While Congress continues to plan for hundreds of billions in cuts and states are closing parks and educational programs, we continue to gush billions on three wars. This fiscal year alone the cost of just Afghanistan will be $113 billion. Just this year. Just for Afghanistan.
We continue expend lives and billions in a country where polls show the majority of citizens want the United States out and are hostile to our presence. Afghan leaders repeatedly have called for us to leave the country. The corrupt president of the country has repeatedly called the West an enemy, stripped women of protections, expressed a desire to be with the Taliban, and sought to tax even the aid to his country and charge for war damage.
It is otherworldly that we are planning cuts in medicaid and other programs while continuing these wars. Even if we pull out next year, we would have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on this war alone with precious little to show for it except enriching some of the most corrupt leaders on Earth.
The American people want out of Afghanistan. Afghans want us out of Afghanistan. However, our leaders do not want to risk be called soft on the wars or responsible for a defeat. So we continue to spend money that we do not have and lose men and women who are irreplaceable. By latest count we are up to 1500 dead in Afghanistan — though it is the money that has finally gotten the Obama Administration to “focus” on reductions.
Source: USA Today
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/06/06/larger-july-drawdown-than-expected-floated-for-afghanistan/
to hear people have their voices heard is extremely refreshing to me 🙂 if only the “big shots” paid more attention to these conversations..
Mike Spindell said:
“I hate gerunds . . . .”
Yeah, but Mike, you gotta love diphthongs.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/03/bachmann-calls-planned-parenthood-a-criminal-enterprise/
“I meant ABOUT 50 million lives snuffed out in the womb”
Tootie,
So you love those fetuses, but hate them when they get old?
“They are not authorized to spend money on Medicaid.
Or Social Security.”
Don’t you realize what a hypocrite that makes you? Some Christians really astound me as they reinterpret the “Golden Rule,” as you do, into the “Rule of Gold.”
Buddha is “take your pick.” You have proved yourself the most moronic troll ever to post here. The reason rests on your copious comments, rarely more than a line, that say nothing of interest, while falling flat on their face as attacks. One must acknowledge your persistence, however, persistence in the pursuit of stupidity is no virtue.
“The endless war is a useful fixture for a government that wants to engineer the society.”
Lotta,
Remember “1984”?
I hate gerunds and can’t stand sophistry.
ekeyra – reread that quote. It starts by saying its not the corporate interests controlling the government that causes war & then goes on to say it is the government itself because “it will be influenced by some private interests or others toward opportunistic warring”
How is that not the exact same thing as the corporate interests? Its not like the NCAA, PETA or the local Cub Scout pack influencing for war. The problem in a democratic republic such as the USA is when the people allow those influences to poison the government into war.
FFLEO, I read Glenn Greenwald quite often but he is not the definitive, only voice in the world. Obama is not my hero but he is much better than the republican alternatives as I have said before.
“Furthermore, people who think that the elimination of corporate influence from the public sphere will finally end the wars and graft will be encouraged to rethink their assumptions about the state: it is not, after all, an organization for the public good that has been hijacked by the rich and powerful, nor an engine of corporate control that can be reformed toward liberal ends. The state itself is and always will be the problem, and so long as it has a military arm, it will be influenced by some private interests or others toward opportunistic warring, and at a minimum manipulated by politicians, even the most supposedly humanitarian and egalitarian of whom have a murderous and diabolical record in deploying its forces and dropping its bombs. Even large business interests can come and go, but the political apparatus itself, the most inherently corrupting of all institutions given its unavoidably coercive and monopolistic nature, will continue to inflict misery and loot the disadvantaged on behalf of the powerful.”
http://mises.org/daily/5345/In-a-Relationship-and-Its-Complicated