[Peace-discuss] Antiwar tendency in Tea-party
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Sun Oct 17 19:32:12 CDT 2010
Neocons Panic Over 'Tea Party'
How sweet it is!
by Justin Raimondo <http://original.antiwar.com/author/justin/>, October
06, 2010
The tiny but well-placed -- and very well-financed -- political sect known as
the neoconservatives
<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>
is in panic mode. Discredited
<http://www.amazon.com/They-Knew-Were-Right-Neocons/dp/0385511817/antiwarradio>
by the disastrous war
<http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0816/US-in-Iraq-What-s-been-left-behind>
in Iraq, and implicated <http://www.thenation.com/article/agents-influence> in
the trail <http://stage.tp.techprogress.org/2005/11/02/hadley-non-denial/> of
lies <http://motherjones.com/politics/2004/01/lie-factory> 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 the
limits <http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/10/03/the-new-antiwar-populism/>
both of the US Treasury, and the willingness of the American people to finance it.
They're living in fear of the so-called tea party, the spontaneous grassroots
rebellion against runaway federal spending
<http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11878> 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 originated
<http://work.colum.edu/%7Eamiller/wolfowitz1992.htm> in the neocon brain
<http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/01/14/richard-perle-still-crazy-after-all-these-years/>.
We've had a veritable fusillade of op eds, first
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/23/AR2010092305493_pf.html>
from Danielle Pletka and Thomas Donnelly in the / Washington Post/ the other
day, and today
<http://www.heritage.org/Research/Commentary/2010/10/Peace-Doesnt-Keep-Itself>
it's the /War Street Journal/'s turn to go to the barricades for the Old Cause
<http://www.amazon.com/Perpetual-Peace-Harry-Elmer-Barnes/dp/0939484013/antiwarbookstore>.
/Weekly Standard/ editor Bill Kristol
<http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=8591>, Ed Feulner
<http://www.heritage.org/about/staff/f/edwin-feulner>, longtime chief honcho at
the Heritage Foundation, and Heritage policy wonk Arthur Brooks
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Brooks>, 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 Aug. 31 speech
<http://projects.washingtonpost.com/obama-speeches/speech/380/> 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:
/"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."/
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 Obama <http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/01-9>
nor the tea party
<http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/08/military-expert-sarah-palin-fights-to-ensure-tea-parties-support-insane-bloated-war-budget/>
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 Ron Paul
<http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/10/05/neocons-panic-over-tea-party/original.antiwar.com/paul>
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 gargantuan <http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1941>
"defense" expenditures.
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 trillions in debt
<http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500803_162-4486228-500803.html> 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.
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."
The old GDP trick is tired, and unlikely to work on readers of the /Wall Street
Journal/, many of whom may be more aware than the Average Joe that GDP, or gross
domestic product, includes all domestic spending and acquisitions, /including
government spending
<http://www.amazon.com/Depression-War-Cold-Studies-Political/dp/0195182928/antiwarbookstore>/:
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 /private sector/ GDP
<http://www.philkerpen.com/?q=node/17>, 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.
Go here <http://blog.mises.org/14134/tax-receipt-fascinating/> 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.
In the face of the overwhelming reality of skyrocketing military costs, the
neocon triumvirate simply makes up their own numbers:
/"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."/
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 nearly doubled
<http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending>. 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.
"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."
They always hide behind this trope: it's for the troops in the field. Except it
isn't. Those soldiers who have been severely wounded
<http://www.homefrontthemovie.com/abouthomefront.php> or otherwise traumatized
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31596375/> in the neocons' wars come home to an
economy that has no jobs
<http://www.marketwatch.com/story/high-unemployment-could-last-a-long-time-2010-10-05?dist=countdown>
for them, and a healthcare system that treats them like sh*t
<http://www.truth-out.org/060509A>. Remember how soldiers' families had to send
them body armor <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,101061,00.html>, 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
designed to face off against the Soviet Union
<http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/m/military_aircraft/f22_airplane/index.html>
-- 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 all across
Europe <http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/eucom.htm>? They've been
there since the end of World War II
<http://www.antiwar.com/stromberg/?articleid=656>! 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 tens of thousands
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Forces_Korea> of US troops stationed
in harm's way
<http://original.antiwar.com/prather/2009/03/27/how-bush-pushed-north-korea-to-nukes/>,
just waiting for the nutty North Koreans to blast them with a couple of nukes.
Why are they there -- and at what cost?
After this fusillade of phony numbers, the triumvirs wheel out the big guns:
/"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. /
/"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."/
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?
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 natural inclination
<http://mises.org/etexts/mises/bureaucracy.asp> of every government agency and
program to expand, and to justify its own existence
<http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Leviathan-Critical-Government-Institute/dp/019505900X/antiwarbookstore>
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 /pirates /to that posed by Soviet nukes aimed at our cities during the cold
war era? Let's get real.
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 the
real danger
<http://washingtonindependent.com/76320/china-threatens-to-dump-u-s-treasury-bonds-over-taiwan-arms-sales>
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.
As was widely reported, the former director of national intelligence, Dennis
Blair, testified
<http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/13/nation/na-security-threat13> before
Congress that our looming economic crisis is the number one threat facing us at
the moment:
/"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./
/"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."/
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: /everyone/ is going broke.
Oh, but surely the armchair generals over at Heritage and the /Weekly Standard/
know more about it than the Director of National Intelligence -- right?
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:
/"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."/
If we don't take radical steps to reduce government spending -- including
military spending, arguably the biggest single item in the budget
<http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm> -- 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.
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 plumbed for war with Iraq
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/550afrhr.asp>, and
is now agitating tirelessly <http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/kristol-iran>
for war with Iran. Beyond that, it was the /Standard/ that published Max Boot's
infamous article, "The Case for American Empire
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/318qpvmc.asp>,"
which called for establishing US colonies around the world.
What we have is a /bankrupt / 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.
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!
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/10/05/neocons-panic-over-tea-party/
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