Cashing in the War Dividend- The Joys of Perpetual War

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Cashing in the War Dividend- The Joys of Perpetual War

by Jo Comerford

So you thought the Pentagon was already big enough? Well, what do you know, especially with the price of the American military slated to grow by at least 25% over the next decade?

Forget about the butter. It's bad for you anyway. And sheer military power, as well as the money behind it, assures the country of a thick waistline without the cholesterol. So, let's sing the praises of perpetual war. We better, since right now every forecast in sight tells us that it's our future.



The tired peace dividend tug boat left the harbor two decades ago, dragging with it laughable hopes for universal health care and decent public education. Now, the mighty USS War Dividend is preparing to set sail. The economic weather reports may be lousy and the seas choppy, but one thing is guaranteed: that won't stop it.



The United States, of course, long ago captured first prize in the global arms race. It now spends as much as the next 14 countries combined, even as the spending of our rogue enemies and former enemies -- Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria -- much in the headlines for their prospective armaments, makes up a mere 1% of the world military budget. Still, when you're a military superpower focused on big-picture thinking, there's no time to dawdle on the details.



And be reasonable, who could expect the U.S. to fight two wars and maintain more than 700 bases around the world for less than the $704 billion we'll shell out to the Pentagon in 2010? But here's what few Americans grasp and you aren't going to read about in your local paper either: according to Department of Defense projections, the baseline military budget -- just the bare bones, not those billions in war-fighting extras -- is projected to increase by 2.5% each year for the next 10 years. In other words, in the next decade the basic Pentagon budget will grow by at least $133.1 billion, or 25%.



http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/20-0

[indepat]

1. The willingness to sacrifice every societal need for a little perceived security surely is insanity

run amok. :P

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. America's Unwelcome Advances

According to the Pentagon's 2008 "Base Structure Report," its annual unclassified inventory of the real estate it owns or leases around the world, the United States maintains 761 active military "sites" in foreign countries. (That's the Defense Department's preferred term, rather than "bases," although bases are what they are.) Counting domestic military bases and those on US territories, the total is 5,429.

The overseas figure fluctuates year to year. The 2008 total is down from 823 in the Pentagon's 2007 report, but the 2007 number was up from 766 in 2006. The current total is, however, substantially less than the Cold War peak of 1,014 in 1967. Still, given that there are only 192 countries in the United Nations, 761 foreign bases is a remarkable example of imperial overstretch—even more so considering that official military reports understate the actual size of the US footprint. (The official figures omit espionage bases, those located in war zones, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and miscellaneous facilities in places considered too sensitive to discuss or which the Pentagon for its own reasons chooses to exclude—e.g. in Israel, Kosovo, or Jordan.)

"The characteristic form of US power outside its territory is not colonial, or indirect rule within a colonial framework of direct control, but a system of satellite or compliant states," observes Eric Hobsbawm, the British historian of modern empires. In this sense America behaves more like the Soviet empire in Europe after World War II than the British or French empires of the 19th century.


To garrison its empire, as of last December, the United States had 510,927 service personnel (including sailors afloat) deployed in 151 foreign countries. This includes some 196,600 fighting in Iraq and 25,700 in Afghanistan.

The reach of the US military expanded rapidly after World War II and the Korean truce, when we acquired our largest overseas enclaves in the defeated countries of Germany, Italy, and Japan, and on Allied turf in Great Britain and South Korea. But despite the wartime origins of many overseas bases, they have little to do with our national security. America does not necessarily need forward-deployed military forces to engage in either offensive or defensive operations, because domestic bases are more than sufficient for those purposes. The Air Force can shuttle troops and equipment or launch bombers from continental American bases using aerial refueling, which has been standard Strategic Air Command doctrine and practice since 1951. Only after the Cold War was well under way did the Strategic Air Command expand into several overseas bases in Canada, England, Greenland, Japan, Oman, Spain, and Thailand in an effort to complicate Soviet retaliatory strategy.

...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/08/americas-unwelcome-advances

[blindpig]

3. Not to worry

It's a jobs program.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

4. The first map reminds of something...

[juno jones]

5. Watch out Kamchatka! n/t

[Orwellian_Ghost]

7. Cost of War Tops $915 Billion

Cost of War Tops $915 Billion

Congress has appropriated another $84.8 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the remainder of the 2009 fiscal year ending September 30, 2009. The Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009, signed into law by President Obama on June 24, 2009, allocates $45.5 billion for war-related actions in Iraq and $39.4 billion to Afghanistan <1> <2>.

These new appropriations bring total war-related spending for Iraq to $687 billion and for Afghanistan to $228 billion, with a total war cost of $915.1 billion<3>. National Priorities Project (NPP) updated its Cost of War counters to reflect the new totals and to show the local costs of these wars to states and many cities. Please note that the cost of war in Iraq has decreased since our last estimate because Congress allocated a larger proportion of war spending to Afghanistan than originally estimated. NPP's trade-off tool allows you to explore what services could be obtained for your community with the same amount of money that Congress has appropriated for war spending.

President Obama's initial supplemental request (delivered April 2009) included approximately $77 billion for U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which was approximately 90% of all requested funding. The final supplemental increased war-related spending by nearly $8 billion, yet total war spending now accounts for about 80% of supplemental spending.

In addition to $85 billion in war spending, Congress allocated $23 billion for other global military and diplomatic actions, as well as several domestic and international programs/initiatives. Among these are $7.7 billion for spending related to the H1N1 virus and general influenza pandemic preparedness; $1 billion for the program known as “Cash for Clunkers” to provide financial incentives to remove low fuel efficiency cars and trucks from the road; more than $6 billion for support of international peacekeeping, nonproliferation, narcotics control, and foreign military training outside of Iraq or Afghanistan; and more than $7.5 billion (the current equivalent of approximately 5 billion SDR<4>) for an increased quota payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

...

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost_of_war_tops_915_billion

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Assorted bogeymen are never in short supply to be erected by politicians and generals. K&R