US INSANE MILITARISM IS THE PROBLEM

INSANE MILITARISM IS THE PROBLEM

That the reason Why financial insolvency? Why people austerity vs. corporate bonanza?.
Inform yourself:

1.
AMERICA’S COSTLIEST WAR
By William Hartung
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27839.htm

April 06, 2011 "Huffington Post" -- Congress, the media, and the public are rightly asking whether America should be spending $1 billion or more on the intervention in Libya at a time of fiscal austerity. One member of Congress has even proposed that the mission be offset dollar for dollar by cuts in domestic programs (leaving the Pentagon and related security programs off limits). [http://bartlett.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=233233]

While this newfound attention to the costs of U.S. global military operations is welcome, focusing on Libya alone misses the mark. The $1 billion in projected spending on Libya is just one tenth of one percent of the over $1 trillion the United States has spent so far on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Looked at another way, the likely costs of the Libyan mission are the equivalent of less than four days of spending on the war in Afghanistan. [http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/01/14/afghanistan-iraq-usa-costs-idUSN1415708320100114]

And that's the point. Those genuinely concerned about war costs need to go where the money is -- Afghanistan. The Pentagon has asked for $113 billion to fight the war there for this year,
[http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2012/FY2012_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf]
roughly two and one-half times what has been requested to support the United States' dwindling commitment in Iraq. That gap will only increase as troop numbers in Iraq continue to fall. To put this in some perspective, the entire Gross Domestic Product of Afghanistan is about $29 billion per year, which means that annual U.S. expenditures on the war are nearly four times the value of the entire Afghan economy. That number would obviously change if the drug economy were taken into account, but it is stunning nonetheless. [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html]

The tax dollars being spent on Afghanistan are enough to offset the $100 billion per year that House Republicans are seeking to cut from next year's budget, or enough to fill the projected budget gaps of the 44 states that expect to run deficits in 2012. [http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=711]

In other words, if the Afghan war ended and the funds allocated for it were returned to the states, no state in America would run a deficit next year. This would save millions of jobs of teachers, police, firefighters and other public employees while holding the line on basic services like Medicaid and income support for families in poverty. This would in turn be good for the economy as a whole. Military spending creates fewer jobs than virtually any other form of expenditure, from education to housing to transportation. [The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities. By Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier. In: http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/071001-jobcreation.pdf] So shifting funds away from war spending will result in a net increase in jobs nationwide.

Human Costs

But the dollar costs of the war in Afghanistan are not the only - or even the most important - consequences of the war. More than 1,500 U.S. soldiers have died since the start of the war, with nearly one-third of those deaths - 499 - occurring in 2010 alone. Nearly 10,000 U.S. troops have been wounded, with more than half of that total occurring in 2010. The figures on wounded military personnel don't take full account of traumatic brain injuries, which have been sustained by roughly one in five veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. These injuries cover everything from mild concussions to seriously debilitating conditions requiring full-time care.

The rapid increase in deaths and injuries to U.S. military personnel caused by the Afghan war is primarily attributable to two factors: 1) the sharp increase in troops deployed, from 45,000 in May 2009 to 98,000 currently; and 2) the increase in incursions into Taliban-controlled areas where soldiers are more vulnerable to ambush and roadside bombs or improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

As tragic as the figures for U.S. casualties are, they lag behind the deaths suffered by Afghan civilians as a result of the war. The United Nations estimates that over 2,700 Afghan civilians were killed in 2010 alone, for a total of six or seven every day. Over two-thirds of these deaths are as a result of actions by the Taliban, with 440 the result of action by U.S.-led coalition forces. To put that in perspective, nearly as many civilians died as a result of coalition actions in 2010 as did U.S. military personnel involved in combat.

Finally, there is the issue of suicides by U.S. troops involved in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have more than doubled since 2001, with 817 occurring during the first eight years of the war. In some months more U.S. military personnel have died from suicides than have died on the battlefield. While not all of these suicides are necessarily directly attributable to the wars, it is fair to assume that the bulk of them are, with one factor being multiple deployments within short time periods. These deployments mean that soldiers suffer longer exposures to the horrors of war, and put more strain on their families. Again, these must be major factors in the rise in suicides, although not the only ones.

The Bottom Line

Although there are occasional reports on the economic and human costs of the Afghan war in major media outlets, they are not done on the kind of consistent and comprehensive basis that would drive home the costs to the average citizen. Public opinion is already turning against the war. If people knew its true costs the scale of the opposition would grow dramatically. [Caring for wounded veterans with traumatic brain injury. By Abby Leonard and Gloria Teal. April 1, 2011. In: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/video-caring-for-wounded-veterans-with-traumatic-brain-injury/8372/]

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William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011).

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HERE ONE MORE Article YOU MUST READ:

2.

TOP 5 REASONS WHY AMERICA KEEPS FIGHTING FOOLISH WARS

From: Is America Addicted to War?. By Stephen M. Walt. April 06, 2011 "Foreign Policy"

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27840.htm

1. Because We Can.

The most obvious reason that the United States keeps doing these things is the fact that it has a remarkably powerful military, especially when facing a minor power like Libya. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, when you've got hundreds of planes, smart bombs, and cruise missiles, the whole world looks like a target set. So when some thorny problem arises somewhere in the world, it's hard to resist the temptation to "do something!"

It is as if the president has big red button on his desk, and then his aides come in and say, "There's something really nasty happening to some unfortunate people, Mr. President, but if you push that button, you can stop it. It might cost a few hundred million dollars, maybe even a few billion by the time we are done, but we can always float a bit more debt. As long as you don't send in ground troops, the public will probably go along, at least for a while and there's no danger that anybody will retaliate against us -- at least not anytime soon -- because the bad guys (who are really nasty, by the way) are also very weak. Our vital interests aren't at stake, sir, so you don't have to do anything. But if you don't push the button lots of innocent people will die. The choice is yours, Mr. President."

It would take a very tough and resolute president -- or one with a clear set of national priorities and a deep understanding of the uncertainties of warfare -- to resist that siren song.

Of course, like his predecessors, Obama justifies his resort to force by invoking America's special place in the world. In the usual rhetoric of "American exceptionalism," he couched it in terms of U.S. values, its commitment to freedom, etc. But the truly exceptional thing about America today is not our values (and certainly not our dazzling infrastructure, high educational standards, rising middle-class prosperity, etc.); it is the concentration of military power in the hands of the president and the eroding political constraints on its employment. (For an elegant skewering of the "American exceptionalism" argument, see Andrew Sullivan here).

2. The U.S. Has No Serious Enemies.

A second factor that permits the United States to keep waging these optional wars is the fact that the end of the Cold War left the United States in a remarkably safe position. There are no great powers in the Western hemisphere; we have no "peer competitors" anywhere (though China may become one sooner if we keep squandering our power foolishly); and there is no country anywhere that could entertain the idea of attacking America without inviting its own destruction. We do face a vexing terrorism problem, but that danger is probably exaggerated, is partly a reaction to our tendency to meddle in other countries, and is best managed in other ways. It's really quite ironic: Because the American homeland is safe from serious external dangers (which is a good thing), Americans have the luxury of going abroad "in search of monsters to destroy" (which is not). If Americans were really worried about having to defend our own soil against a powerful adversary, we wouldn't be wasting time and money on feel-good projects like the Libyan crusade. But our exceptionally favorable geopolitical position allows us to do these things, even when they don't make a lot of strategic sense.

3. The All-Volunteer Force.

A third enabling factor behind our addiction to adventurism is the all-volunteer force. By limiting military service only to those individuals who volunteer to do it, public opposition to wars of choice is more easily contained. Could Bush or Obama have kept the Iraq and Afghanistan wars going if most young Americans had to register for a draft, and if the sons and daughters of Wall Street bankers were being sent in harm's way because they got an unlucky number in the draft? I very much doubt it.

By the way, I am not saying that the AVF is a bad idea that should be chucked, as there are a number of good arguments in its favor. Nonetheless, the AVF is one of those features of the contemporary U.S. national security order that makes the frequent resort to force politically feasible.

4. It's the Establishment, Stupid.

A fourth reason we keep meddling all over the world is the fact that the foreign-policy establishment is hard-wired in favor of "doing something." Foreign-policy thinking in Washington is dominated either by neoconservatives (who openly proclaim the need to export "liberty" and never met a war they didn't like) or by "liberal interventionists" who are just as enthusiastic about using military power to solve problems, provided they can engineer some sort of multilateral cover for it. Liberal interventionists sometimes concede that the United States can't solve every problem (at least not at the same time), but they still think that the United States is the "indispensable" nation and they want us to solve as many of the world's problems as we possibly can.

These worldviews are developed, promulgated, and defended by a network of think tanks, committees, public policy schools, and government agencies that don't always agree on what should be done (or which problems deserve most priority) but that are all committed to using U.S. power a lot. In short, our foreign policy is shaped by a bipartisan class of foreign policy do-gooders who spend years out of power maneuvering to get in, and spend their time in office trying to advance whatever their own pet project(s) might be. Having scratched and clawed to get themselves on the inside, the people who run our foreign policy are not likely to counsel restraint, or to suggest that the United States and the rest of the world might be better off if Washington did a bit less. After all, what's the point of being a big shot in Washington if you can't use all that power to try to mold the world to your liking?

Compared with most Americans, this is a wealthy, privileged, highly educated group of people and most of them are personally insulated from the consequences of the policies they advocate (i.e., with a few exceptions, their kids don't serve in the military -- see No. 3). Advocates of intervention are unlikely to suffer severe financial reverses or face long-term career penalties if some foreign war goes badly; they'll just go back to the same think-tank sinecures when their term of service is over.

By the way, lurking underneath the Establishment consensus on foreign-policy activism is the most successful Jedi mind trick that the American right ever pulled. Since the mid-1960s, American conservatism has waged a relentless and successful campaign to convince U.S. voters that it is wasteful, foolish, and stupid to pay taxes to support domestic programs here at home, but it is our patriotic duty to pay taxes to support a military establishment that costs more than all other militaries [of the world] put together and that is used not to defend American soil but to fight wars mostly on behalf of other people. In other words, Americans became convinced that it was wrong to spend tax revenues on things that would help their fellow citizens (like good schools, health care, roads, and bridges, high-speed rail, etc.), but it was perfectly OK to tax Americans (though of course not the richest Americans) and spend the money on foreign wars. And we bought it. Moreover, there doesn't seem to be an effective mechanism to force the president to actually face and confront the trade-offs between the money he spends on optional wars and the domestic programs that eventually have to be cut back home. Which brings me to No. 5.

5. Congress Has Checked Out.

The authority to declare war is given to Congress, not the president, but that authority has been steadily usurped ever since World War II. Although the Constitution could not be clearer on this point, modern presidents clearly feel no constraints about ordering U.S. forces to attack other countries, or even to fully inform Congress as to what we might be doing in secret. In practice, therefore, the vaunted system of "checks and balances" supposedly enshrined in our Constitution simply doesn't operate anymore, which means that the use of America's military power has been left solely to the presidents and a handful of ambitious advisors (see No. 4 above). This is not to say that public opinion doesn't figure into their calculations (i.e., they've got pollsters and political advisors too), but it is hardly a binding constraint.

I've no doubt that one could add more items to this list (e.g., the passive press, the military-industrial complex, etc.), but the items already noted go a long way to explaining why the supposedly peace-loving United States keeps finding itself in all these small but draining wars.

Back in the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama said that his favorite movie was The Godfather. And if I recall correctly, he said his second favorite movie was The Godfather, Part II. But his presidency is starting to play out like Part III of that famed trilogy, where Michael Corleone rails against the fates that have foiled his attempt to make the Corleone family legit.

I can just hear Obama saying it: "Just when I thought I was out … they pull me back in."
Precisely.

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Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.