Isn't the War on Terror plummeting the US Economy?

[mazbut]

FOOD FOR THOUGHT!

Isn't the War on Terror plummeting the US Economy?

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US Joins Ranks Of Failed States
By Paul Craig Roberts

US Joins Ranks Of Failed States By Paul Craig Roberts

There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400

[smuttydad]

1. This is the cost of being the worlds only superpower.
2. Part of this cost would be being paid even if the troops were not involoved overseas.
3. Somethings are more important than money.

[mazbut]

October 22, 2009
The Toll on Pakistan's Poor
The Rotten Fruits of War

By DAN PEARSON and KATHY KELLY

Five months ago, shortly after the Pakistani government had begun a
military offensive against suspected Taliban fighters in the
northernmost area of the country, we arrived in Islamabad, the capital,
as part of a small delegation organized by Voices for Creative
Nonviolence (Voices for Creative Nonviolence). Our initial travel plans had focused on
learning more about civilian suffering caused by U.S. drone attacks.
But, over the course of our three-week visit, close to 3 million people
had become uprooted by violence in the Swat Valley and neighboring
districts. Visiting tent encampments and abandoned buildings to which
people had fled, we spoke with people who identified themselves as poor
people, with meager resources, who were anxious to return to their homes
as soon as possible. They were also alarmed because they feared that
their crops, animals, shops and stores were already destroyed.

Now that the military offensive in Swat has wound down, Pakistan’s
government officials have labeled the operation a success. They claim to
have cleared the area of Taliban fighters and have commenced a new
military offensive in South Waziristan.

A closer look reveals a very different story.

Many families from Swat and surrounding districts returned to find that
their homes, crops and other means of survival have been damaged or
destroyed. Such circumstances force many to rely heavily on food aid.
According to Amjad Jamal, a spokesperson for the World Food Program
(WFP), “around 2.4 million displaced people received aid from the WFP
food hubs last month.”

The WFP announced today that they are temporarily closing 20 food hubs
in the North West Frontier Province citing concerns of worsening
security.

Reporting from a Pakistani field hospital run by the International
Committee of the Red Cross, the BBC met with scores of victims wounded
by land mine explosions. The father of a 14 year old boy whose hands
were blown off while he was playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance
expressed anger over the government’s failure to remove the land mines
before telling people it was safe to return. The father worked as a
jeweler before the military offensive began, but after he and his family
fled the fighting, his shop was looted; now he has no income, and his
home was damaged in the shelling.

The BBC also reported that more than 200 corpses, believed to be bodies
of suspected Taliban, have been found across the valley in recent weeks.
Pakistan's independent Human Rights Commission has called for an
investigation into reports of numerous extra-judicial killings and
reprisals carried out by security forces.

Dr. Aasim Sajjad, a professor at the Lahore University of Management
Sciences, believes that the Taliban’s numbers will grow as a result of
Pakistan’s military offensives. “The hundreds of thousands
languishing in refugee camps talk of the mortar shells that have
destroyed their homes and killed their relatives,” says Dr. Sajjad.
“They seethe with anger and warn the government that most Taliban
fighters hail from the local population. The longer the war continues --
and it has only just begun in this region -- the better the chances that
the Taliban will be able to recruit from the refugees.” (Monthly
Review “War, Islamists and the Left,” July 7, 2009)

Yesterday’s deadly suicide bombing at the Islamic University in
Islamabad was the latest in a series of the Taliban’s recent reprisal
attacks against the Pakistani government that have claimed the lives of
over 150 people.

Military offensives that promise to smash or eradicate “the bad
guys” may accomplish short-term “successes” by locking up or
killing armed resisters and promising that the military will provide
peace and security. But military establishments aren’t set up to
address the long-term, desperate grievances that afflict impoverished
people and give rise to support for militant groups of resisters.

According to conservative estimates, 75% of Pakistan's population of
170 million lives on less than $2 a day. The majority of Pakistanis
yearn for food security, clean water, a livelihood that can sustain
their families and education that will help their children break out of
impoverishment. Young men who are jobless, shut out of education are
resentful of social structures that favor wealthy landowners and other
elites and they are drawn to Taliban groups that promise a Robin Hood
sort of redistribution. These Taliban groups have been dealt a temporary
setback by the military offensive, but the fundamental problems of
hunger, lack of clean water, illiteracy and joblessness haven’t been
tackled.

Meanwhile, U.S. drone attacks continue, in both Pakistan and
Afghanistan. Using “eyes in the skies” by piloting Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles, (UAVs or drones), the U.S. analysts can see and attack
suspected Taliban or Al Qaida fighters, along with anyone else who might
happen to be in the vicinity. But the UAVs won’t help us understand
the acute need for humanitarian relief, diplomacy, negotiation and
dialogue in a region already overwhelmed by attacks, counter-attacks,
bloodshed and death.

Whether it is in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq or even in the U.S., as
we've seen in recent years, war takes its heaviest toll on the poorest.
It is a profound mistake to believe that military force is a solid
foundation for peace.

Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) and Dan Pearson (dan@vcnv.org) are
co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. With colleagues in
Chicago, they are organizing the Peaceable Assembly Campaign to
nonviolently resist U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well
as military support for the Israeli military.

[mazbut]

The Super Rich are Laughing
The US as Failed State



By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The US has every characteristic of a failed state.
The US government’s current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation.
Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the US relies on terrorism and military aggression.
Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized interest groups at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. For example, war at all cost, which enriches the armaments industry, the officer corps and the financial firms that handle the war’s financing, takes precedence over the needs of American citizens. There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400.
“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” said Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the subcommittee.
According to reports, the US Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way.
While the US government squanders $400 per gallon of gasoline in order to kill women and children in Afghanistan, many millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their homes and are experiencing the kind of misery that is the daily life of poor third world peoples. Americans are living in their cars and in public parks. America’s cities, towns, and states are suffering from the costs of economic dislocations and the reduction in tax revenues from the economy’s decline. Yet, Obama has sent more troops to Afghanistan, a country half way around the world that is not a threat to America.
It costs $750,000 per year for each soldier we have in Afghanistan. The soldiers, who are at risk of life and limb, are paid a pittance, but all of the privatized services to the military are rolling in excess profits. One of the great frauds perpetuated on the American people was the privatization of services that the US military traditionally performed for itself. “Our” elected leaders could not resist any opportunity to create at taxpayers’ expense private wealth that could be recycled to politicians in campaign contributions.
Republicans and Democrats on the take from the private insurance companies maintain that the US cannot afford to provide Americans with health care and that cuts must be made even in Social Security and Medicare. So how can the US afford bankrupting wars, much less totally pointless wars that serve no American interest?
The enormous scale of foreign borrowing and money creation necessary to finance Washington’s wars are sending the dollar to historic lows. The dollar has even experienced large declines relative to currencies of third world countries such as Botswana and Brazil. The decline in the dollar’s value reduces the purchasing power of Americans’ already declining incomes.
Despite the lowest level of housing starts in 64 years, the US housing market is flooded with unsold homes, and financial institutions have a huge and rising inventory of foreclosed homes not yet on the market.
Industrial production has collapsed to the level of 1999, wiping out a decade of growth in industrial output.
The enormous bank reserves created by the Federal Reserve are not finding their way into the economy. Instead, the banks are hoarding the reserves as insurance against the fraudulent derivatives that they purchased from the gangster Wall Street investment banks.
The regulatory agencies have been corrupted by private interests. Frontline reports that Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers blocked Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating derivatives. President Obama rewarded Larry Summers for his idiocy by appointing him Director of the National Economic Council. What this means is that profits for Wall Street will continue to be leeched from the diminishing blood supply of the American economy.
An unmistakable sign of third world despotism is a police force that sees the pubic as the enemy. Thanks to the federal government, our local police forces are now militarized and imbued with hostile attitudes toward the public. SWAT teams have proliferated, and even small towns now have police forces with the firepower of US Special Forces. Summons are increasingly delivered by SWAT teams that tyrannize citizens with broken down doors, a $400 or $500 repair born by the tyrannized resident. Recently a mayor and his family were the recipients of incompetence by the town’s local SWAT team, which mistakenly wrecked the mayor’s home, terrorized his family, and killed the family’s two friendly Labrador dogs.
If a town’s mayor can be treated in this way, what do you think is the fate of the poor white or black? Or the idealistic student who protests his government’s inhumanity?
In any failed state, the greatest threat to the population comes from the government and the police. That is certainly the situation today in the USA. Americans have no greater enemy than their own government. Washington is controlled by interest groups that enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.
The one percent that comprise the superrich are laughing as they say, “let them eat cake.”
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com