quote:
Originally posted by themax:
Written by a French reporter? Gosh, I am so scared, how nice.
To begin with Max you use the techniques of attacking the writer instead of the facts. Just cause he is French means what? Means they were right about Iraq is what it means.
The days of "Freedom Fries" are an embarrassment and a good example of how people are just hoarded into accepting policies without thinking. Iraq was based on lies and a huge blunder. Because the French, and the Germans and the majority of the world opposed the attack doesn't mean they are weak but they are smart and willing to stand by their prinicples
The huge military budget is not keeping us safe. Terrorism is growing, because of Bush's wars and western intolerance. The huge military is not doing anything in Iraq or Afghanistan and we are making the same blunders we made in Vietnam. The US is an aging empire ruled by incompetent patronage, power and corruption. We are crumbling from within.
The budget is really to expand the corporate empire to attack other countries and exploit them. To try to rule the world though force. Except our own country is crumbling inside. The money would be better spent on rebuilding our manufacturing base, helping the family farmers, a sound and secure economy and infrastructure, education, health care and housing. This is real "National Security." A boated military that is useless against guerilla forces is a tremendous blunder.
And as the article points out spending the money on eliminating the causes that breed terrorism, poverty, hunger, disease, ignorance would be money better spent. These are the true enemies of all humanity.
The defense budget is also a huge rip-off as it takes money out of our economy that could be used to better our lives but goes into the pockets of the defense industry and stock market instead. Who then turn around and give huge campaign contributions to politicians who keep the money flowing.
Here is a great quote from Eisenhower, who warned us about the military industrial complex and this permanent state of war we were heading into too then:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are
not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is
not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers,
the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not
a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening
war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
Here is an excerpt from the article "Bush's Insane Budget" where the author explains what he means.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022007G.shtml "What use is this veritable mess? The exponential growth in American military expenditures defies all rationality. Can George W. Bush say - at a time when his country's social needs are significant, when it seems no one has taken the lessons from Hurricane Katrina into account - that this is truly the way to increase his compatriots' security? Concretely, is the United States richer in security than it was six years ago? That's far from being certain. Must people be reminded that the terrorist threat is by definition asymmetrical and that the September 11th attacks cost "only" $100,000, according to a United Nations report? Irrationality seems to rule. The more Washington increases its military expenditures, the more it is tempted to use force and the more it expands hostility towards itself, and consequently its own insecurity. How is it possible not to see that the all-military approach that seems to guide US thinking is an impasse, not only for the United States itself, but also for the whole world? The $660 billion spent on the war in Iraq has not increased security, but, on the contrary, has developed insecurity and violence. Wouldn't those billions have been better used for development, education or public health? The World Health Organization estimates it needs$ 25 billion a year to eradicate AIDS, malaria and illnesses that thrive in the absence of vaccination. That money has not been raised, and millions of people, including many children, die every year as a result.
The United States, with its army, doesn't give much to the countries of the South. While the United Nations has fixed 0.7 percent of rich countries' GNP as the level necessary to contribute to public development aid to eradicate destitution, Washington devotes only 0.13 percent to that objective.
Moreover, is it necessary to be reminded that in 2006, the total amount of global public development aid was $100 billion - $19 billion of which involved the massive reduction in Iraqi debt? Iraq, therefore - apart from the cost of the war - will have represented one-fifth of global public development aid."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022007G.shtml
