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Imagine if in 2010 we did not spend one more borrowed penny to manufacture new weapons, occupy new lands, or recruit new mercenaries. Going cold turkey on military spending would wipe out nearly $1 trillion of our 1.6 trillion dollar deficit. A year and a half of war & weapons abstinence could erase our debt entirely.
Unfortunately, America is addicted to war and to
debt.
Fortunately,
we can work together to kick the perpetual war and debt habit.
Veteran, Anti-War Activist, and Born on the Forth of July author Ron Kovic praising Marcy Winograd at Redondo Beach Winograd for Congress fundraiser.
Sunday, February 7, 2010.
The proposed new $1-trillion dollar military budget includes $800-billion for the Pentagon, a 30-billion supplemental to escalate the war in Afghanistan, plus funds to maintain secret black hole prisons; military aid to foreign nations, and money for mercenaries. Requests to approve this unprecedented military budget comes at a time when General Stanley McChrystal is apologizing for Sunday's NATO air strike in Afghanistan that killed over two dozen civilians, women and children among the casualties.
The proposed new $1-trillion dollar military budget includes $800-billion for the Pentagon, a 30-billion supplemental to escalate the war in Afghanistan, plus funds to maintain secret black hole prisons; military aid to foreign nations, and money for mercenaries.
To sell the American public on perpetual war, subsidized by the country we vaporized at the end of WWII, the Pentagon is rebranding the Iraq war and occupation, changing the name of Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn.
Dawn connotes daybreak, a new beginning rays rising from the ocean; gold ripples lapping our shores; poetry.
Sounds better than permanent bases, oil grabs, and soldier suicides.
To pay for all of this, including the marketing campaign, our nation must increasingly borrow from Japan as China recently dumped U.S. treasuries, leaving Japan to surge ahead as the largest foreign holder of US Treasury bonds.
And deeper into debt we sink, while Republicans clamor for slashing the deficit, calling for all- too-powerful commissions on fiscal responsibility to "study" Social Security all the while forgetting to mention we have over two trillion dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund and that it's perpetual war, not Social Security, that drives our deficit.
If only the world had a 12-step program for war addicts.
Seriously, It's time to break the addiction -- and to vote the
enablers out.
My opponent Jane Harman relies on military contractors to keep herself
in office. Military contractors rely on my opponent to keep us at war.
Already, my opponent has taken almost $60,000 in campaign contributions (2009/2010) from military contractors. Certainly, these contributions compromise my opponent's decisions with respect to war.
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