A trillion dollars blown up in the blood and rubble of Iraq and another trillion or so gone poof in Afghanistan…
(Photo at left shows pallets of hundred-dollar bills shipped to Iraq – and unaccounted for. Chart shows defense spending in relation to the rest of the US budget.)
Back at home, the economy teeters on the edge of a cliff and the national debt snowballs out of control…
You would think the last thing America’s leaders would be contemplating is another war. You would be wrong.
As I write this, a powerful group is girding for a public relations campaign to prepare Americans for a “military option” in Iran.
In a news analysis for Inter Press Service, reporter Jim Lobe charges that “veterans of the Bush administration’s pre-Iraq invasion propaganda offensive are clearly mobilizing their arguments for a similar effort on Iran, even suggesting that the timetable between campaign launch and possible military action – a mere six months in Iraq’s case – could be appropriate.”
Lobe reports that:
Neo-conservative and other hawks have also pounced on reported remarks by United Arab Emirates (UAE) Amb. Yousef al-Otaiba, at a retreat sponsored by The Atlantic magazine in Colorado this week to nullify another obstacle to military action – the widespread belief that Washington’s Arab allies oppose a military attack on Iran by the U.S. or Israel as too risky for their own security and regional stability.
“We cannot live with a nuclear Iran,” Otaiba was quoted as saying in a Washington Times article by Eli Lake, a prominent neo-conservative journalist.
“Mr. Otaiba’s …comments leave no doubt what he and most Arab officials think about the prospect of a nuclear revolutionary Shiite state,” the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, a major media champion of the Iraq War, opined. “They desperately want someone, and that means the U.S. or Israel, to stop it, using force if need be.”
You can read the article here:
You probably know by now that the United States spends more on “defense” than the rest of the world combined. And you probably know that a lot of that “defense” spending benefits foreign countries – America maintains hundreds of military bases in the most unlikely spots around the globe.
It seems to me that America’s number one foreign policy is to wage war – or at least threaten to wage war.
Why?
You might say it’s necessary to sustain an economy buttressed by defense factories. Billions are spent on doomsday weapons and war machines that no one could even think of using unless the world goes completely mad. I can think of no other reason for this expenditure except to retain American jobs and line the pockets of powerful people.
But, while I have no facts and figures to back up my hunch, I bet a lot of America’s defense budget ends up in far-away countries where labor is cheap and laws are lax. That’s the way it is with everything else these days. Cars “made” in Detroit are put together from parts imported from who knows where, for example.
That’s one reason the stimulus didn’t pay off as expected. A lot of the money that the government poured into the U.S. economy ended up in China as Americans spent it at places like Wal-Mart.
I know Israel is America’s ally, and I know a powerful Israeli faction is pressing for an American strike against Iran. But shouldn’t America’s own welfare – America’s own survival – come first in American government policies?
Isn’t it obvious that killing Iranians is a luxury the U.S. cannot afford?
They say Iran will develop a nuclear bomb and that will be the end of the world. But doesn’t Israel have nuclear weapons? And the Russians? And even crazy Pakistan? And isn’t the world still spinning around the sun?
A nuclear Iran is, indeed, a terrifying possibility. But if America goes to war with Iran, a bankrupt America will be an equally frightening certainty.
I wonder why America’s “hawks” don’t see this. Or is it that they just don’t care? Or do they have a hidden agenda that includes the bankrupting of their own country?
You tell me!