GLOBAL RESEARCH
12/27/2013
Passage of Budget Bill Is not a Victory for the American People … Only for the Military-Industrial Complex
For example, we’ve noted that we wouldn’t be in a budget crisis in the first place if we hadn’t spent so much money on unnecessary wars … which are killing our economy.
But it goes far beyond actual fighting. We could easily slash the military and security budget without reducing our national security.
BusinessWeek and Bloomberg point out that we could slash military spending without harming our national security. Indeed, we could slash boondoggles that even the generals don’t want.
Reuters notes:
$8.5 trillion in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996, the first year it was supposed to be audited, has never been accounted for. That sum exceeds the value of China’s economic output last year.
The People Want Peace, But D.C. Wants War
For the first time, a majority of Americans think that we should never have started the war in Afghanistan. As the Washington Post reports:
In a separate Associated Press-GfK poll released Wednesday, 57 percent of Americans said the United States did “the wrong thing” in going to war with Afghanistan, with mixed feelings toward keeping troops in the country past 2014.
And the American people don’t want to go to war against Syria, Iran or anywhereelse.
But D.C. politicians do a lot of fundraising from defense contractors and make a lot of money from inside trading related to military spending.
And war helps distract people from the economic mess that the politicians are largely responsible for (the old distraction trick.)
As usual, government policy will make the rich richer and everyone else poorer.
It will keep the bloated defense industry fat and happy … while making everyone else poorer, and gutting the civilian economy.