G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
The Legacy of Bush II
By Robert Scheer
Created Feb 6 2008 - 9:13am
- from Truthdig [1]
Curb your enthusiasm. Even if your favored candidate did well on Super
Tuesday, ask yourself if he or she will seriously challenge the bloated
military budget that President Bush has proposed for 2009. If not, military
spending will rise to a level exceeding any other year since the end of
World War II, and there will be precious little left over to improve
education and medical research, fight poverty, protect the environment or do
anything else a decent person might care about. You cannot spend well over
$700 billion on "national security," running what the White House predicts
will be more than $400 billion in annual deficits for the next two years,
and yet find the money to improve the quality of life on the home front.
The conventional wisdom espoused by the mass media is that Bush's budget is
a lame-duck DOA contrivance, but that assumption is wrong. The 9/11 attacks
have been shamefully exploited by the military-industrial complex with
bipartisan support to ramp up military expenditures beyond Cold War levels.
This irrational spending spree, which accounts for more than half of all
federal discretionary spending, is not likely to end with Bush's departure.
Which one of the likely winners from either party would lead the battle to
cut the military budget, and where would the winner find support in
Congress? Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have treated the military
budget as sacrosanct with their Senate votes and their campaign rhetoric.
Clinton is particularly clear on the record as favoring spending more, not
less, on the military.
John McCain, who previously distinguished himself as a deficit hawk and was
almost in a class by himself in taking on the rapacious defense contractors,
has thrown in the towel with his inane support for staying in Iraq till
"victory," even if it should take a century. It is simply illogical to call
for fiscal restraint while committing to an open-ended war in Iraq that has
already cost upward of $700 billion. Bush's request for $515.4 billion for
the Defense Department doesn't even include the cost of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, which accounted for nearly $200 billion over the last budget
year and which will cost at least $140 billion in 2009. Add to those numbers
$17.1 billion for the Department of Energy's weapons program and over $40
billion for the Department of Homeland Security and other national security
initiatives spread throughout the federal government, and you'll see that my
$700-billion figure underestimates the hemorrhaging.
McCain knows, and has frequently stated as a Senate watchdog, that much of
the military spending is wastefully superfluous for combating terrorists who
lack any but the most rudimentary weapons. Bush totally betrayed his
campaign 2000 promise to reshape the post-Cold War U.S. military when he
seized upon the 9/11 attack as an opportunity to reverse the "peace
dividend" that his father had begun to return to taxpayers. Instead, Bush II
ushered in the most profligate underwriting of weapons systems that are
grotesquely irrelevant for combating terrorism.
The U.S. already spends more than the rest of the world combined on its
military, without a sophisticated enemy in sight. The Bush budget cuts not a
single weapons system, including the most expensive ones, those designed to
combat a Soviet military that no longer exists. Those sophisticated weapons
have nothing to do with combating terrorism and everything to do with jobs
and profits that motivate both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It is
not known whether Osama bin Laden even possesses a rowboat in his naval
arsenal, but that won't stop Joe Lieberman from pushing, as is his habit,
for an increase in the defense budget to double the funding for the
$3.4-billion submarines built in his home state of Connecticut. Nor does the
collapse of the old Soviet Union--and with it the need for enormously
expensive stealth aircraft to evade radar systems the Soviets never
built--dissuade congressional supporters of those planes from pushing for
more, not less, than Bush is requesting. Nor does wasting an additional $8.9
billion on ICBM missile defense have anything to do with stopping terrorists
from smuggling a suitcase nuke into this country.
The centerpiece of the Bush legacy is a "war on terror" based on a vast
disconnect between military expenditures and actual national security
requirements that the presidential candidates all fully understand. The
question is whether the voters and media will force them to face that
contradiction or whether we're in for more of the same--no matter how much
the candidates go on about change.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Robert Scheer
Created Feb 6 2008 - 9:13am
- from Truthdig [1]
Curb your enthusiasm. Even if your favored candidate did well on Super
Tuesday, ask yourself if he or she will seriously challenge the bloated
military budget that President Bush has proposed for 2009. If not, military
spending will rise to a level exceeding any other year since the end of
World War II, and there will be precious little left over to improve
education and medical research, fight poverty, protect the environment or do
anything else a decent person might care about. You cannot spend well over
$700 billion on "national security," running what the White House predicts
will be more than $400 billion in annual deficits for the next two years,
and yet find the money to improve the quality of life on the home front.
The conventional wisdom espoused by the mass media is that Bush's budget is
a lame-duck DOA contrivance, but that assumption is wrong. The 9/11 attacks
have been shamefully exploited by the military-industrial complex with
bipartisan support to ramp up military expenditures beyond Cold War levels.
This irrational spending spree, which accounts for more than half of all
federal discretionary spending, is not likely to end with Bush's departure.
Which one of the likely winners from either party would lead the battle to
cut the military budget, and where would the winner find support in
Congress? Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have treated the military
budget as sacrosanct with their Senate votes and their campaign rhetoric.
Clinton is particularly clear on the record as favoring spending more, not
less, on the military.
John McCain, who previously distinguished himself as a deficit hawk and was
almost in a class by himself in taking on the rapacious defense contractors,
has thrown in the towel with his inane support for staying in Iraq till
"victory," even if it should take a century. It is simply illogical to call
for fiscal restraint while committing to an open-ended war in Iraq that has
already cost upward of $700 billion. Bush's request for $515.4 billion for
the Defense Department doesn't even include the cost of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, which accounted for nearly $200 billion over the last budget
year and which will cost at least $140 billion in 2009. Add to those numbers
$17.1 billion for the Department of Energy's weapons program and over $40
billion for the Department of Homeland Security and other national security
initiatives spread throughout the federal government, and you'll see that my
$700-billion figure underestimates the hemorrhaging.
McCain knows, and has frequently stated as a Senate watchdog, that much of
the military spending is wastefully superfluous for combating terrorists who
lack any but the most rudimentary weapons. Bush totally betrayed his
campaign 2000 promise to reshape the post-Cold War U.S. military when he
seized upon the 9/11 attack as an opportunity to reverse the "peace
dividend" that his father had begun to return to taxpayers. Instead, Bush II
ushered in the most profligate underwriting of weapons systems that are
grotesquely irrelevant for combating terrorism.
The U.S. already spends more than the rest of the world combined on its
military, without a sophisticated enemy in sight. The Bush budget cuts not a
single weapons system, including the most expensive ones, those designed to
combat a Soviet military that no longer exists. Those sophisticated weapons
have nothing to do with combating terrorism and everything to do with jobs
and profits that motivate both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It is
not known whether Osama bin Laden even possesses a rowboat in his naval
arsenal, but that won't stop Joe Lieberman from pushing, as is his habit,
for an increase in the defense budget to double the funding for the
$3.4-billion submarines built in his home state of Connecticut. Nor does the
collapse of the old Soviet Union--and with it the need for enormously
expensive stealth aircraft to evade radar systems the Soviets never
built--dissuade congressional supporters of those planes from pushing for
more, not less, than Bush is requesting. Nor does wasting an additional $8.9
billion on ICBM missile defense have anything to do with stopping terrorists
from smuggling a suitcase nuke into this country.
The centerpiece of the Bush legacy is a "war on terror" based on a vast
disconnect between military expenditures and actual national security
requirements that the presidential candidates all fully understand. The
question is whether the voters and media will force them to face that
contradiction or whether we're in for more of the same--no matter how much
the candidates go on about change.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson