[Peace-discuss] Ignore the presidential campaign

[C. G. Estabrook]

In contrast to countries with a real democracy (e.g., Venezuela, Brazil, 
Haiti [until we destroyed it]), the US lacks a functioning democracy, 
and so its empty forms can be thrust forward as a distraction when 
there's any threat that a real political discussion might break out in 
this depoliticized country.

That's the only reason for beginning the fake presidential campaign some 
two years before the election.

The only reasonable response is to ignore it.  The fix is in, and 
regardless of who gets elected, US policies will continue on their 
murderous way, unless an aroused US public puts an end to them, or 
foreign forces (military or economic) do.

Here, as a sort of counter-factual thought-experiment, is an example of 
what a reasonable presidential platform might look like.  --CGE

PS -- The Democratic-led Congress today authorized more Iraq war 
spending, sending Bush a defense bill requiring no change in strategy.
The measure already had passed the House and now goes to Bush, who is 
expected to sign it. It authorizes Pentagon programs expected to cost 
$506.9 billion during fiscal 2008, which began in October. The bill 
authorizes another $189.4 billion for the Iraq and Afghan wars, for 
which Congress has already approved some $600 billion. (Appropriations 
legislation, still under consideration, is required to deliver the 
money.) The vote in the Senate was 90-3, Durbin voting in favor and 
Obama not voting...

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	Imagine a Campaign that Called for
	Slashing Military Spending 75%
	Dave Lindorff
	Thursday 2007-12-13

While the Democratic and Republican candidates for president blather on 
about non-issues like who will be meaner to immigrants, who will use the 
most water on torture victims, who wanted to be president at the 
youngest age, who’s the best Christian and other such nonsense, and 
while Congress and the president dance their meaningless dance of 
pretend conflict, let’s for a moment ponder something more momentous.

What if the US just packed up and left Iraq and Afghanistan, and brought 
the troops all home, shut down the 750-odd overseas bases we operate 
around the globe, and slashed our military budget by 75 percent?

That would be an instant savings of roughly $365 billion per year.

Now, the first thing we need to do is address the criticism that such an 
action would be abandoning the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, whose 
countries we have been systematically destroying for the last four to 
six years.

Okay. I agree we have an obligation here. So let’s allocate say $50 
billion in annual aid to those two countries, to be funneled through 
international aid organizations, from the U.N. to CARE and the Red 
Cross/Red Crescent.

That still leaves $315 billion in funds to play with.

We also have to address those who will ask fearfully if we aren’t 
opening ourselves to attack from our many enemies abroad.

But hold on a minute. If we cut the US military budget down to a paltry 
$115 billion a year, that would still leave us with by far the largest 
military budget in the entire world. The next biggest spender on its 
military is China, at $62.5 billion, followed by Russia, at $62 billion. 
That is to say, our military budget, if slashed by three quarters, would 
still be about equal to Russia’s and China’s military budgets combined. 
And that only tells part of the story. Most of China’s army is a 
repressive police force, required to keep order in what is a widely 
despised dictatorship, and would never be available for foreign 
adventures. (That’s why China, with a million or more soldiers, hasn’t 
ever invaded Taiwan, with a population of just 23 million. The army 
China could spare for an invasion would probably be no larger than the 
one little Taiwan could field to defend itself.) The same can be said 
for Russia, which is eternally in danger of splitting apart into myriad 
smaller states, and has to be held together by threat of force. Figuring 
that neither China nor Russia is likely to attack us anyway, given that 
one needs us to buy all the junk they make, and the other needs us to 
buy their oil, maybe we should look at those “axis of evil” states and 
their ilk, that might think we’re easy pickin’s if we were to slash our 
military spending.

Well, maybe not. It turns out if you add up all the military budgets of 
America’s other “major” enemies—those so-called “rogue” states like 
Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria—and throw in a few extra 
possible hostiles for good measure like Myanmar, Somalia and, oh, what 
the heck, Grenada (you never know when that troublesome little island 
might have another revolution!), it comes to a grand total of $15 
billion spent on military stuff. That’s less than one-seventh of what 
we’d still be spending.

And of course we wouldn’t be alone. Our allies—Britain, Germany, France, 
Japan, Israel, Holland, Canada, Italy, Australia, South Korea and Spain 
for example, though there are surely more who would come to our aid in a 
crisis—collectively spend another $258 billion on their militaries (and 
yet even today we have our military based in many of those countries. Go 
figure!). So we would hardly be at anybody’s mercy.

We could even take a few billion of that $115 military budget and shift 
it productively from our huge and useless strategic nuclear program (you 
know, the one that just lost six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles for 36 
hours, and flew them across the country, unprotected and unnoticed) over 
to operations like border patrol, satellite monitoring, and the Coast 
Guard, where it might actually help protect us, instead of just funding 
futuristic weapons that will never be used for anything but helping 
generals justify their stars by having units to command.

So here we would be with still, by a factor of two, the largest and most 
advanced military in the world, but at peace and with $315 billion a 
year suddenly freed up and at our disposal.

What might we do with all that money?

Well, for starters, if we accept for argument’s sake that the Social 
Security System is running at a deficit and will eventually be defunded 
(which, by the way, I do not for a minute believe), actuaries say that 
injecting about $130 billion a year into the fund (the equivalent of 
increasing everyone’s SSI payroll tax by 2 percent) would solve the 
alleged problem indefinitely, allowing all current and future Americans 
to count on an inflation-adjusted secure retirement forever. So let’s do 
that. Then there’s education. Currently, the federal government spends 
about $58 billion a year on education. That gives us classroom sizes in 
our cities of 30-35 kids (40 here in Philadelphia). That’s not 
education—that’s child abuse (and teacher abuse). So what say we boost 
that amount by 50 percent—a much better educational reform than a lot of 
stupid “No Child Left Behind” testing regimens. Then there’s healthcare, 
on which the government spends a paltry $52 billion, leaving us with 
declining life expectancies and infant mortality rates, particularly 
among our poorest citizens, that are a scandal. Let’s boost that 
spending by 50 percent, too.

Geez! We still have another $130 billion left!

The federal government right now only spends some $40 billion a year on 
science, energy and the environment. That includes nuclear power and 
waste containment, and the entire NASA budget. Given the global climate 
change disaster we’re facing, we should probably double that, with the 
added $40 billion going all to environmental research, don’t you think?

Now we’re left with $90 billion.

Well, it turns out that’s about what the government spends on “social 
programs.” You know, like welfare—the thing that we were supposedly 
ending? Truth is, of course, that over the last decade, the number of 
poor people and hungry people in the US has been rising, not falling, so 
maybe we should rethink that “ending welfare as we know it” mantra, and 
start thinking about improving the lives of those at the bottom of the 
ladder. That extra $90 billion, by doubling social programs—especially 
if it was spent on housing and job creation—would go a long way towards 
making America a better place for all. It would also reduce crime 
significantly, meaning we’d have a whole lot of money freed up that 
currently goes to police and prisons, so we could spent that money on 
other good stuff too.

So who’s going to make this eminently sensible proposal?

I’m frankly sick to death of hearing about how “tough” our next 
president is going to be.

Our current president has shown just what being tough is good for: 
nothing. The country is less safe, we’ve got 80,000 returned soldiers 
suffering from life-long injuries, we’ve made enemies out of friends all 
over the world, and this country’s been going down the tube, with 
joblessness rising, the economy teetering and the once mighty dollar 
headed for Third World currency status.

Until I hear political candidates start talking about slashing military 
spending -- and I mean on the order of 75 percent, none of this 
nickel-and-dime stuff, and about funding the things that really need 
funding -- I’m not even listening to these moronic campaigns.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His 
latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for 
Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). 
His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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