Endless war wastes money — and lives

[Asian.Century]

Endless war wastes money — and lives

BY ERNEST F. HOLLINGS,
Monday, June 20, 2011

I have been trying to fathom Barack Obama. As a member of the Illinois Legislature, Sen. Obama declared against the war in Iraq. Now, as president, he not only begs to stay in Iraq, but increases our commitment in Afghanistan by tripling the number of troops. What puzzles me: What is our "commitment in Afghanistan?"

The only war we have won since World War II was in Afghanistan -- Charlie Wilson's war. Charlie and I had lunch together just before I left the Senate in 2005, and he allowed that we won that war against the Russians because Afghans "hated foreigners." He emphasized that the warlords in Afghanistan didn't trust each other, and the CIA had to pay them off to get anything done.

Now I have come across Zbigniew Brzezinski's 1997 book, "The Grand Chessboard," describing Eurasia, including the land mass of Russia and China. Brzezinski writes: "For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia. ... Now a non-Eurasian power is pre-eminent in Eurasia -- and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained."

Thus, the U.S. policy of encirclement of Russia and China. Apparently, it's being implemented with President Obama promising missiles for Poland; establishing a naval base with South Korea on Jeju Island; and staying in Afghanistan.

The lesson of Vietnam was that you couldn't change a culture militarily. This is particularly true of Afghanistan, a narco state where they still sell their daughters and the warlords control.

Not long ago, Gen. David Petraeus stated: "The recent progress by American and allied forces against the Taliban and other insurgent groups is 'fragile' and 'reversible,' making the continued presence of American troops in the oft-violent country a continuing necessity."

After 10 years of war, we're not "pre-eminent" in Afghanistan, much less Eurasia. Worse, China is not about to be put in a geopolitical cage. Reacting to Brzezinski's policy of preeminence in Eurasia, China agrees with Pakistan to build and operate a naval base at Pakistan's Gundar port.

President Obama and Gen. Petraeus don't appreciate Charlie Wilson's lesson -- Afghans hate foreigners, and for 10 years we have been the foreigners.

Gen. Petraeus concludes: "We want to ensure that Afghanistan does not become an attractive alternative to them [al-Qaida] again, a safe haven in which they might plot attacks such as those of 9/11."

Shortly after 9/11, the State Department delivered to me a list and map of 45 countries where al-Qaida has operated. Apparently, General Petraeus has 44 countries to go.

With the world's superpowers all having nuclear arms, the suicide weapon, China realizes that the way to attain preeminence globally is with its economy. With controlled capitalism, China uses every trick in the book. It subsidizes its product, refuses to re-value its currency, demands technology for foreigners to produce in China, and alters acquired technology, patenting it so that the new technology becomes the article in trade.

Issuing its 12th five-year plan, China stresses innovation, balancing the need for growth against the necessity of protecting the environment; improving information technology; developing new and renewable energy sources, and developing high speed railway and highway networks.

China knows how to use its economic influence. Twenty years ago, after Tiananmen, the United States secured a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly to investigate human rights in China. China went to its economic friends in Africa and the Pacific Rim and there has never been a hearing on the resolution.

Devoid of a plan, the U.S. can't even raise the debt limit to the amount already spent. We go broke fighting wars against terror.

No nation threatens the security of the U.S. militarily. But China threatens our economic security in the trade war. Globalization is nothing more than a trade war with production looking for a cheaper country to produce. Corporate America is the fifth column in this trade war - it opposes rebuilding our economy.

To create jobs, we need to eliminate the tax breaks for the off-shoring of jobs and give a tax break to Corporate America to create jobs in the United States by replacing the corporate tax with a 6 percent value added tax (VAT). Then we need to enforce our trade laws to protect our economy.

But Wall Street, the big banks, and Corporate America want to keep the off-shore profits flowing. As the headline on the front page of The New York Times reads, "Obama Seeks To Win Back Wall St. Cash."

The president is not about to turn off his best contributor so we fail to compete in globalization.

More importantly, we are wasting lives and money. Get out of the war in Afghanistan now and get into the trade war now.

Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings, a Democrat, served as governor of South Carolina from 1959-63 and in the U.S. Senate from 1966-2005.

Endless war wastes money

 

[Asian.Century]

True in it?

 

[Asian.Century]

For common Afghanis.....

Counting Blood and Treasure
Jun. 23 2011 - 7:45 am | 2 views | 0 recommendations | 0 comment

Kabul:

Last night U.S. President Barak Obama announced the beginning of the end of his Afghan surge. Ten thousand U.S. troops will be home by the end of the year, with the remaining 20,000 surge troops returning stateside by next summer. That will leave approximately 70,000 to focus on Afghanistan’s restive borders to the south and east. Some of those will trickle back by 2014, when full security of the country is to be handed over to Afghan forces. Others are likely to be stationed at semi-permanent bases across the country into the near future.

The drawdown is seen as deeper and faster than anticipated by the Pentagon and, rather than signaling overwhelming success, reflects the heightened fiscal pressures that have descended on Washington along with the uncertainties surrounding the broad nation-building mission in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death.

The U.S. military is on track to spend $113 billion on its operation in Afghanistan this fiscal year, and is seeking $107 billion for the next. This breaks down to roughly $1 million per year for each deployed service member in Afghanistan and represents a higher per-capita cost than in Iraq because fuel and other supplies that must be trucked into landlocked Afghanistan.

However, a 30 percent reduction in troop strength will only yield a 15 percent savings in total costs due to the need to sustain bases and other infrastructure.

The largest single line item in next year’s Defense Department budget request is $12.8 billion to stand-up the Afghan National Army, a mission that has already consumed more than $28 billion. Maintaining Afghan military and police forces, once they are at fighting strength, is expected to cost between $6 and $8 billion a year. With a budget of only $1.5 billion, the Afghan government is incapable of even attempting to fund its own security. This leaves the U.S. with little choice but to foot the bill.

But taking the knife to the Defense Department’s top line item would prove shortsighted. An Afghan officer requires $22,000 in funding a year, much less the million dollar price tag required to send his American counterpart back to Afghanistan.

These billions of dollars being spent on a benighted country halfway around the world might seem significant at a time when America is busy grappling with the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. But the $444 billion spent on the ten-year war, on track to rival the costs of U.S. wars in Korea and Iraq but not there yet , pales in comparison to the $14 trillion national debt.

Judge the surge on its merits of security gained over lives lost, not on 3.5 percent of the national debt.

Counting Blood and Treasure - Alim Remtulla - Kabul Capital - Forbes

 

[Asian.Century]

if only US and UK had known this........

 

[Asian.Century]

American democrats and republicans fight!!!

America's Afghanistan exit strategy brings conflict to the domestic frontline

Despite its tremendous cost – including more than 1,600 American military fatalities – the war in Afghanistan has not received a great deal of media attention in the US. It has not been the focus of extensive Congressional debate, nor was it a major issue in the presidential election of 2008 or the congressional elections of last year.

But President Obama's announcement that he intends to withdraw 33,000 of the 100,000 US troops deployed in Afghanistan by the end of next year – reversing the surge he ordered at the end of 2009 – could finally precipitate a public clash. Champions of the war are now protesting that the president is wimping out, while opponenrts are complaining that the drawdown is too slow to bring US involvement in the war to an end. Contenders for the Republican presidential nomination reacted to the president's announcement in different ways. Afghanistan, it seems, might finally become a political issue.

Many congressional Democrats have long been skeptical of the war and didn't approve Obama's decision to boost the US presence in Afghanistan. Yet these Democrats, until recently, have only gingerly registered their opposition.

Republicans, in keeping with their traditional hawkishness, have largely backed Obama's surge, though prominent supporters such as senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have repeatedly complained about Obama withdrawing troops prematurely, transmitting a mixed message of concerned support. The few non-interventionist/isolationist Republicans who questioned the war did not have much political room for manoeuvre. The war proceeded without much fuss.

But ever since Obama announced the 2009 surge, this moment has been looming, for the president had noted then that July 2011 would mark the start of a disengagement. He never said how fast or extensive the troop withdrawal would be – only that it would begin now, which had the effect of suspending the political debate.

Hawks worried that Obama would cut out on the troops-heavy counterinsurgency mission they fancied, but they couldn't be sure. And doves had trouble gaining traction for their anti-war efforts, while the president was saying that soon the United States would be bringing its troops home. The American public seemed content to not have to ponder these dicey issues.

Now Afghanistan is centre stage. With this middle course – withdrawing not too many, but not too few troops – Obama is obviously trying to persuade the public, especially the independent voters he will need in 2012, that he is indeed delivering on his promise, but doing so cautiously and responsibly. The White House hopes this stance will prevent any major political firestorm. But among the politics-and-policy class, there's likely to be a swirl of clashes.

Last month, a large number of House Democrats joined with a handful of Republicans to establish a timetable for withdrawal; they lost on a close 215-204 vote. This group, which has been drawing increasing strength, is not likely to be appeased by Obama's announcement.

"It has been the hope of many in Congress and across the country that the full drawdown of US forces would happen sooner than the president laid out," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said after the speech. Meanwhile, hawks such as McCain and Graham quickly started complaining, with McCain griping that Obama's plan, "poses an unnecessary risk to the hard-won gains that our troops have made thus far in Afghanistan".

In the Republican presidential contest, three of the candidates immediately struck differing positions. Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman said Obama's withdrawal is too slow. Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty called for a slower drawdown, in keeping with the more modest proposal General David Petraeus reportedly backed. And former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who has had a muddled position of late, reverted to an old conservative cliché. "We shouldn't adhere to an arbitrary timetable on the withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan," he said. These differences could lead to feisty primary debates in the weeks and months ahead.

So will Afghanistan become a major issue in the 2012 election? Certainly it won't compete with the flailing economy for attention – even if it is costing American taxpayers $120bn a year. Obama, who will attempt to remain above the various intra-mural debates on Afghanistan, has conveniently scheduled his de-surge to be finished by September 2012. That date was suggested by defence secretary Robert Gates as a compromise, after the White House proposed an early 2012 deadline and Petraeus requested an end-of-year deadline.

But if the September 2012 date is met, the president will be able to claim that he has kept his promise to ratchet back the war and to argue he should be trusted to guide its continuing reduction. At that point, a Republican nominee who contends the war should be bolstered will likely be at a disadvantage.

David Corn is the Washington bureau chief of motherjones.com

 

[Respect4Respect01]

111% true.

 

[Asian.Century]

111% true.

Thanks brother! Am trying to post only whats truth...

 

[Asian.Century]

AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ: WHERE THE AMERICAN EMPIRE DIES

By Frosty Wooldridge
June 23, 2011
NewsWithViews.com

History clearly shows that all empires collapse. They fail. They die. They cease to exist because they overextend themselves in wars, in debt, in borrowing and in loss of a comprehension of reality.

Today, the United States embroils itself in three wars that sap and bleed the life blood out of its people, its financial foundation and its understanding of reality. Who created the war in Iraq and Afghanistan? Was it 9/11? Was it bin Laden who demanded we leave Muslims lands long before 9/11 or was it the Military Industrial Complex that continues to maintain a strangle hold on Congress and the last two presidents?

What on earth gave George Bush the right to attack a sovereign nation like Iraq with no evidence whatsoever of a threat to the United States? How did he maneuver the American people to support such insane violence of his famous, “Shock and Awe” campaign? Why is it after 10 years and nothing but death to show for it—the current president continues to spend $12 billion a month of borrowed money to carry on such death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Why do they pretend success is just around the corner? Why do they want our troops to stay because they don’t want all those deaths to be in vain? Have they ever thought about adding more deaths in vain such as what happened in Vietnam?

Now that bin Laden suffered a head shot…why didn’t they kill him five, six, seven or eight years ago? Is it possible that Congress wanted a “reason” to remain in Afghanistan? Why do we continue in Afghanistan, a backward tribal country that defeated the British, the Russians and now, the Americans with little more than guerilla warfare? Why do we waste one more single American young man or woman? What’s the point?

Somebody or some entity or some corporation holding unlimited financial power that avoids rational thinking and ignores the will of the American people-----continues the wars in the Middle East. It dupes the American people into compliance. It may be the Military Industrial Complex. It may be this president that enjoyed the Nobel Peace Prize shoved into his pocket by a world crying for peace.

But the war continues with no end in sight! Moms and dads offer their children up to the war machine like sheep to the slaughter, like human sacrifices like so much unwanted chattel. You see 99 percent of Americans going about their daily lives without even a mention of the war—but it continues killing human beings on both sides—all for nothing.

Henry Kissinger, a man I despise from the Vietnam War era (along with Robert McNamara) said, “Soldiers are dumb pawns. Military men are just dumb, stupid, animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” Henry Kissinger was Secretary of state under Nixon and Chinese trade negotiator while American soldiers were dying in Vietnam.

Senator John McCain said in his stump speeches when he ran for the presidency, “We must fight on toward final victory in Afghanistan.” What a bunch of verbal garbage.

Nixon and Johnson killed over two million people in Vietnam and slaughtered 58,000 young American kids. The “Silent Majority” remained silent throughout all that killing for 10 years. Finally, the college kids of my generations screamed, “Hell no, we won’t go!”

President James Madison said: "If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these precede debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad."

Our country bleeds to death daily on a thousand fronts because powerful men in Congress and this president refuse to look at reality. Instead of correcting our educational systems that fail our children, they choose war. Instead of stopping mass immigration that’s buckling the fabric of our civilization, they choose war. Instead of undertaking solutions to solve our ominous energy crisis, they choose war. Instead of giving the truth to the American people, they do everything to obfuscate and cloud the “why” of remaining in three wars. Instead of serving and honoring our finest young men and women who chose to serve their country, our Congress and this president do not serve our young men and women. Instead of honoring their service, the members of Congress use those kids as pawns as mentioned by Kissinger.

The American empire cannot continue and it will not continue. We failed the world and we failed ourselves by allowing our Congress and the past two presidents to act in the most reprehensible manner to bring about so much death and destruction 10,000 miles away.

We have killed tens of thousands, we have bombed their lands, we have created 2.5 million refugees, we have polluted their soils and we have left them in chaos.

Cost to us? After the Vietnam War, a veteran MD wrote a book showing that 175,000 to 200,000 American combat troops came home with their minds scrambled and committed suicide. The projections for the two current wars show 100,000 suicides will be committed by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. That doesn’t count the endless stream of drug use, alcoholism and ruined marriages along with horribly emotionally damaged children.

How can so much human misery on such a scale be tolerated and accepted by Americans?

Listen to Frosty Wooldridge on Wednesdays as he interviews top national leaders on his radio show "Connecting the Dots" at www.themicroeffect.com at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning in to your time zone.

 

[Asian.Century]

[Viewpoint] Money and the U.S. military

As with NATO, money has become the main issue, and we must watch for changes in the Korea-U.S. alliance.
June 25, 2011

The 62-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, remains the most powerful intergovernmental alliance in history. Its 28 member countries include the Group of Eight: the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia.

It’s unofficial motto is “All for one and one for all.” In the North Atlantic Treaty signed in Washington D.C. in 1949, NATO members agreed that an armed attack against one or more of them would be considered an attack against them all, and it authorized individual or collective actions, including the use of armed force. It has been the most successful global alliance, and was instrumental in dismantling the Soviet Union and liberating Eastern Europe.

It contained any new military aspirations of Germany and led the reconstruction of Europe. What the first NATO Secretary General Lord Ismay bluntly described as the organization’s ultimate goal - “To keep the Russians out, the Americans in and Germans down” - was accomplished.

But the allies’ attachment to this organization is “aging out,” according to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who raised questions about NATO’s viability in his final address as Pentagon boss at a recent defense ministers’ meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Gates more or less criticized the organization for transforming into a pompous and pretentious Emperor who parades about unclothed believing he is decked out in finery.

Gates, who will be retiring at the end of this month, was blunt in his criticism of European members. In the war in the Afghanistan, NATO showed serious flaws and weaknesses in military capabilities and political will. “Despite more than 2 million troops in uniform, not counting the U.S. military, NATO has struggled, at times desperately, to sustain a deployment of 25,000 to 45,000 troops,” he said.

The engagement in Libya was even more troubling. “While every alliance member voted for the Libya mission, less than half have participated, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission,” he said. “Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can’t. The military capabilities simply aren’t there.” The world’s strongest military alliance is struggling with a shortage of munitions in a fight against a tin pot dictatorship just 11 weeks into the operation.

NATO currently runs a two-tiered alliance: members committed to peacekeeping, reconstruction and development assistance, and those engaged in combat missions.

But it is neglecting its obligations and dumping most of the hard work on the U.S. European countries’ defense spending has fallen 15 percent since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The U.S. accounted for 50 percent of NATO’s military spending during the Cold War. Now it pays for over 75 percent, seriously burdening the U.S federal budget, which is in a deep deficit.

Gates’ was particularly outspoken on the issue of European countries getting a free ride on the maintenance of global security.

He was warning that American taxpayers can no longer tolerate paying for the growing security burden produced by reductions in European defense budgets. His address bluntly described the situation in the future: “There will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.”

With most countries struggling with deficits following the 2008 financial crisis, economic and financial contributions may be the crux of the alliance’s destiny. Without a common enemy, NATO may wither into an organization existing largely as a coalition of the unwilling.

With scarce budget resources, the U.S. is likely to demand more burden-sharing from Europe in the security alliance. For the next 12 years, the U.S. plans to cut defense spending by $40 billion. Reducing the federal deficit and increasing jobs will be the primary focus of next year’s presidential election. The Republican majority in the Congress is hawkish, not in the sense of being pro-war but in terms of cutting the deficit.

President Barack Obama is pursuing the withdrawal of 33,000 troops from Afghanistan next year and delaying the relocation of American forces in Japan due to his budget dilemma.

Korea is no exception. The U.S. Senate Defense Commission last week decided to shelve the proposal to allow a three-year tenure for American soldiers stationed in Korea with their families.

It suggested a freeze in extra budgeting until the new army general in command of U.S. forces in Korea presents a master plan on U.S. military operations in Korea, including spending. That will include the American troop relocation to Pyeongtaek under the revised alliance pact signed by the last government to enhance mobility.

We should not take lightly the fact that a new arms strategy has been put off due to U.S. budget problems. We must not sit idly back, comforted by the people that say our bilateral alliance has never been better.

Money has become the main issue and we must be alert for possible changes in the Korea-U.S. security alliance.

*The writer is an editor of foreign and security affairs at the JoongAng Ilbo.

 

[Asian.Century]

U.S. military spends a cool $20 billion on air conditioning annually in Iraq and Afghanistan

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 10:45 PM on 26th June 2011

The U.S. military forks out a whopping $20.2billion a year on keeping troops in Iraq and Afghanistan cool, it has emerged.

The alarming figure is more than Nasa's entire annual budget and trumps the amount the G-8 has pledged to aid Egypt and Tunisia.

It's even more than the clean up cost of BPs Gulf oil spill.

Burning money: Air conditioning units attached to individual free-standing tents take a gallon of fuel each, which soon goes in the searing 125 degree heat

Why?

An air conditioning unit at a remote Afghanistan outpost takes a gallon of fuel, which soon goes in the searing 125degree heat.

This has to be shipped into Karachi, then driven 800 miles over 18 days to the war-torn country on atrociously bad roads.

'And you've got risks that are associated with moving the fuel almost every mile of the way,' Steven Anderson, a retired brigadier general who served as General David Patreaus' chief logistician in Iraq, told National Public Radio (NPR).

Fuel convoys remain key targets for attack, and according to Anderson, more than 1,000 troops have died while delivering vital supplies.

Withdrawal: 30,000 American troops are due home soon, according to Barack Obama, but the move is unlikely to make any serious savings in the budget

For Anderson the military would save money by going green. He claims experiments with polyurethane foam insulation tents in Iraq cut energy use by a staggering 92 per cent, taking 11,000 fuel convoys off the road.

But getting the top commanders to embrace change has been hard.

'People look at it and say "It's not my lane. We don't need to tie the operational commanders' hands" - things like this,' he said.

'A simple policy signed by the secretary of defence - a one or two-page memo, saying we will no longer build anything other than energy-efficient structures in Iraq and Afghanistan would have a profound impact.'

It was thought President Obama's decision to bring 30,000 American troops home soon would act as a relief on the coffers.

But according to experts the savings made by the withdrawal do not equal the $30billion cost of putting the soilders there in the first place.

Decision: President Obama announced his decision to draw down U.S. troops in Afghanistan during a televised address from the East Room of the White House last week

'What history has told us is that you don't see a proportional decrease in spending based on the number of troops when you draw them down,' Chris Hellman, a senior research analyst at the National Priorities Project, said.

'In Afghanistan that's going to be particularly true because it's a very difficult and austere environment in which to operate.'

The infrastructure being built in Iraq is the main expense, according to American University professor Gordon Adams.

'We're building big bases,' the costs of which are 'sunk' costs, he said.

But we won't see back any money from that infrastructure,' he added.

The Obama administration has also requested $13billion to train and equip Afghan security forces in the next year.

But Afghan president Hamid Karzai also hinted a couple of years ago that Afghanistan would be in no position to support its own forces 15 even 20 years from now.

It's likely the U.S. will pick up that bill as well.

However critics claim the military is not the biggest cost coming out of Washington.

Lawrence Kaplan, a visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College said Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security swallow far more than the

Pentagon's $107billion budget for Afghanistan next year.

U.S. military spends a cool $20billion on air conditioning annually in Iraq and Afghanistan | Mail Online

 

[Asian.Century]

The $1 trillion "war of choice"
Sunday, June 26, 2011
By Kevin Clarke

While most of the nation’s attention is properly fixed on how best to commemorate the upcoming 10th anniversary of the attacks in New York, Washington and in the air over Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001 that claimed more than 2,700 lives, the nation passed another kind of milestone recently related to that event. The Pentagon noted on June 21 that total military spending on Iraq and Afghanistan passed the $1 trillion mark at the end of April this year. That figure does not include $100 billion or so spent on intelligence and the total cost is obviously still accruing. For the month of April the Department of Defense spent more than $6 billion in Afghanistan alone.

Most of the money spent on our war on terror has been raised by selling debt, so you can expect that over time that staggering outlay will significantly increase. Some economists have predicted that by the time the United States has extracted itself from the major combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and paid off the bonds sold to pay for the war, more than $3 trillion will be spent. I presume someday someway will be found to punish those responsible for the gross cherry picking and distortion of intelligence that led to Colin Powell’s ignoble, career-ending performance at the United Nations in 2003 and the eventual excursion into Iraq. So far the proponents of the Iraq plan, if it can be called that, those who assured the nation this “optional” war would just about pay for itself once the overflowing oil wells of Iraq were made to pump profitably again, have been punished with World Bank appointments, Presidential Medals of Freedom, and cushy commentating gigs at Fox News.

It goes without saying that the economic debacle of the last few years has made all too clear how many ways that vast amount of national wealth could have been better spent within our own borders, particularly as budget crunching at the federal and state levels in recent months has turned us against ourselves in the nastiest manner imaginable over the last year. I don’t think unionism has been this vehemently and incoherently denounced since its earliest, costliest victories at the beginning of the 20th century as it is now. While I wait for the beginning of the many vigorous prosecutions of the people who delivered the nation into economic ruin in 2004 through 2007, the scapegoating of unions and the sideshow assaults on their pension funds continues apace. There is no end in sight to this just as there remains no credible plan for a much needed national restoration of infrastructure or institutions, nor is there any money to pay for it if there were a plan.

The invasion of Iraq did far more than divert the nation’s attention from running down the culprits of the September 11 attacks. It has proved a pit for both the nation’s resources and its credibility. The decision to pacify Afghanistan through force has opened a strategic quagmire for the United States and NATO. That excursion will end, according to the President, by 2014. I wish I could say that whatever hard-won “success” is achieved in Afghanistan will prove enduring, but I have a sickening suspicion that the current and by many accounts irredeemably corrupt regime in Kabul and the flimsy central government and military infrastructure that has been so laboriously constructed over the past decade will not last many weeks after a U.S. withdrawal. But that may prove true whether the U.S. departs in 2014 or 2044.

I find myself thinking of the Athenians who, assured by the oracle at Delphi that a great empire would fall if they invaded Syracuse, felt emboldened to launch their great navy without first pondering which empire the oracle was referring to. The attack of September 11 may prove to be the most cost-effective strike against a great power in history. It did not have to be so. Rarely have the just war principles, compiled and promulgated by the church over centuries, seemed so pointed and true as they are when stood up against the decision to begin a “war of choice” in Iraq.

There were a number of options before the nation in the months that followed September 11. We perhaps followed the most predictable course of action which has delivered us to this point almost ten years later. Pope John Paul II, attempting to thwart the first Gulf War, implored President Bush the elder to turn away from the path of war, what he called the “adventure with no return,” and its ceaseless spiral of violence and mourning. How poignantly those words resonate today as we attempt to extricate ourselves from Iraq and Afghanistan where more than 6,000 U.S. service members have died and an unknowable number of civilians killed. How his warning resounds as we simultaneously seek a way ahead in our own troubled nation toward a renewed and shared understanding of a common good that includes union workers and the people who pay them, the faltering middle class, the unemployed, the sick, the mentally ill, the young and the aged. And not least in importance, a way to pay for it. War-making is unspeakably costly.

The $1 trillion "war of choice" | USCatholic.org

 

[cheekybird]

If only this could be put in obamas thick head

 

[Asian.Century]

Estimated Cost of Post-9/11 Wars: 225,000 Lives, Up to $4 Trillion

By Editor on Friday, July 1st, 2011

Iraq, Afghanistan Wars Cost US Nearly $4 Trillion

The cost of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan are estimated at 225,000 lives and up to $4 trillion in U.S. spending, in a new report by scholars with the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. The group’s “Costs of War” project has released new figures for a range of human and economic costs associated with the U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks.

Nearly 10 years after the declaration of the War on Terror, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan have killed at least 225,000 people, including men and women in uniform, contractors, and civilians. The wars will cost Americans between $3.2 and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans, according to a new report by the Eisenhower Research Project based at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. If the wars continue, they are on track to require at least another $450 billion in Pentagon spending by 2020.

The group’s “Costs of War” project, which involved more than 20 economists, anthropologists, lawyers, humanitarian personnel, and political scientists, provides new estimates of the total war cost as well as other direct and indirect human and economic costs of the U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks. The project is the first comprehensive analysis of all U.S., coalition, and civilian casualties, including U.S. contractors. It also assesses many of the wars’ hidden costs, such as interest on war-related debt and veterans’ benefits.

Catherine Lutz, the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Brown University, co-directs the Eisenhower Research Project with Neta Crawford, a 1985 Brown graduate and professor of political science at Boston University.
Among the group’s main findings:

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan will cost between $3.2 and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans. This figure does not include substantial probable future interest on war-related debt.
More than 31,000 people in uniform and military contractors have died, including the Iraqi and Afghan security forces and other military forces allied with the United States.

By a very conservative estimate, 137,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by all parties to these conflicts.

The wars have created more than 7.8 million refugees among Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis.

Pentagon bills account for half of the budgetary costs incurred and are a fraction of the full economic cost of the wars.

Because the war has been financed almost entirely by borrowing, $185 billion in interest has already been paid on war spending, and another $1 trillion could accrue in interest alone through 2020.

Federal obligations to care for past and future veterans of these wars will likely total between $600-$950 billion. This number is not included in most analyses of the costs of war and will not peak until mid-century.

“This project’s accounting is important because information is vital for the public’s democratic deliberation on questions of foreign policy,” said Lutz. “Knowing the actual costs of war is essential as the public, Congress and the President weigh the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, and other areas including the deficit, security, public investments, and reconstruction.”

“There are many costs and consequences of war that cannot be quantified, and the consequences of wars don’t end when the fighting stops,” Crawford said. “The Eisenhower study group has made a start at counting and estimating the costs in blood, treasure, and lost opportunities that are both immediately visible and those which are less visible and likely to grow even when the fighting winds down.”

The Eisenhower Research Project is a new, nonpartisan, nonprofit, scholarly initiative that derives its purpose from President Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address, in which he warned of the “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial complex and appealed for an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” as the only force able to balance the often contrasting demands of security and liberty in the democratic state.

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Cost of War to the United States | COSTOFWAR.COM

 

[Contract Killer]

Estimated Cost of Post-9/11 Wars: 225,000 Lives, Up to $4 Trillion

By Editor on Friday, July 1st, 2011

Iraq, Afghanistan Wars Cost US Nearly $4 Trillion

The cost of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan are estimated at 225,000 lives and up to $4 trillion in U.S. spending, in a new report by scholars with the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. The group’s “Costs of War” project has released new figures for a range of human and economic costs associated with the U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks.

Nearly 10 years after the declaration of the War on Terror, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan have killed at least 225,000 people, including men and women in uniform, contractors, and civilians. The wars will cost Americans between $3.2 and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans, according to a new report by the Eisenhower Research Project based at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. If the wars continue, they are on track to require at least another $450 billion in Pentagon spending by 2020.

The group’s “Costs of War” project, which involved more than 20 economists, anthropologists, lawyers, humanitarian personnel, and political scientists, provides new estimates of the total war cost as well as other direct and indirect human and economic costs of the U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks. The project is the first comprehensive analysis of all U.S., coalition, and civilian casualties, including U.S. contractors. It also assesses many of the wars’ hidden costs, such as interest on war-related debt and veterans’ benefits.

Catherine Lutz, the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Brown University, co-directs the Eisenhower Research Project with Neta Crawford, a 1985 Brown graduate and professor of political science at Boston University.
Among the group’s main findings:

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan will cost between $3.2 and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans. This figure does not include substantial probable future interest on war-related debt.
More than 31,000 people in uniform and military contractors have died, including the Iraqi and Afghan security forces and other military forces allied with the United States.

By a very conservative estimate, 137,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by all parties to these conflicts.

The wars have created more than 7.8 million refugees among Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis.

Pentagon bills account for half of the budgetary costs incurred and are a fraction of the full economic cost of the wars.

Because the war has been financed almost entirely by borrowing, $185 billion in interest has already been paid on war spending, and another $1 trillion could accrue in interest alone through 2020.

Federal obligations to care for past and future veterans of these wars will likely total between $600-$950 billion. This number is not included in most analyses of the costs of war and will not peak until mid-century.

“This project’s accounting is important because information is vital for the public’s democratic deliberation on questions of foreign policy,” said Lutz. “Knowing the actual costs of war is essential as the public, Congress and the President weigh the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, and other areas including the deficit, security, public investments, and reconstruction.”

“There are many costs and consequences of war that cannot be quantified, and the consequences of wars don’t end when the fighting stops,” Crawford said. “The Eisenhower study group has made a start at counting and estimating the costs in blood, treasure, and lost opportunities that are both immediately visible and those which are less visible and likely to grow even when the fighting winds down.”

The Eisenhower Research Project is a new, nonpartisan, nonprofit, scholarly initiative that derives its purpose from President Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address, in which he warned of the “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial complex and appealed for an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” as the only force able to balance the often contrasting demands of security and liberty in the democratic state.

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Cost of War to the United States | COSTOFWAR.COM

Still this Monster called Terrorism/ Al-Kaida/ Taliban/ JUD/LET/JEM exist.......

More 225,000 lives to be taken. More 4 Trillion to be spend. Then maybe world will get Peace.