Why is it, when the average citizen thinks about the US deficit, they immediately turn their focus on domestic policies.. like healthcare and education, pork spending.
I'm wondering why so few see the elephant in the room.
Following the Vietnam War, which has been estimated to have cost $111 billion ($738 billion in today's money), the US economy was, to put it mildly, in a mess.
Yet that figure is a mere 12% of what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might actually have cost. In March 2013 the Guardian reported "the war in Iraq has cost $823.2bn between 2003 and 2011" and "that it may eventually cost as much as $3.7tn." (
http://bit.ly/1as1ll8). Also that month The Telegraph reported, "Cost to US of Iraq and Afghan wars could hit $6 trillion". (
http://bit.ly/YPsf1p).
The Whitehouse's infographic of the U.S National Debt at http://www.whitehouse.gov/infographics/us-national-debt
No one is making nearly enough hay of this, not least the US populace themselves, who stand to lose the most. (For the estimated costs of major U.S. wars since 1775 see
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf).
Mike Baker did a wonderful article pertaining to the cost of looking after the veterans of wars, many of which should never have been started:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-costs-us-wars-linger-over-100-years
The problem with most US wars is that they are not conducive to law and order in the world. They do not make us safer. They make us less safe. They are not just wars, but unjust wars. They do not foster good will. But ill feelings and often justified retribution.
General Eisenhower once said:
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 are 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. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Can we assume that General Eisenhower spoke from wisdom gained through experience, and if so, why do we keep ignoring this elephant in the room?
I once quoted General Smedley Butler to a die hard conservative (remember.. I am a conservative) and he called General Butler a "traitor." I would call him a "patriot" because he loved his country yet stood firm with honesty and honor-ability while describing his job.. his career.. and our place in the world.
War Is A Racket
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most
vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the
profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it
seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it
is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very
many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the
conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States
during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax
returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them
dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out?
How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and
machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of
them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are
victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the
few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public
shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones.
Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression
and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a
racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the
international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to
stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and
Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion],
their dispute over the Polish Corridor.
The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia]
complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each
other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was
Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people -- not those who
fight and pay and die -- only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to
profit.
There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our
statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.
Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?
Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being
trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in
"International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, said:
"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the
future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the
moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. . . . War
alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility
upon the people who have the courage to meet it."
Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained
army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war -- anxious for
it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with
Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border
after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose
sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.
Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for
more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently
increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.
Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of
Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when
Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then
our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison
us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us?
Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent
about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and
industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.
Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect
these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all
stirred up to hate Japan and go to war -- a war that might well cost us tens of
billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds
of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.
Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit --
fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few.
Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They
would fare well.
Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It
pays high dividends.
But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit
their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their
children?
What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge
profits?
Yes, and what does it profit the nation?
Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside
the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than
$1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted
aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning
about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At
the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international
affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade
balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a
purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade
might well have been ours without the wars.
It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average
American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this
racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost
of operations is always transferred to the people -- who do not profit.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
Today the benefactors are hidden in plain sight. Let us focus on the
top five of the
2008 list:
* The first name that comes to everyone’s mind here is
Halliburton. Halliburton’s KBR, Inc. division bilked government agencies to the tune
of $17.2 billion in Iraq war-related revenue from 2003-2006 alone. This
is estimated to comprise a whopping one-fifth of KBR’s total revenue
for the 2006 fiscal year. The massive payoff is said to have financed
the construction and maintenance of military bases, oil field repairs,
and various infrastructure rebuilding projects across the war-torn
nation. This is just the latest in a long string of military/KBR wartime
partnerships, thanks in no small part to Dick Cheney’s former role with
the parent company.
* At first blush, a private equity fund (and not, say, Exxon-Mobil) being
the number 2 profiteer in the Iraq war might sound strange. However, the
cleverly run fund has raked in $1.44 billion through its
DynCorp
subsidiary. The primary service DynCorp has provided to the war efforts
is the training of new Iraqi police forces. Often described as a ‘
state within a state‘,
the sizable company is headed by Dwight M. Williams, former Chief
Security Officer of the upstart U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
With this and other close ties to defense agencies, Veritas Capital Fund
and DynCorp are well-positioned to capitalize on Iraq even more.
* The Washington Group International has parlayed its expertise the repair, restore, and maintenance of
high-output oil fields into $931 million in Iraq-related revenue from
2003-2006. The publicly traded 25,000 employee company’s other
specialties include the building and maintenance of schools, military
bases, and municipal utilities, such as watering systems. Some have
complained that Washington Group’s hefty government payoffs have served
primarily to raise its trading price on the New York Stock Exchange. One
thing is for sure – with oil prices continuing to rise, there will be
no shortage of demand for the oil protection services Washington Group
International brings to bear.
* All war zones eventually becomes cluttered with spent ammunition and
broken/abandoned weapons, creating a lucrative niche for any company
willing to clean it all up. In Iraq, this duty has
fallen into the hands of Environmental Chemical.
The privately held
Burlingame, California company has stockpiled $878
million by the end of fiscal 2006 for munitions disposal, calling upon
its “decade of experience planning and conducting UXO removal,
investigation, and certification activities.” The company has close ties
to several defense agencies and is staffed by graduates of the U.S.
Navy’s Explosive Ordinance Schools, as well as the U.S. Army’s Chemical
Schools at Anniston.
* Aegis has done the United Kingdom proud after reeling in a contract to coordinate all of Iraq’s
private security operations.
The Pentagon contract is good for $430 million (incredibly lucrative by
any standard) but it has landed Aegis in some hot public relations
water. The company’s decision to contribute to Iraq war efforts has lead
to a rejected membership application from the International Peace
Operations Association. According to The Independent, the influential
trade organization does not consider Aegis worthy of inclusion in the
“peace and stability industry.” It remains to be seen whether Aegis will
continue to be ostracized for participating in the training of Iraqi
security forces.
So when we discuss education and healthcare affordability why do we still ignore this elephant in the room?
