July 29 2011 Budgets, deficits and war profiteering in the days of Obama

The 2011 US budget stipulates $160 billion for 'overseas contingency operations.' Read that as over $13 billion dollars a month for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Americans aren't stupid. PEW research tells us that the majority of Americans blame the soaring debt on the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. It's not hard to see that if Obama kept his pledges regarding the end of US occupation  of Iraq and and end to US inv0lvement in Afghanistan our economy would look very different.

Why aren't we shutting down these wars more quickly? Why are our men and women still being maimed and killed in these wars? What is the benefit? Who is making the money here?

CorpWatch reports that Aegis, DynCorp,Triple Canopy. Blackwater and Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions aren't doing badly. Protected by Washington lawmakers who fail to vote for subpoena level investigations, these are among the largest war profiteers. Bechtel's amazing record of mismanaged projects ranks up there, too, and their failure to properly dispose of waste (open pit burning is a favored method) has cost the lives and health of too many military personnel, not to speak of the uncounted civilians who die from these same practices.

And these are the small guys. When you get into the Lockheed Martins of the war machine you see some real power in action. So much of our economy is locked up in the war machine that it is going to take a social retooling to alter our path. Attacking Xe services wont do it.[Tom Engelhardt]

We have to start teaching our young ones a different way of moving in the world; a way of peaceful economies and solutions; not profiteering from violent conflict. First, I guess, we have to start acting/voting/talking with peace in mind.  We are evolving in our relationship to environmental and health issues. We can evolve in our thinking about confict, too.

 

 

 

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