This month, the war in Afghanistan became by far the longest war fought by the United States since its independence. Although the withdrawal of U.S troops is supposed to begin next year in July, according to the military plan that approved a surge of U.S troops there, no one inside or outside the administration expects that the timetable for the withdrawal will be adhered to. The most important matter that concerns me in any war is the loss of lives, both in the ranks of the civilians and the military. I mentioned this two days ago; nonetheless, there are other important aspects, and perhaps the most important issue in wars after human lives are the expenses of Bush's wars, which have ultimately led to the global financial crisis, as he fought his wars with money he borrowed from China and other countries. Since the war in Afghanistan is still raging on, and might continue for years to come (I even read the possibility of 30 years more), there are real concerns that the war will cause another financial crisis, even before the ramifications of the last one are eliminated. Robert Gates has been in the Pentagon since late 2006, and each defense budget he submitted, and got approval for, broke a previous record. The proposed budget for the year 2011 will involve a total tally of 549 billion dollars, and an additional 159 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and the border area in Pakistan), i.e. 708 billion dollars, or the equivalent of the combined defense spending of the rest of the world. Personally, without claiming to have special expertise and by only relying on my own experience and information, I believe it is likely that the actual U.S military spending borders the one trillion dollars mark annually. However, many allocations are part of the budgets of other departments or agencies, and thus help in hiding the actual figure. According to the experts who suffice themselves with declared numbers, the present spending by the U.S on the wars, after adjusting for inflation, is 13 percent more than the highest amount spent in one year during the Korea war, and 33 percent more than the highest amount spent in one year during the Vietnam war. I write this column that will be published on the last day of the month in which a bipartisan task force on sustainable defense submitted a report recommending cuts of one trillion dollars over the next ten years, including 113 billion dollars by reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal; 200 billion dollars by reducing U.S. military bases and personnel stationed abroad; 138 billion dollars by replacing unworkable, costly weapons systems and 100 billion dollars by cutting other unnecessary expenditures in the Pentagon. But I do not think that the report mentioned above will be implemented. There are other congressmen who place their personal interests or the interests of their constituencies before any other interest. When Secretary Gates asked to cancel unnecessary military programs, several congressmen representing the regions where these programs are manufactured objected. Moreover, several congressmen made additional allocations in the budget to build a second engine for a fighter jet that the Pentagon does not want. Today, there are more than 700 U.S military bases around the world, and about 370 thousand soldiers. If this presence abroad was justified during the Cold War, then this war has ended two decades ago. But the United States is still looking for an enemy to justify its defense industry, an enemy that the Bush administration subsequently found in Islam and Muslims. Personally, I am confident that President Obama wants to reverse this devastating trend. However, I do not think he will succeed, because on the other side of the divide, there are the hawks of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, the majority of whom happen to be pro-Israeli. Then there are the warmongering Likudnik neoconservatives, along with a right-wing media and extremist think tanks, and also the lobby of the defense industries, which are worth hundreds of billions of dollars. How can this evil alliance justify the huge military spending after the collapse of communism, in a country that is beleaguered by a stifling economic crisis? No matter what they say in this regard, they would be lying, and I have in front of me a study entitled “War makes us poor”, but there is no room to present it here. They invoke the war on terror. However, we know that there would not have been any terrorism were it not for the American policy in the Middle East. In truth, George W. Bush's war on terror has spawned more terror around the world, which means that to fight and defeat terrorism, non-military methods must be used instead, starting with changing the policy that is biased in favor of a fascist criminal country. As for the other countries which also adopted the slogans of the war on terror, they have a weaker argument, because it is their alliance with the United States that made them a target for terror, and were it not for this, the terrorists would never have entered into animosity with countries such as Britain, Spain, Australia, Canada and other nations. In other words, the United States is spending money that does not exist, to exacerbate the problem that it is trying to address. Meanwhile, its allies import the problem to their countries, as they try to keep it out. [email protected]
