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by Peter A. Belmont / 2010-01-20
© 2010 Peter Belmont
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Reagan defeated his (he called it America’s) enemy, the USSR, by challenging it to massive military spending, a challenge which it accepted but found that it couldn’t afford to continue.
Today, the wars of GW-Bush and Obama in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan may be seen as examples of massive military spending aimed at impoverishing another enemy of the Republicans, communistic entitlements for the people—Social Security, Medicare, and the new as-yet unrealized universal health care.
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America divides its well-financed entitlements into two groups. The first group is the people-directed entitlements: Social Security, Medicare, Universal Health Care (as if!), and, perhaps, Education. Expenditures for these entitlements are regarded as suspect and must not be increased without countervailing savings such as increased taxes or decreased “programs” elsewhere. They will bankrupt us, it is said by the so-called “conservatives”, including Democrats as well as Republicans.
The second group are entitlements for corporations and the rich. These entitlements include the depletion allowance enjoyed as a tax-reduction gimmick by fossil-fuel interests who benefit from it, making fossil fuels more affordable, even today when global warming requires us to stop using fossil fuels altogether. These entitlements include bailouts of so-called “too big to fail” banks and auto manufacturers. These entitlements notably include the richly profitable gifts to military suppliers of “goods” (aircraft, missiles, bombs, etc.) and services (the Blackwater-like suppliers of mercenaries who do jobs which could be done so very much more cheaply by the armed forces, the CIA, etc., etc.). [1]
These corporate-entitlements are treated, as Caesar’s Wife was supposed to be, “above suspicion”—that is, it is never said that these entitlements will bankrupt us and such expenditures may be spent and even increased with never a question asked about compensatory revenue or program cuts.
However, as GW-Bush and Obama soldier on with these ill-considered wars (ill-considered, that is, if military or diplomatic success is a concern, ill-considered when their long-run efficacy seems to be chiefly in the production of violence-prone enemies whom we, ignoring all our own daily killing and destruction for political-linguistic purposes, call “terrorists”), their real purpose becomes clearer and clearer—to bankrupt America’s timid essays toward a sort of “communism”, the people-directed entitlements.
Although no-one in Washington will be heard to inquire how we are to pay for these military enormities, and no-one in Washington will suggest taxing the rich to pay for the wars (who else but the rich has any money these days, anyhow? but that’s another topic for another day), and no-one in Washington will suggest reducing one element of corporate entitlements (say depletion allowances) to help pay for other ones (say the Blackwater component of the current land-wars and spy-wars), nevertheless many in Washington (the so-called “conservatives”) will say that we can no longer afford Medicare or Social Security.
You really have to hand it to GW-Bush and his handlers! They really figured out how to work this conservative swangdangle (Google it!) and co-opt the Democrats into ending up sponsoring it! How are Democrats going to become anti-war (or anti-war-spending) when they so whole-heartedly jumped on the stupid “war on terror” bandwagon, a truly infinite money-sink next to which people-entitlements are pikers? And the corporate-entitlements are so marvellously and excessively expensive! Why does the US have the most expensive weapons that money can buy—weapons ill-suited to the work nominally before our armed forces? Because of the truly wondrous profits they generate. And these profits are carefully arranged to result from high-wage employment in each and every Congressional district, with campaign contributions necessarily to follow! It’s a wonderful system!
But if war is so important to us, wouldn’t you think we’d take better care of our soldiers during and after their service?
No, of course not! Because if we did, more people might sign up and the Blackwater mercenaries wouldn’t be needed, and the huge profits from supplying these mercenaries wouldn’t be available! Simple, really. And, anyway, taking care of soldiers and veterans is just another sort of people-entitlement spending, something the US instinctively avoids.
Imagine a really big (and steeply graduated) tax on banks which thus hits especially hard the banks “too big to fail” and, for a while at least, produces enough money to pay for the wars. Then stop the wars but continue the tax and we could pay for Universal Health Care, etc. But, it might be objected, the banks, enjoying globalism, would simply move to other countries to avoid the US bank-tax. Well, would they? Where else could they borrow as much money as they like at 0% interest? And while we’re on the subject of globalism, why aren’t all those other countries paying their share of the costs of the US “war on terror”? Is it because we’re suckers who’ll pick up the world’s tab? Or is it because the terrorism we’re fighting is only aimed at us, because of our “freedom”—or perhaps because of our global killing and destruction?
Or is it because our “war on terror” doesn’t work and no other country would be so foolish as to pick up part of our “bill” when the purpose of these wars was the defeat of domestic “communism” anyway, and has nothing to do with “terrorism” except to practice it and thereby to encourage those who suffer from US terrorism to fight back?
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[1] But keep in mind that fear, wherever directed, is a remarkably profitable emotion to exploit. Just think of those controversial full-body-scan machines now being installed in airports at a cost of up to $170,000 each. One promoter of them is former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff, “who now heads the Chertoff Group, which represents one of the leading manufacturers of whole-body-imaging machines, Rapiscan Systems.” He’s part of a growing “full-body-scanner lobby” of ex-Washington politicos just made for our moment.
Every jolt of terror, in other words, is a jolt of profit for some company or set of companies. After a while, those jolts of fear become repetitive adrenaline rushes for a whole set of interests which, in the American system, soon hire lobbyists, corner senators and congressional representatives, retain law and publicity firms, and live well as long as people remain terrified.See full article here.
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