Why The Government Is Obsessed With War

Without question, there comes a time when a country needs to throw down and have at it. But besides the incredibly tragic loss of life and mutilation that accompanies every war there is an economic cost that is staggering. For that reason, it is incumbent upon the government to very carefully weigh the realities of the perceived threat with the consequences of prosecuting a war.

In Vietnam we were told that if we didn't stop the Communists there we'd be fighting them at home. We lost. The Commies never came. Now we're being told terrorists or alternatively 'Islamic Extremists' are the boogey men and they must be stopped there lest we end up fighting them in our own towns and cities.

The truth, unfortunately, is uglier than war. Rather than being driven by a desire to protect our country and its people, the rush to war is motivated simply by greed.

Our current military spending is over $430B a year. That's over 3 times that of China and 8 times that of Russia. Add to that the expense of foreign 'aid' we give to countries for military access and the 'War on Terror' and the number gets even more alarming. This kind of spending, and the massive amount of foreign borrowing being done to support it is unsustainable. But 'They' don't care.

I couldn't find any cost information for the 'Shock and Awe' show we put on in Baghdad. We did launch 800 cruise missiles in the first two days alone and at $600k a-piece that works out to $10M an hour. Needless to say, expending munitions is an expensive propostion.

I was watching a History Channel program yesterday on the A4 Strikemaster attack jet. The program talked about the 24-hour-a-day bombing missions being run off the Orinsky and Enterprise. !2 hours on and 12 hours off. I know a couple Vietnam war pilots who flew these missions. Both relate that one major frustration was the fact that their strike missions were of very low quality. Their targets were either non-existant or suspect at best and it was not uncommon for them to have missions to the same target multiple times. The History Channel program talked to officers of the Orinsky and one made some interesting comments. Talking about a visit from Sect. of Defense McNamara he said that the Secretary seemed only interested in the tonnage of ordnance going over the bow of the carrier and not at all interested in the effectiveness of those missions.

For every bomb that is dropped another has to be made and someone gets to charge the government for it. And these are not small numbers . Over 6.7 million tons were dropped during Vietnam alone.

There's alot of talk in the news these days about the sorry state that some of the major financial institutions are in becasue of the housing debacle. Companies like CitiCorp, Countrywide and Meriil Lynch. When experts are asked how these companies couldn't recognize the risk they are quick to say that they undoubledly did. They just didn't care. because the profits were so high they had no concern that their actions would lead to the ruin of the companies and the economy at-large.

Compared to the business of War, these financial giants are small potatoes. If these captains of the financial and banking industry are willing to endorse a scortched-earth policy when it comes to their own businesses and the economy why would the military industrial complex be any different? Afterall, these people are cut from the same cloth.

Well written and very true.

What is interesting is that all the spending on the war machine represents an upwards redistrubution of wealth. The cash for the bombs is taken out of tax dollars and basically handed to the arms industry with little to no oversight.

Pick up a copy of The Shock Doctrine. You will find some answers to your question.

My grandfather was a WWII vet, and was in the push through Italy. He had some pictures developed, and he stated, it did not hit at the time, but after a couple of years, he thought about it. The back of some of the pictures had stamped on them "Defender of Kodak", and the rest were stamped "Defender of Dupont". I feel this situation ties in to the topic.

Why is the government shipping stray dogs from Iraq to the United States( ABC World News Report, February 08,2008).