As we approach the season of gift giving there is the usual daunting question of what to get for loved ones. Those who decry the commercial nature of the Yuletide season might have their wish come true as this will no doubt be the leanest meanest year ever in consumer spending since Coca-Cola invented Santa Claus. Stores are already slashing prices and there is a long list of permanent store-closings being passed around the internet. It has been suggested that giving gift cards will be more common than ever so those receiving the cards can spend the money where needed rather than on some superfluous nick-knack.
Our political elites should be feeling rather penitential as the festive season rolls around and seeing the outrageous mess they have left the world economy with every assurance it is going to take a decade or so of less than festive seasons to clean up the mess.
President-elect Barack Obama has it in his power to give not just his country but the entire world the greatest of gifts, and under the circumstances, one richly deserved. He can bring an immense amount of genuine good will into the world; soothe global tensions, save lives, and save hundreds of billions of much needed dollars on the home front with one simple act. He must by year’s end announce that Missile Defense is terminated. Not one more cent will be sent on it and present installations will be dismantled.
Fifty odd years ago another American president, at the end of his presidency, Dwight Eisenhower, warned his country men about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He cautioned that it could too easily become an out of control monster needlessly consuming vast resources out of all proportion to the real needs of
During the Cold War vast expenditures could be justified as the USSR and the Free World were in an epic struggle for global domination, part of this was the arms race; so too was the concept of MAD- Mutually Assured Destruction. Both sides ended up stalemated. Though armed to the teeth with both conventional and nuclear weapons neither side dared start a major conflict for fear of unintended consequences in the form of a massive retaliation.
When the
As for the peace dividend, it was squandered. Military spending just kept ballooning until today it consumes the best part of a trillion dollars a year. The
Under the Bush regime 1.5 million Iraqi’s have been killed, another 2.4 million are refugees.
Clearly, these conflicts are occurring to justify a military-industrial complex that is like a metastasized cancer running out of control. There is a peace dividend to be harvested if a more enlightened foreign policy is pursued and
Missile Defense is a rotten military redundancy that has nothing to do with “defense” and everything to do with offense. It is a global tyranny imposed by one nation that is spurring another arms race and condemning future generations to living yet again under the threat of nuclear holocaust.
If Obama were to announce to the world even before this inauguration that Missile Defense is dead and buried he would indeed cast his presidency as the beginning of a whole new era, one of greater peace, and greater and essential international co-operation. The age of militarism is dead- the boys have to give up their toys for more urgent priorities.
Further more, it would empower him both at home and abroad to be a very real and effective agent of change and possibly one of
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Stumble It!
The November 25th Guardian UK writes that Obama intends to start cutting both farm subsidies and health care at a time when the US is spending roughly half its national budget on defense. Adjusted for inflation this is more than it was spending during the Cold War. The US now spends about 3% of its budget for social programs.
The entire budget of the UN is 2% of the US military budget. Member countries are about 700 million in arrears, most of which is owed by the US.
Alas, the elephant is just so big it has flattened everybody in the room.