The Nation: American Imperial Bankruptcy?

BLOG | Posted 01/23/2008 @ 3:06pm
American Imperial Bankruptcy?
Tom Engelhardt


Within the next month, the Pentagon will submit its 2009 budget to Congress and it's a fair bet that it will be even larger than the staggering 2008 one. Like the Army and the Marines, the Pentagon itself is overstretched and under strain--and like the two services, which are expected to add 92,000 new troops over the next five years (at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion per 10,000), the Pentagon's response is never to cut back, but always to expand, always to demand more.

After all, there are those disastrous Afghan and Iraqi wars still eating taxpayer dollars as if there were no tomorrow. Then there's what enthusiasts like to call "the next war" to think about, which means all those big-ticket weapons, all those jets, ships, and armored vehicles for the future. And don't forget the still-popular, Rumsfeld-style "netcentric warfare" systems (robots, drones, communications satellites, and the like), not to speak of the killer space toys being developed; and then there's all that ruined equipment out of Iraq and Afghanistan to be massively replaced -- and all those ruined human beings to take care of.

You'll get the gist of this from a recent editorial in the trade magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology:



Even on the rare occasion when--as in the case of Boeing's C-17 cargo plane--the Pentagon decides to cancel a project, there's Congress to remember. Contracts and subcontracts for weapons systems, carefully doled out to as many states as possible, mean jobs, and so Congress often balks at such cuts. (Fifty-five House members recently warned the Pentagon of a "strong negative response" if funding for the C-17 is excised from the 2009 budget.) All in all, it adds up to a defense menu for a glutton. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15&pid=274247

this is that his successor will not have the wherewithal to undertake any more disastrous invasions even if so inclined.

If another repug gets in he find some way to have another war.Maybe the next country we attack will loan us the money to do it.

With luck it will self implode under its own gravity, weight and pressure.

thanks!

:) :hi: