But we sometimes think military spending is a bright spot in our economy, not understanding that the military spending is destroying our economy. Each billion dollars of government spending invested in the military creates about 12,000 jobs. Investing it instead in tax cuts for personal consumption generates approximately 15,000 jobs. But putting it into healthcare gives us 18,000 jobs, in home weatherization and infrastructure also 18,000 jobs, in education 25,000 jobs, and in mass transit 27,700 jobs. In education the average wages and benefits of the 25,000 jobs created is significantly higher than in the military's 12,000 jobs. Military spending is a lost opportunity, a drain on our treasury.
While a majority of Americans would be happy to cut back on military spending, most don't want to cut it back as much as is needed, and many don't want to give up the habit of launching wars. Even if the Iraq War was a bad one, other wars are good: World War II, the American Revolution, maybe the Civil War (depending where you're from), or even the war in Afghanistan. Not all wars are based on lies, or so we're told.
The fact is that all wars have always been and always will be based on lies. World War II had nothing to do with saving the Jews and did not save them. Roosevelt refused to increase the immigration quota and killed a bill that would have allowed 20,000 Jewish refugee children to enter. The allies refused to work with Germany when it wanted to expel the Jews, and did not want to rescue them when Germany had decided to kill them all. Roosevelt lied about allegedly unprovoked German submarine attacks, just as Wilson had done to get us into the war to end all wars. Roosevelt used a forged map to claim Germany had plans to take over the Americas.
This escalated for years as Roosevelt and Churchill longed for a Japanese attack on U.S. forces. Our country began giving airplanes and training and pilots to China for its efforts to bomb Japan. The first U.S. pilots didn't fly missions until 12 days after Pearl Harbor, but Washington had made sure Japan knew about it. And our ambassador repeatedly warned the state department of the plans for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was not in the United States -- remember -- but in the middle of the Pacific on an island whose queen we'd overthrown on behalf of sugar plantations.
The United States cut off Japan's economy, including oil and scrap metal. Japan's survival was at risk when Roosevelt told his cabinet officials he expected the Pearl Harbor attack to come on December 1st. He was off by 6 days.
Wars are never justifiable, and planning for them makes them almost inevitable. It also puts us at risk of triggering a nuclear holocaust that would eliminate all life on earth. It also puts the earth at risk, among other ways, through the consumption of oil. The largest user of oil in this country is the military. If the Pentagon were a country, it would be in 32nd place in oil use. I know Bill McKibben spoke about pollution here this week. I hope he mentioned this vicious cycle of burning oil in wars fought in large part for control of oil.
The night before last, I had dinner with the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who did something I don't think an American president has done in generations. He met with peace activists to discuss ways to keep the peace.
A-ha, you may be thinking, but if you had evil intentions, wouldn't you want to disarm the other side by talking peace? Don't people who meet with this man risk being played for suckers? Wasn't Roosevelt right to refuse to meet with Hitler on the grounds that we were too busy ramping up weapons production in case we had to fight him? Isn't talking to people a form of appeasement that just encourages them?
But encourages them in what exactly? The United States overthrew Iran's elected president 58 years ago and installed a dictator. Iran eventually, in the late 1970s, drove out its dictator, in large part through nonviolent resistance, something Gandhi had recommended to the Germans, by the way. As the United States occupies the nations to the east and west of Iran, and Iran has not itself attacked another nation since long before the United States existed, what are we afraid Iran will do?
The story is that we don't want them to have nuclear energy because it would put them closer to having nuclear weapons if they chose to. But we've embargoed Iran to keep out parts for windmills and other green energy. We're treating Iran as we treated Germany and Japan between the two world wars. None of which is to suggest that Iran has a clean record on human rights or a healthy democracy. But wars don't fix those problems. And nothing is worse than war. And if that was the basis for a war wouldn't we have bombed Saudi Arabia by now?
A resolution is being circulated in Congress that would ask Israel to attack Iran. Senator Lindsay Graham recently proposed that we attack Iran. Some of the most powerful forces in our country have been pushing for this for years and will keep pushing as long as it takes, unless we turn things around.
One chance to start doing that is on October 2nd. Antiwar activism is in a strange place this week, as the big push from progressives has been to let gays and lesbians and immigrants take part in our war crimes. In fact, the legislation just defeated in the Senate would make college and the military the paths to citizenship for immigrants, without providing funding for college, and without permitting nonviolent public service in place of participation in the war machine. With those misguided measures defeated, perhaps we can focus on getting the heterosexual citizens out of our wars by organizing, educating, resisting recruitment, and lobbying congress to vote No on the larger bill that is now in play which would dump hundreds of billions into the military, $150 billion into the wars, and a good chunk into building permanent bases in Afghanistan.
In July 115 congress members voted No on war money. It's harder to get them to do so when the rest of the military is in the same bill, but we have to try. What's encouraging is that labor and community and civil rights groups that have shied away from opposing wars are now beginning to work with the peace movement, with the understanding that we all want to move the money from wars and the military to the places it's needed. We could have 20 high-paying green energy jobs for every soldier sent to Afghanistan. And we can push more effectively for that change if we all work together on domestic issues while insisting that all useful projects be funded in bills that are clean of war money.
On October 2nd a major and historic march on Washington is planned that will unite this broader coalition. See http://onenationforpeace.org And PDA is organizing lobbying and other events the day before, so check out http://pdamerica.org
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