and economic disparities -- perhaps in part because of them -- human beings are endowed (or burdened) with an acute sensitivity to "who is getting how much," in particular a deft attunement to whether anyone else is getting more or less than one's self. -- Biological roots of today's anger by David P. Barash (The Chronicle of Higher Education 2010-07-11).
Megagrammar: "The jumper colon is a paragraphical Red Bull, a rocket-launch of a punctuator, the Usain Bolt of literature. It’s punchy as hell. To believers of short first sentences -- Hemingway? -- it couldn’t get any better. To believers of long-winded sentences that leave you gasping and slightly confused -- Faulkner? -- it also couldn’t get any better. By itself this colon is neither a period nor a non-period… or rather it is a period and it is also a non-period. You choose." -- Colonoscopy: It’s Time to Check Your Colons by Conor J. Dillon (The Millions 2010-07-13).
No room for argument; very little for vermouth: If the news is driving you to drink, at least the libation in question can be the perfect martini: "First a note about substituting ingredients or tools. Don't. This method has been exhaustively tested and retested for excellence and the smallest variation can result in catastrophic and unintended consequences. See the 'butterfly flaps its wings and causes hurricane' metaphor from Chaos Theory. There is room for personal preference and improvisation in many things. This is not one of them. 'Oh, I love Bach's Fourth Brandenburg Concerto, but perhaps it should be just a touch slower.' 'I cropped Caravaggio's Crucifixion of Saint Peter along the top a bit to get rid of some of that icky dark area.' Begin by assembling the following materials and a clean, white towel at your work space. Turn off the television and eliminate other distractions. John Coltrane's First Meditations is appropriate music to work by. I cannot vouch for anything else." -- Perfect by Jim Coudal (Coudal Partners).
The first cut is the deepest: In attempt to reframe the debate over budget priorities, Reps. Barney Frank and Ron Paul have been tag-teaming across the country calling for dramatic cuts in military spending. Basing their critique on “Debt, Deficits and Defense: A Way Forward” (pdf), a study by the bipartisan congressional Sustainable Defense Task Force, they call for cutting the Pentagon’s annual “base”budget by $960 billion over ten years, an average annual reduction of roughly 17 percent below current spending levels. Defense spending accounts for more than half of the federal government’s entire discretionary budget. At a time when virtually every community in the country is facing critical budget shortfalls, defense spending has continued to grow. The Task Force’s report proposes cuts such as reducing the number of deployed nuclear weapons to 1,000 and cutting the number of submarines and missiles which carry them; cutting the total number of active duty members of the Army and Marine Corps to 50,000 below their levels before the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; cutting certain weapons programs including the Joint Strike Fighter, the V-22 “Osprey” tilt-rotor aircraft, and the total number of Navy aircraft carriers; and reforming the Pentagon’s health care and compensation systems. Regardless of the impact this or any other letter has on the deficit debate in Congress, the Task Force report insures one important thing: supporters of reduced military spending now have an answer to the question, “how do you cut Pentagon spending without undermining our nation’s security?” At a time when all areas of federal spending should be subject to the budget cutter’s knife, it can no longer be said, even within the mainstream debate, that it’s impossible to identify significant savings in the Pentagon budget. -- Pentagon Spending on the Chopping Block by Christopher Hellman (Yes! Magazine 2010-0715).
Maybe Asian tourists can be enticed to spend money in Billings on cow-tipping expeditions: According to both Montana Sen. Max Baucus and Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, ratifying the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement in Congress will be the most important thing our national legislature accomplishes in the next year. In the avenue of international commerce, our political leadership has no goals. They have empty ideals and failed methodology. They ingratiate themselves with organizations like Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in order to forward their own positions, but they provide nothing substantive and lasting to the people they represent. -- APEC and America's Dangerous Free Trade Deception by Craig Harrington (Economy in Crisis 2010-07-16).
Long live rock and roll:
Wanna be friends?: If these supernets continue to thrive and grow, they could fundamentally change the way we share information about the world and transform our notions of friendship and acquaintance. If so, the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace might just turn out to be the harbingers of a sea change in our social evolution, in the same way that the arrival of language transformed our ancestors. -- Why Facebook friends are worth keeping by Richard Fisher (New Scientist 2010-07-15).
Finally, a stupid (but very cold) party trick for a hot summer barbecue:
The Long War: Losing in Afghanistan
Barack Obama is following the footsteps of a predecessor, but they are not Theodore Roosevelt's, as he imagines, but Lyndon Johnson's
by Marjorie Cohn (truthout 2010-07-07)
Last week, the House of Representatives voted 215-210 for $33 billion to fund Barack Obama's troop increase in Afghanistan. But there was considerable opposition to giving the president a blank check. One hundred sixty-two House members supported an amendment that would have tied the funding to a withdrawal timetable. One hundred members voted for another amendment that would have rejected the $33 billion for the 30,000 new troops already on their way to Afghanistan; that amendment would have required that the money be spent to redeploy our troops out of Afghanistan. Democrats voting for the second amendment included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and nine Republicans. Both amendments failed to pass.
The new appropriation is in addition to the $130 billion Congress has already approved for Iraq and Afghanistan this year. And the 2010 Pentagon budget is $693 billion, more than all other discretionary spending programs combined.
Our economic crisis is directly tied to the cost of the war. We are in desperate need of money for education and health care. The $1 million per year it costs to maintain a single soldier in Afghanistan could pay for 20 green jobs.
Not only is the war bankrupting us, it has come at a tragic cost in lives. June was the deadliest month for US troops in Afghanistan. In addition to the 1,149 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan, untold numbers of Afghan civilians have died from the war - untold because the Defense Department refuses to maintain statistics of anyone except US personnel. After all, Donald Rumsfeld quipped in 2005, "death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."
There are other "depressing" aspects of this war as well. As Gen. Stanley McChrystal reported just days before he got the ax, there is a "resilient and growing insurgency" with high levels of violence and corruption within the Karzai government. McChrystal's remarks were considered "off message" by the White House, which was also irked by the general's criticisms of Obama officials in a Rolling Stone article. McChrystal believes that you can't kill your way out of Afghanistan. "The Russians killed 1 million Afghans and that didn't work."
He and his successor, Gen. David Petraeus, likely disagree on the need to prevent civilian casualties (known as "Civ Cas"). McChrystal instituted some of the most stringent rules of engagement the US military has had in a war zone: "Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force." Commanders cannot fire on buildings or other places if they have reason to believe civilians might be present unless their own forces are in imminent danger of being overrun. And they must end engagements and withdraw rather than risk harming noncombatants. McChrystal knows that for every innocent person you kill, you create new enemies; he calls it "insurgent math." According to The Los Angeles Times, McChrystal "was credited with bringing about a substantial drop in the proportion of civilian casualties suffered at the hands of NATO's International Security Assistance Force and its Afghan allies."
While testifying in Congress before he was confirmed to take McChrystal's place, Petraeus told senators that some US soldiers had complained about the former's rules of engagement aimed at preventing civilian casualties.
According to the Rolling Stone article, Obama capitulated to McChrystal's insistence that more troops were needed in Afghanistan. In his December 1 speech at West Point, the article says, "the president laid out all the reasons why fighting the war in Afghanistan is a bad idea: It's expensive; we're in an economic crisis; a decade-long commitment would sap American power; Al Qaeda has shifted its base of operations to Pakistan. Then," the article continued, "without ever using the words 'victory' or 'win,' Obama announced that he would send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, almost as many as McChrystal had requested."
Both Obama and Petraeus no longer speak of "victory" over the Taliban; they both hold open the possibility of settlement with the Taliban. Indeed, Maj. Gen. Bill Mayville, chief of operations for McChrystal, told Rolling Stone, "It's not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win."
The majority of Americans now oppose the war in Afghanistan. Fareed Zakaria had some harsh words for the war on his CNN show, saying, "the whole enterprise in Afghanistan feels disproportionate, a very expensive solution to what is turning out to be a small but real problem." Noting that CIA Director Leon Panetta admitted that the number of al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan may be 50 to 100, Zakaria asked, "why are we fighting a major war" there? "Last month alone there were more than 100 NATO troops killed in Afghanistan," he said. "That's more than one allied death for each living Al Qaeda member in the country in just one month." Citing estimates that the war will cost more than $100 billion in 2010 alone, Zakaria observed, "That's a billion dollars for every member of Al Qaeda thought to be living in Afghanistan in one year." He queried, "Why are we investing so much time, energy, and effort when Al Qaeda is so weak?" And Zakaria responded to the argument that we should continue fighting the Taliban because they are allied with al-Qaeda by saying, "this would be like fighting Italy in World War II after Hitler's regime had collapsed and Berlin was in flames just because Italy had been allied with Germany."
There is also division in the Republican ranks over the war. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele made some gutsy comments about the war in Afghanistan, saying it is not winnable and calling it a "war of Obama's choosing." (Even though George W. Bush first invaded Afghanistan, Obama made the escalation of US involvement a centerpiece of his campaign.) Steele said that if Obama is "such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? Everyone who has tried, over 1,000 years of history, has failed." Interestingly, Republicans Lindsey Graham and John McCain slammed Steele and jumped to Obama's defense. Rep. Ron Paul, however, agreed with Steele, saying, "Michael Steele has it right, and Republicans should stick by him."
Obama will likely persist with his failed war. He appears to be stumbling along the same path that Lyndon Johnson followed. Johnson lost his vision for a "Great Society" when he became convinced that his legacy depended on winning the Vietnam War. It appears that Obama has similarly lost his way.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
by Marjorie Cohn (truthout 2010-07-07)
Last week, the House of Representatives voted 215-210 for $33 billion to fund Barack Obama's troop increase in Afghanistan. But there was considerable opposition to giving the president a blank check. One hundred sixty-two House members supported an amendment that would have tied the funding to a withdrawal timetable. One hundred members voted for another amendment that would have rejected the $33 billion for the 30,000 new troops already on their way to Afghanistan; that amendment would have required that the money be spent to redeploy our troops out of Afghanistan. Democrats voting for the second amendment included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and nine Republicans. Both amendments failed to pass.
The new appropriation is in addition to the $130 billion Congress has already approved for Iraq and Afghanistan this year. And the 2010 Pentagon budget is $693 billion, more than all other discretionary spending programs combined.
Our economic crisis is directly tied to the cost of the war. We are in desperate need of money for education and health care. The $1 million per year it costs to maintain a single soldier in Afghanistan could pay for 20 green jobs.
Not only is the war bankrupting us, it has come at a tragic cost in lives. June was the deadliest month for US troops in Afghanistan. In addition to the 1,149 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan, untold numbers of Afghan civilians have died from the war - untold because the Defense Department refuses to maintain statistics of anyone except US personnel. After all, Donald Rumsfeld quipped in 2005, "death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."
There are other "depressing" aspects of this war as well. As Gen. Stanley McChrystal reported just days before he got the ax, there is a "resilient and growing insurgency" with high levels of violence and corruption within the Karzai government. McChrystal's remarks were considered "off message" by the White House, which was also irked by the general's criticisms of Obama officials in a Rolling Stone article. McChrystal believes that you can't kill your way out of Afghanistan. "The Russians killed 1 million Afghans and that didn't work."
He and his successor, Gen. David Petraeus, likely disagree on the need to prevent civilian casualties (known as "Civ Cas"). McChrystal instituted some of the most stringent rules of engagement the US military has had in a war zone: "Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force." Commanders cannot fire on buildings or other places if they have reason to believe civilians might be present unless their own forces are in imminent danger of being overrun. And they must end engagements and withdraw rather than risk harming noncombatants. McChrystal knows that for every innocent person you kill, you create new enemies; he calls it "insurgent math." According to The Los Angeles Times, McChrystal "was credited with bringing about a substantial drop in the proportion of civilian casualties suffered at the hands of NATO's International Security Assistance Force and its Afghan allies."
While testifying in Congress before he was confirmed to take McChrystal's place, Petraeus told senators that some US soldiers had complained about the former's rules of engagement aimed at preventing civilian casualties.
According to the Rolling Stone article, Obama capitulated to McChrystal's insistence that more troops were needed in Afghanistan. In his December 1 speech at West Point, the article says, "the president laid out all the reasons why fighting the war in Afghanistan is a bad idea: It's expensive; we're in an economic crisis; a decade-long commitment would sap American power; Al Qaeda has shifted its base of operations to Pakistan. Then," the article continued, "without ever using the words 'victory' or 'win,' Obama announced that he would send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, almost as many as McChrystal had requested."
Both Obama and Petraeus no longer speak of "victory" over the Taliban; they both hold open the possibility of settlement with the Taliban. Indeed, Maj. Gen. Bill Mayville, chief of operations for McChrystal, told Rolling Stone, "It's not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win."
The majority of Americans now oppose the war in Afghanistan. Fareed Zakaria had some harsh words for the war on his CNN show, saying, "the whole enterprise in Afghanistan feels disproportionate, a very expensive solution to what is turning out to be a small but real problem." Noting that CIA Director Leon Panetta admitted that the number of al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan may be 50 to 100, Zakaria asked, "why are we fighting a major war" there? "Last month alone there were more than 100 NATO troops killed in Afghanistan," he said. "That's more than one allied death for each living Al Qaeda member in the country in just one month." Citing estimates that the war will cost more than $100 billion in 2010 alone, Zakaria observed, "That's a billion dollars for every member of Al Qaeda thought to be living in Afghanistan in one year." He queried, "Why are we investing so much time, energy, and effort when Al Qaeda is so weak?" And Zakaria responded to the argument that we should continue fighting the Taliban because they are allied with al-Qaeda by saying, "this would be like fighting Italy in World War II after Hitler's regime had collapsed and Berlin was in flames just because Italy had been allied with Germany."
There is also division in the Republican ranks over the war. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele made some gutsy comments about the war in Afghanistan, saying it is not winnable and calling it a "war of Obama's choosing." (Even though George W. Bush first invaded Afghanistan, Obama made the escalation of US involvement a centerpiece of his campaign.) Steele said that if Obama is "such a student of history, has he not understood that, you know, that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? Everyone who has tried, over 1,000 years of history, has failed." Interestingly, Republicans Lindsey Graham and John McCain slammed Steele and jumped to Obama's defense. Rep. Ron Paul, however, agreed with Steele, saying, "Michael Steele has it right, and Republicans should stick by him."
Obama will likely persist with his failed war. He appears to be stumbling along the same path that Lyndon Johnson followed. Johnson lost his vision for a "Great Society" when he became convinced that his legacy depended on winning the Vietnam War. It appears that Obama has similarly lost his way.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
The Long War: "...a fool’s errand." - Rep. Jerrold Nadler
Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) has joined the Out of Afghanistan Congressional Caucus in opposing the war in Afghanistan and speaking out against the war’s continued funding.
“Every dollar we spend in Afghanistan, every life we waste there, is a waste,” said Nadler. “An intelligent policy is not to try to remake a country that nobody since Genghis Khan has managed to conquer. What makes us think, what arrogance gives us the right to assume that we can succeed where the Moguls, the British, the Soviets, failed.…It will take tens of years, hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of American lives, and we don’t need to do it. We don’t need to do it. We, frankly, have no right to do it. It’s a fool’s errand, and I just hope and pray that we get wise enough to stop sending our young men and women to waste their lives there, and our money that could be used to prop up our own people.”
Below is the text of Nadler’s remarks, as delivered:
“Every dollar we spend in Afghanistan, every life we waste there, is a waste,” said Nadler. “An intelligent policy is not to try to remake a country that nobody since Genghis Khan has managed to conquer. What makes us think, what arrogance gives us the right to assume that we can succeed where the Moguls, the British, the Soviets, failed.…It will take tens of years, hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of American lives, and we don’t need to do it. We don’t need to do it. We, frankly, have no right to do it. It’s a fool’s errand, and I just hope and pray that we get wise enough to stop sending our young men and women to waste their lives there, and our money that could be used to prop up our own people.”
Below is the text of Nadler’s remarks, as delivered:
I am Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York. I got started in politics in opposition to the war in Vietnam because we thought that it was a mistake. I don’t think that too many historians would disagree today – that every dollar spent and every life wasted in Vietnam was just that – a waste. It did not enhance the security of this country by one bit because it was based on a false premise.
Afghanistan is the same. Every dollar we spend, every life we waste, is a waste. It does not enhance the security of the United States, which is what ought to be our goal. We were attacked on 9/11 by Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is our enemy and we must fight them. Al Qaeda had bases in Afghanistan; it made sense to go in and destroy those bases, and we did. We have every right, we have every duty to destroy bases, to take out bases that are being used to plot attacks on the United States. But we are told today that there are fewer than one hundred Al Qaeda personnel in all of Afghanistan – their bases are in Pakistan, but we are not invading Pakistan. They have bases in Somalia and Yemen, but we are not invading Somalia and Yemen, G-d forbid we should.
An intelligent policy might be to attack the bases from which mayhem is being plotted against the United States wherever they are. An intelligent policy is not to try to remake a country that nobody since Genghis Khan has managed to conquer. What makes us think, what arrogance gives us the right to assume that we can succeed where the Moguls, the British, the Soviets, failed. No government in Afghanistan, no government in Kabul, has ever been able to make its run and rule the country.
Why have we undertaken to invent a government that is not supported by the majority of the people, that is corrupt, and to impose its will, to impose it on the country? Afghanistan is in the middle of what is, at this point, a 35 year civil war. We have no business intervening in that civil war, we have no ability to win it for one side or the other, and we have no necessity to win it for one side or the other. We have the duty to make sure that bases are not used, but bases can be attacked, specific bases. We don’t have to – this whole idea of counter-insurgency, that we are going to persuade the people, those left alive after our firepower is applied, to love the government that we like is absurd.
It will take tens of years, hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of American lives, and we don’t need to do it. We don’t need to do it. We, frankly, have no right to do it. It’s their country. If they want to have a civil war, we can’t stop them. We can’t choose the rulers that they have, we don’t have to like the rulers that they have, we don’t have to like their choices. It’s not up to us.
We should not be spending – aside from making sure that specific bases are not being used against us – we should not be spending a nickel, should not be wasting a life. And the lives that are being spent there by our brave men and women are being wasted, because they’re being spent in pursuit of an unintelligent, unthought-through, unachievable, and unnecessary goal.
So we ought to pull our troops out as rapidly as possible, and I don’t mean by as rapidly as possible as soon as the Afghans can take over. Why are all the Afghans fighting on the other side? We can’t train the Afghans on our side to fight, why? Not because they’re not bright, not because they’re any less literate or more literate than the Taliban. Because the people fighting on our side have no will. They don’t have the motive. You can’t instill that. If they had the will and the motive they wouldn’t need our help. Without the will and the motive, our help cannot help.
So, it’s a fool’s errand, and I just hope and pray that we get wise enough to stop sending our young men and women to waste their lives there, and our money that could be used to prop up our own people.
Priorities: Guns or butter? Wall Street or Main Street?
The mid-term elections are around the corner. Time to ask whether your congressperson stands with you or the corporations when it comes to federal spending.
See, also: Budget Deficit and Wars’ Cost Draw Fire on the Home Front by David Herszenhorn (New York Times 2010-07-02).
In Cleveland, where I come from, unemployment is devastating our community. People are demanding that their government, our government, recognize the suffering of families who have lost jobs and can't find work.-- Statement on the floor of the House of Representatives by Rep. Dennis Kucinich in support of legislation to extend emergency unemployment benefits.
Will Washington tell my constituents and people like them, all over America, 'We have money for war but no money for the unemployed? We have money for military contractors but no money for the unemployed? We have money, billions, for corrupt foreign governments but no money for our unemployed in the United States? We havemoney for tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans but no money for the unemployed? Hundreds of billions for Wall Street but no money for the unemployed?'
Instead, the out-of-work, poor, and middle class get lectures on balancing the budget, lectures on pay-fors. What are people supposed to do when they don't have budgets because they don't have money? When they can't pay for food, shelter, and clothing? Yes, we need jobs, but people out of work can't find a job and they have to survive. People need unemployment benefits because they have to pay for their mortgage, their rent, their utility bills. So many Americans are hanging on by their fingertips. Some exhort our constituents, 'pull yourselves up by your boot straps.' What if you don't have money to buy boots?
See, also: Budget Deficit and Wars’ Cost Draw Fire on the Home Front by David Herszenhorn (New York Times 2010-07-02).
Don't be fooled by false deficit prophets:
More Klein: "'Debt' isn't a buzzword, it's a math problem. And it's instructive to try to solve it. The 'Stabilize the Debt' game allows you to cut, tax and spend your way to a better budget outlook. So go ahead. Choose your own deficit."
Many policies that sound impressive when a politician promotes them don't actually save much money. Cutting foreign aid in half, for instance, will save $210 billion by 2022. That would get us 3 percent of the way there. Cutting earmarks in half is even less effective: It would save $130 billion by 2022. -- Choose your own deficit by Ezra Klein (Ezra Klein's Wonkbook/Washington Post 2010-06-27).Cut military spending -- $1,449 billion last year! -- cut that in half and it begins to add up to real money....
More Klein: "'Debt' isn't a buzzword, it's a math problem. And it's instructive to try to solve it. The 'Stabilize the Debt' game allows you to cut, tax and spend your way to a better budget outlook. So go ahead. Choose your own deficit."
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