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<p class="pagesub"> Neocons Panic Over ‘Tea Party’<br>
How sweet it is!<br>
by <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/author/justin/"
title="Posts by Justin Raimondo">Justin Raimondo</a>, October
06, 2010 </p>
</div>
<div class="entry">
<p>The tiny but well-placed – and very well-financed – political
sect known as <a
href="http://www.google.com/search?q=site:antiwar.com+neocons&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGLL_enUS400US400&ie=UTF-8&hl=#sclient=psy&hl=en&rlz=1B3GGLL_enUS400US400&q=neocons+site:antiwar.com&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=c6affe93747c32d0">the
neoconservatives</a> is in panic mode. <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/They-Knew-Were-Right-Neocons/dp/0385511817/antiwarradio">Discredited</a>
by the <a
href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0816/US-in-Iraq-What-s-been-left-behind">disastrous
war</a> in Iraq, and <a
href="http://www.thenation.com/article/agents-influence">implicated</a>
in the <a
href="http://stage.tp.techprogress.org/2005/11/02/hadley-non-denial/">trail</a>
of <a
href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2004/01/lie-factory">lies</a>
that led us into that quagmire, the neocons are deathly afraid
that the jig is up: that their agenda of perpetual war and
extravagant “defense” spending is coming up against <a
href="http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/10/03/the-new-antiwar-populism/">the
limits</a> both of the US Treasury, and the willingness of the
American people to finance it. </p>
<p>They’re living in fear of the so-called tea party, the
spontaneous grassroots rebellion against <a
href="http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11878">runaway
federal spending</a> that has successfully challenged the GOP
establishment and wants to cut big government down to size –
with a meat axe. Not that the tea partiers have even brought up
the idea that military spending ought to be treated like all
government spending and summarily subjected to the chopping
block, but, hey, the whole idea of preemption as a strategic
principle <a
href="http://work.colum.edu/%7Eamiller/wolfowitz1992.htm">originated</a>
in the <a
href="http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/01/14/richard-perle-still-crazy-after-all-these-years/">neocon
brain</a>. We’ve had a veritable fusillade of op eds, <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/23/AR2010092305493_pf.html">first</a>
from Danielle Pletka and Thomas Donnelly in the <i>
Washington Post</i> the other day, and <a
href="http://www.heritage.org/Research/Commentary/2010/10/Peace-Doesnt-Keep-Itself">today</a>
it’s the <i>War Street Journal</i>‘s turn to go to the
barricades for <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Perpetual-Peace-Harry-Elmer-Barnes/dp/0939484013/antiwarbookstore">the
Old Cause</a>. </p>
<p><i>Weekly Standard</i> editor <a
href="http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=8591">Bill
Kristol</a>, <a
href="http://www.heritage.org/about/staff/f/edwin-feulner">Ed
Feulner</a>, longtime chief honcho at the Heritage Foundation,
and Heritage policy wonk <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Brooks">Arthur
Brooks</a>, onetime “compassionate conservative,” make the
case for cutting little old ladies off of social security while
letting the big defense contractors off the hook. The party line
is trotted out in partisan terms: citing President Obama’s <a
href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/obama-speeches/speech/380/">Aug.
31 speech</a> announcing the supposed “end” of “combat
operations” in Iraq, in which he pointed to the costs of the
Iraq occupation as one reason to draw our mission to a close,
they snicker: </p>
<p><i>“It is encouraging to see Mr. Obama concerned about deficits
and debt. But his concern with the military is largely
misplaced. It is neither the true source of our fiscal woes,
nor an appropriate target for indiscriminate budget-slashing
in a still-dangerous world.”</i> </p>
<p>Well, then, why argue about the “true source” of our looming
bankruptcy if cutting the military is off the table from the
start? I guess they want to cover all their bases, which shows
how nervous they must be – as they ought to be. Because while
neither <a
href="http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/01-9">Obama</a>
nor <a
href="http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/08/military-expert-sarah-palin-fights-to-ensure-tea-parties-support-insane-bloated-war-budget/">the
tea party</a> is making any overt moves in the direction of
the War Party’s toy chest, the neocons are truly worried about
the latter: the fact that <a
href="http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/10/05/neocons-panic-over-tea-party/original.antiwar.com/paul">Ron
Paul</a> is one of the Tea Party’s heroes is enough to cause
them acute discomfort. Nor is Paul the only one in those circles
calling for a reevaluation of our foreign policy and <a
href="http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1941">gargantuan</a>
“defense” expenditures. </p>
<p>So the neocons have to clothe their argument for more spending
in “fiscal conservative” drag. Thus they are mad as hell about
“the president’s proposed budget for 2011” which “will add $10
trillion in debt over the next decade.” No mention is made,
however, of the <a
href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500803_162-4486228-500803.html">trillions
in debt</a> accrued by the Bush administration, where their
comrades-in-arms held sway for eight years. “By 2020,” they
wail, “the federal government will owe $20 trillion, or $170,000
per American household. That’s a beast that must be stopped”:
but the tea partiers know it’s a beast with two heads – and
they’re one of them. </p>
<p>Oh, but this is “a beast that has not principally been fattened
on a diet of Pentagon spending,” they aver. “Even with the costs
of Iraq and Afghanistan, this year the Department of Defense
will spend some $720 billion—about 4.9% of our gross domestic
product, significantly below the average of 6.5% since World War
II.” </p>
<p>The old GDP trick is tired, and unlikely to work on readers of
the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, many of whom may be more aware
than the Average Joe that GDP, or gross domestic product,
includes all domestic spending and acquisitions, <i><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Depression-War-Cold-Studies-Political/dp/0195182928/antiwarbookstore">including
government spending</a></i>: every time Ben Bernanke and his
friends speed up the printing presses, it’s all counted as part
of “GDP.” That’s why this metric generates complete baloney: a
more useful one would measure the <a
href="http://www.philkerpen.com/?q=node/17"><i>private sector</i>
GDP</a>, i.e. the real source of actual wealth and
productivity in the US economy. In real terms, the percentage of
national wealth consumed by military spending is much higher.</p>
<p><a href="http://blog.mises.org/14134/tax-receipt-fascinating/">Go
here</a> and look at the “receipt” you would get if the feds
thought enough of you to give you one, in return for your taxes.
The military is divided up into several different items, but add
them all together and it looks like the Warfare State rivals the
Welfare State in terms of sheer extravagance. It’s worth noting
that the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are right
up there all by themselves at number five, just below the big
entitlement programs and the interest on the national debt. And
those are just the military expenditures they tell us about: if
we add the “classified” “off-budget” items handed out to the CIA
and other clandestine agencies and “special projects,” plus the
opportunity costs of allocating this huge sum to the military
sector, the real price tag is much higher. </p>
<p>In the face of the overwhelming reality of skyrocketing
military costs, the neocon triumvirate simply makes up their own
numbers: </p>
<p><i>“Defense spending has increased at a much lower rate than
domestic spending in recent years and is not the cause of
soaring deficits. Even as the United States has fought two
wars, the core defense budget has increased by approximately
$220 billion since 2001.”</i> </p>
<p>Perhaps they simply define the “core defense budget” as DoD
expenditures alone – or else the neocons have invented their own
branch of mathematics – but the fiscal reality is this: since
2001, money for the military has <a
href="http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending">nearly
doubled</a>. According to Laicie Olson of the Center for Arms
Control, military spending totaled $437 billion in 2001, and by
2011 had climbed to $720 billion. </p>
<p>“We should be vigilant against waste in every corner of the
budget,” the triumvirs aver, “but anyone seeking to restore our
fiscal health should look at entitlements first, not
across-the-board cuts aimed at our men and women in uniform.” </p>
<p>They always hide behind this trope: it’s for the troops in the
field. Except it isn’t. Those soldiers who have been <a
href="http://www.homefrontthemovie.com/abouthomefront.php">severely
wounded</a> or otherwise <a
href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31596375/">traumatized</a>
in the neocons’ wars come home to an economy that has <a
href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/high-unemployment-could-last-a-long-time-2010-10-05?dist=countdown">no
jobs</a> for them, and a healthcare system that treats them <a
href="http://www.truth-out.org/060509A">like sh*t</a>.
Remember how soldiers’ families had to <a
href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,101061,00.html">send
them body armor</a>, fer chrissake, because the military
wasn’t providing it? It isn’t about “our men and women in
uniform,” it’s about the hugely expensive weapons systems that
were <a
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/m/military_aircraft/f22_airplane/index.html">designed
to face off against the Soviet Union</a> – an enemy that no
longer exists. And speaking of enemies that no longer exist: how
much money are we spending maintaining a string of military
bases <a
href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/eucom.htm">all
across Europe</a>? They’ve been there <a
href="http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/?articleid=656">since
the end of World War II</a>! While the neocons are always
screeching about how this or that tinpot dictator is the
equivalent of Hitler, there seems little likelihood the real
thing is making a comeback in Germany. Ditto Korea, which has <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Forces_Korea">tens
of thousands</a> of US troops stationed <a
href="http://original.antiwar.com/prather/2009/03/27/how-bush-pushed-north-korea-to-nukes/">in
harm’s way</a>, just waiting for the nutty North Koreans to
blast them with a couple of nukes. </p>
<p>Why are they there – and at what cost? </p>
<p>After this fusillade of phony numbers, the triumvirs wheel out
the big guns: </p>
<p><i>“Furthermore, military spending is not a net drain on our
economy. It is unrealistic to imagine a return to long-term
prosperity if we face instability around the globe because of
a hollowed-out U.S. military lacking the size and strength to
defend American interests around the world. </i> </p>
<p><i>“Global prosperity requires commerce and trade, and this
requires peace. But the peace does not keep itself. The Global
Trends 2025 report, which reflects the consensus of the U.S.
intelligence community, anticipates the rise of new
powers—some hostile—and projects a demand for continued
American military power. Meanwhile we face many nonstate
threats such as terrorism, and piracy in sea lanes around the
world. Strength, not weakness, brings the true peace dividend
in a global economy.”</i> </p>
<p>If commerce and trade are dependent on the US military policing
the world, then it’s a zero sum game, because there is no bigger
drain on our economy than our grossly extravagant military
budget. It is a fiscal cancer eating away at our vitals, as any
honest set of budget numbers will show. And why can’t our
trading partners take up some of the responsibilities of
policing the sea lanes and other trade routes: isn’t trade a
two-way street?</p>
<p>Yes, no doubt the “intelligence community” wants more money, as
does the military establishment and every other self-interested
bureaucracy operating out of Washington: it’s the <a
href="http://mises.org/etexts/mises/bureaucracy.asp">natural
inclination</a> of every government agency and program to <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Leviathan-Critical-Government-Institute/dp/019505900X/antiwarbookstore">expand,
and to justify its own existence</a> in terms of a looming
“crisis.” Yet the US doesn’t face a major adversary, or, at
least, an adversary of a conventional type: can we really
compare the threat of <i>pirates </i>to that posed by Soviet
nukes aimed at our cities during the cold war era? Let’s get
real. </p>
<p>Our extravagance is itself the biggest threat to our national
security – not China, but our debt to China. Kristol & Co.
are worried about the Chinese People’s Liberation Army denying
us access to the Asian-Pacific region, but <a
href="http://washingtonindependent.com/76320/china-threatens-to-dump-u-s-treasury-bonds-over-taiwan-arms-sales">the
real danger</a> is their denying us access to their capital,
which buys up US debt and keeps the US government afloat. They
own us. Isn’t that the real threat to our national security, and
not some imagined military assault? There’s no reason to attack
us militarily if they can accomplish the same goal without
firing a shot. </p>
<p>As was widely reported, the former director of national
intelligence, Dennis Blair, <a
href="http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/13/nation/na-security-threat13">testified</a>
before Congress that our looming economic crisis is the number
one threat facing us at the moment: </p>
<p><i>“The nation’s new intelligence chief warned Thursday that
the global economic crisis is the most serious security peril
facing the United States, threatening to topple governments,
trigger waves of refugees and undermine the ability of
America’s allies to help in Afghanistan and elsewhere.</i> </p>
<p><i>“The economic collapse ‘already looms as the most serious
one in decades, if not in centuries,’ said Dennis C. Blair,
director of national intelligence, in his first appearance
before Congress as the top intelligence official in the Obama
administration.”</i> </p>
<p>In his testimony, Blair made a quite plausible case that
economic instability across the globe will lead inevitably to
political turmoil, which will in turn adversely impact American
interests in a major way. The nature of the crisis is multiplied
many times by the global character of the economic implosion: in
the past, regions experiencing economic woes were able to export
their way out of it. These days, however, there is no one to
export to: <i>everyone</i> is going broke. </p>
<p>Oh, but surely the armchair generals over at Heritage and the <i>Weekly
Standard</i> know more about it than the Director of National
Intelligence – right? </p>
<p>The neocons’ trump card, aside from pure partisanship, is their
own self-portrayal as Reaganite “optimists,” a meme that seems
oddly inappropriate at a time when millions of Americans are
facing foreclosure, bankruptcy, and a diet of cat food in their
old age: </p>
<p><i>“There are some who think the era of U.S. global leadership
is over, and that decline is what the future inevitably holds
for us. Some even believe that decline offers us a better
future, in the model of our relatively pacifist
social-democratic allies. But this is an error. A weaker,
cheaper military will not solve our financial woes. It will,
however, make the world a more dangerous place, and it will
impoverish our future.”</i> </p>
<p>If we don’t take radical steps to reduce government spending –
including military spending, arguably the <a
href="http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm">biggest
single item in the budget</a> – our pretensions to “global
leadership” will surely evaporate as quickly as did those
trillions of dollars during the crash of ’08. What is this
“global leadership,” anyway? It has always been our position of
economic preeminence, the foundations of our military strength,
that has ensured our leadership. Yet that preeminence is being
hollowed out by the spendthrift addictions of both the right and
the left, who exempt their own favorite government programs from
honest scrutiny. </p>
<p>A cheaper military is not necessarily a weaker military:
indeed, a leaner fighting force, one geared to the realistic
objectives of the post-cold war era, is in all ways a stronger,
more capable, more useful military configuration. This is what a
real “defense” budget would entail: but the neocons aren’t
interested in defense: they want to play offense. It was, after
all, Kristol’s little subsidized magazine that <a
href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/550afrhr.asp">plumbed
for war with Iraq</a>, and is now <a
href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/kristol-iran">agitating
tirelessly</a> for war with Iran. Beyond that, it was the <i>Standard</i>
that published Max Boot’s infamous article, “<a
href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/318qpvmc.asp">The
Case for American Empire</a>,” which called for establishing
US colonies around the world.</p>
<p>What we have is a <i>bankrupt </i>
empire – and that’s the sort of empire that inevitably goes into
decline. If we follow the advice of Kristol and his buddies,
we’ll be in receivership in no time. </p>
<p>It’s great to see the neocons so worried: anything that makes
them nervous is a good thing. Now, come on, you tea partiers,
let’s give them something to worry about!<br>
</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/10/05/neocons-panic-over-tea-party/">http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/10/05/neocons-panic-over-tea-party/</a><br>
</p>
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