Don't Cut Entitlements-Cut The Military
By Timothy V. Gatto
16 April, 2011
Countercurrents.org
It seems that this President has turned his back on everything he touted during his campaign. Yet, as mature individuals we should have expected it…after all he's a politician and most politicians lie through their teeth, right? You must remember, closing Guantanamo, having a more “transparent” government, working for peace in the Mid-East, talking to Iran, etc., etc., etc.
I hate to shatter anyone's bubble, but he hasn't done anything except reward the perpetrators of the Wall Street crash, expand the War in Afghanistan and move it over to Pakistan to boot. We still have troops in Iraq and we are considering putting troops in Libya where we have no national interests at all. Funny what that “Commander-in-Chief” title can lead you to do.
Yes, since the Congress declared “The Global War on Terror”, the executive branch has almost unlimited resources and power. “Hail Caesar!” I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little bit tired of him moving our military around the World like he's playing some kind of chess game. You can bet that the military personnel are getting a little sick of it too.
I found out that the reason we are so down on Iran is because they are the sworn enemy of Saudi Arabia. Gee, I didn't know that. I should have figured it out. When the Saudi's sent troops into Bahrain to put down a popular movement against the princes of the oilfields, it became quite clear that America is certainly for freedom in the Mid-East, but only in certain parts. We supply Saudi Arabia with 3.5 Billion dollars of military equipment every year. Do they pay for it? Let me guess…no. Between Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia we give them more that 10.5 Billions of dollars in military hardware.
We have a situation where we spend more on our military than all the other nations on Earth combined. We are doing it today, and what are our fearless leaders talking about in Congress? How to reduce the average Americans entitlements! They have absolutely no qualms about spending more than half the tax dollars they get, but want to cut programs that American taxpayers put money into! If what I heard tonight is true, 40 cents of every tax dollar received goes to finance the debt. If that's true, between financing the debt and paying for our military, that only leaves 10 cents of every dollar to actually spend. Is it any wonder why we are going bankrupt?
How about Libya? Who the F**K authorized us into that war? Just what are the people of the U.S. going to gain from it? The U.S. has a new toy called AFRICOM and they want to use it. Some say that Somalia, Yemen and Sudan will be next. Just what is going on and why aren't Americans screaming their fool heads off?
Look, I didn't use any big words and everything I've said here can be easily verified. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this nation is in a fatal spiral of debt that will eventually have us go the way of the Soviet Union. Where are all the lefties? Where are the people that don't want Medicare and Social Security cut? Why isn't there uproar over our out of control military spending? Do you realize the two largest air forces are the U.S.Airforce and secondly the U.S. Navy? Did you know that it takes approximately 50 Billion dollars to operate one nuclear powered aircraft carrier and we have eleven of them? There are two nations; Italy and Spain the closest to us in numbers have 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_country
So why do we have so many carriers? Just what real good are they doing? Off the coast of Somalia American and other nations ships are routinely captured by pirates in fast boats. How do you hide a two football field long tanker from an aircraft carrier? Doesn't this make you sit up and say WTF?
We're fighting a war in Afghanistan to root out what the U.S. admits are only 50-100 al Qaida. The average cost of having one set of boots on the ground there for a year is One Million Dollars http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114294746 , just what are we doing? Opium production there has risen 400% since the U.S. landed troops there. Some sources say it is now over 6000 metric tons yearly. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6239734.stm There are entire families addicted to the stuff. War is hell and opium makes it less so. If we gave them a democracy (which isn't the real mission there) they wouldn't know what to do with it. Between depleted uranium and opium, the Afghani's will never forget us.
Forget about the class war here in America where the top 1% of the population owns almost 40% of the wealth and the other 19% together with the1% hold 83% of the nation's wealth, leaving the bottom 80% of us with a whopping 7% of the total wealth. Never mind that the middle class has seen wages fall steadily over the last two decades while the upper 10% have had a 13% increase. Don't tax the rich! According to the GOP that will mean that they can't hire anyone. (What …like an extra maid or butler?)
So when are we going to do something about it? Obama, with his minions from Goldman Sacks aren't going to break the status quo. Anyway, he's Commander-in-Chief! I say do something. If things progress the way they are, we will have the largest armed forces in the world, but they will all be mothballed. (And maybe that's a good thing). The government wants to cut everything under the sun, but the military is sacrosanct. It's about time we brought the subject up loud enough for these cowards in Washington to hear us. Don't you think?
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