How Much Did You Pay In Taxes For War?

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Birthplace of Independent Conservatism


You know, when a progressive sight has something that actually makes sense it is worth airing on an independent conservative sight. I just came across a post on  HUFFPOST WORLD that deserves an airing. First a nifty calculator to help you determine the amount of your taxes that went to support the 10 year Afghanistan war.






Excerpt from the article:
President Obama likes to talk about "winning the future" these days, but the U.S. is in a losing situation in Afghanistan. We're bleeding wealth and lives at an unacceptable rate, and things are only expected to get worse this year as fighting season resumes in the spring. Meanwhile, the Pentagon and their political allies want the president to ignore the clear will of the American people, who want troops out within a year. The military is reportedly pushing the president to pull out only an "insignificant" number of troops, despite the fact that it will cost us $1 million per troop to keep forces in Afghanistan this year. Bleeding that many resources on a war that's not making us safer all the way until 2014 is losing, regardless of what General Petraeus' spin shop tells us. We're losing the future in Afghanistan. {Read More}

What we are witnessing today, actually we have been since the end of WW II, was talked about by a past Republican President.




And so today, over 50 years after President Eisenhower's warning, the Military Industrial Complex has grown and become deeply entrenched in our national fabric.

Isn't it about time we took his words seriously? Isn't it time to do something about it? If not now, WHEN?

And what about the Libyan intervention and it's additional costs?

Cross posted to LCR

Via: Memeorandum

Comments

  1. As long as the American people can be suckered into believing in every stupid bogeyman of the right - Muslims, commies, etc - the MIC will continue to grow and further entrench.

    JMJ

    ReplyDelete
  2. Or as long as there are progressives like , Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Clinton, Obama, and a couple liberal spending Bush's

    ReplyDelete
  3. You forgot Reagan on your list of progressives....nobody liked the MIC like ol' Ronnie...

    ReplyDelete
  4. After almost four years in the military industrial complex, my ideas about it have changed a lot. I used to believe in an interventionist foreign policy. I chalk it up to being young and dumb. I wish more conservatives would embrace cutting MIC.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I thinks it would be much better for every one in USA if government start spending taxes on the people of USA rather than the wars against the countries in the whole world they have started.

    ReplyDelete
  6. (Oops! I accidentally posted this over on Silver's blog!)

    Les,

    Wilson and FDR did not support a large, permanent, peacetime, standing military. I doubt most later presidents thought it was a good idea, but the politics of fear prevented action. Three later presidents stand out the most for military expansion, and unnecessary expansion at that - Johnson, Reagan, and GW Bush.

    George HW Bush and Clinton both tried to begin reining in military spending, and seemed to be on a good track, and then 9/11 happened, and George W Bush and Co used the terrorist attack to balloon military spending, much to the delight of their particular corporate backers.

    Whatever the case, it is not "progressive" to maintain a "large, permanent, peacetime, standing military." Just because an ostensible "progressive" supports a regressive policy, that does not make the regressive policy progressive. That would be like saying, "The rapist was Chritian, therefore rape is a Christian endeavor."

    So, let's talk like grown-ups here.

    FDR, who you so carelessly cited, also was a proponent of leadership by confidence and not fear. Reagan talked confidence, and somewhat applied it domestically, but the messages that supported massive military expansion all came from fear.

    The politics of fear in the foreign sphere is how we have the massive military estate we have today. It is historically extremely dangerous. Countless great states have fallen because they spent too much, and put too much power on their military estates. As long as we have these paranoid, ridiculous, ludicrous extistential fears, We the People will continue down the path to militaristic ruin.

    It is a Rightwing phenomena. Period. It is the Daddy State. When you vote Republican you perpetuate and compound the problem, and just because the Demcrats kowtow to these powerful politics of fear, that certainly does not make fear "progressive." To argue against that fact is just comically specious, at best.

    JMJ

    ReplyDelete
  7. Your historical interpretations do not align nicely with mine.

    There are convergent points, and yes Reagan was responsible for building the military, the result which resulted in a collapse of the USSR, because they were outspent. A good thing. The problem was we never cut back to pre WW II.

    Bush 1 to a lesser degree but Bush II to a huge degree in Iraq and later in Afghanistan showed us the errors of unfounded and unjustified military interventionist policy.

    Your hero BHO has found his footing, and his war cause, he will likely will be the Globalist LBJ in a military sense should we be so unfortunate as to have him for a second and completely unrestrained term.

    His is a fine teacher. To bad few read or listen to the lessons history will give us.

    ReplyDelete

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