We need to bring the troops home—not just from Iraq and Afghanistan, but from all 800 of the places we have them stationed around the globe. We need to make reefs of our aircraft battle groups, and new forests of our many, many airfields and military bases.
We need to put the hundreds of thousands of men and women who unproductively march around in ugly desert uniforms to productive work as teachers, scientists, technicians, builders, healthcare workers and reforestation workers.
We need to take the trillion dollars a year we annually blow on the military and start putting it into our education system, our health system, our retirement system and, most critically, into R&D on ways to save the planet from climate disaster.
There is probably still time to pull the US out of a permanent dive into third-class nationhood, but not much. Especially if the idiots currently at the wheel are allowed to make things worse by attacking Iran.
We can start by demanding that the current candidates for President and Congress stop their lies. None of them can bring about any “change” in America, or rescue the country from its growing crisis, without slashing our absurd military budget, and without ending the con game called “globalization” that is hollowing out the economy.
If we don’t demand that kind of honesty of our political class, we have only ourselves to blame for the wreckage that will ensue.
If you want to see what it’s going to look like if we continue down our present path, take a trip to Rome and walk through the ruins of the Forum. Those structures went from gleaming marble to piles of bricks in a matter of decades, during which Rome went from the capital of a pan-European empire to a fetid swamp (much like a post-collapse Washington would be). But a word of warning. If you go to Rome, bring a sleeping bag and a lunch pail. Your dollar will not get you a hotel room or pay for lunch at even a run-of-the-mill eatery these days, so plan on camping and eating from the grocery store while there.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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