Obama Seeks $33 Billion More in Afghanistan Escalation Funds:

Afghan Escalation Funding

More war, fewer jobs, poor excuses.....

snip

The corporate media went along with this bait-and-switch strategy, polling and reporting on the escalation debate in Washington until the president fell in line behind his generals (give or take 10,000 or so extra troops). The coming vote was then relabeled as a simple matter of "war funding." This was convenient, since Americans are far more likely to oppose escalating already unpopular wars than just keeping them going -- and would be likely to oppose such funding even more strongly if the financial tradeoffs involved were made clear. However, a new poll shows a majority of Americans do not believe that this war is worth fighting at all.

Nonetheless, as in a tale foretold, Congress is expected to vote later this month on $33 billion in further “war funding” to pay for sending 30,000 troops (plus "support" troops, etc.) to Afghanistan -- most of whom are already there or soon will be. In addition, an extra $2 billion is being requested for aid and “civilian” operations in Afghanistan (much of which may actually go to the Afghan military and police), $2.5 billion for the same in our almost forgotten war in Iraq.........

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After all, 33 billion miles could take you to the sun 226 times. And $33 billion could radically alter any non-military program in existence. There's a bill in the Senate, for instance, that would prevent schools from laying off teachers in all 50 states for a mere $23 billion. Another $9.6 billion would quadruple the Department of Energy's budget for renewable energy. Now, what to do with that extra $0.4 billion?
And remember what this $33 billion actually involves: adding more troops, support troops, and private contractors, whose work, in turn, will mean ongoing higher costs to maintain the Afghan occupation, construct new bases there, fuel the machines of war, and provide the weaponry. Keep in mind as well that various other costs associated with the president’s most recent "surge" are hidden in the budgets of the CIA, the Department of State, and other parts of the government. Looking just at the military, however, this is $33 billion to be added to an unfathomable pile of waste. According to the Congressional Budget Office, Congress has already approved $345 billion for war in Afghanistan, not to mention $708 billion in Iraq.

According to the National Priorities Project, for that same money we could have renewable energy in 1,083,271,391 homes for a year (or every home in the country for more than 10 years), or pay 17,188,969 elementary school teachers for a year. There may be 2.6 million elementary and middle school teachers in our country now. Assuming we could use 3 million teachers, we could hire them all for five years and employ that extra $13 billion or so to give them bonuses. "Honor our brave teachers" anyone?
Even these calculations, however, are misleading. As economists Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz demonstrated in The Three Trillion Dollar War, their book on the cost of the Iraq war alone, adding in debt payments on moneys borrowed to fight that war, long-term care for veterans wounded in it, the war's impact on energy prices, and other macroeconomic impacts, the current tax bill for the Iraq War must be at least tripled and probably quadrupled or more to arrive at its real long-term cost. (Similarly, the cost in lives must be multiplied by all those lives that could have been saved through other, better uses of the same funding.) The same obviously applies to the Afghan War.
The fact is that military spending is destroying the U.S. economy. An excellent report from the National Priorities Project, “Security Spending Primer," provides a summary of research that supports these basic and well-documented facts:

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Too broad a view? Then consider just the present proposed $33 billion escalation funding for the Afghan War. For that sum, we could have 20 green energy jobs paying $50,000 per year here in the United States for every soldier sent to Afghanistan; a job, that is, for each of those former soldiers and 19 other Americans. We're spending on average $400 per gallon to transport gas over extended and difficult supply lines into Afghanistan where the U.S. military uses 27 million gallons a month. We're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bribe various small nations to be part of a “coalition” there. We're spending at least that much to bribe Afghans to join our side, an effort that has so far recruited only 646 Taliban guerrillas, many of whom seem to have taken the money and run back to the other side. Does all this sound like a wise investment -- or the kind of work Wall Street would do?
What Excuses Are They Using?
A strong case can be made that the war in Afghanistan is illegal, immoral, against the public will, counterproductive on its own terms, and an economic catastrophe. The present path of escalation there appears militarily hopeless. The most recent Pentagon assessment once again indicates that the Taliban’s strength is growing; according to polling, 94% of the inhabitants of Kandahar, the area where the next U.S. offensive is to take place this summer, want peace negotiations, not war, and a U.S. plan to seek local consent for the coming assault has been scrapped.

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http://www.truthout.org/afghan-escalation-funding59382

yep

Perhaps people should start setting up tent cities in front of the white house. Then something will be done, if only to move the people who don't MATTER out of view.

CHANGE? Really? WHERE?

:grr:

Puke

the only ones who count to them are the ultra-rich and mega-corporations. Whatever part of the Democratic Party that used to care about us - the people - has died. There are only corporate Dems now - and those few that aren't are too small a minority to matter. It's sad. We have been betrayed. It's gonna be an all out war now between the corporations and the people - and NOBODY is standing up for the people. As people, human beings, we're fucked - as workers and consumers - we'll be their slaves. :(

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if my math is correct... and I hope that it is, isn't that the same as






take 10 MILLION poor families and give each and every family a check for $3300??

Or 33 Million families a check for $1000?

Keep flushin lives and money down the drain, Barack...

:cry:


Where Have All The Flowers Gone
(Pete Seeger)

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing?
Where have all the young girls gone, long time ago?
Where have all the young girls gone?
Gone for husbands everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the husbands gone, long time passing?
Where have all the husbands gone, long time ago?
Where have all the husbands gone?
Gone for soldiers everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?
Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

:hug:

for the additional troops. Congress is preparing to vote on it.

Now is the time to raise the issue again, in hopes that Congress could be pressured into doing the right thing and not funding more war.

collapsed. We are following the same path considering our vast, internal financial dilemma.

When in a military-industrial state, just what would you expect to take the priority? The Pentagon is a huge funnel that sucks what it wants from the fruits of our labor. For now, we are beholden to the military apparatus and corporate mono-culture. Our problem is not the wingisitic issues about size of government as we all know, it is about who's best interests are being served.

Don't hold your breath for this to change as you watch funds cut from everything that matters to us here on the streets. Yet, it continues to worsen and who can do what about it when our masters have decreed it so?

Really?

...short, succinct and to the point!

:thumbsup:

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:eyes:

(NOT rolling eyes at the OP!)

What Accountability, Mr. President?

Obama on Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan: 'I am Accountable'
by Jeremy Scahill

During his White House press conference Wednesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, President Obama addressed the issue of civilian deaths caused by US operations in Afghanistan. "I take no pleasure in hearing a report that a civilian has been killed," said Obama. "That's not why I ran for president, that's not why I'm Commander in Chief."

"Let me be very clear about what I told President Karazi: When there is a civilian casualty, that is not just a political problem for me. I am ultimately accountable, just as Gen. McChrystal is accountable, for somebody who is not on the battlefield who got killed," said Obama.

That statement is quite remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it is not true. How are President Obama or Gen. McChrystal accountable? Afghans have little, if any, recourse for civilian deaths. They cannot press their case in international courts because the US doesn't recognize an International Criminal Court with jurisdiction over US forces, Afghan courts have not and will not be given jurisdiction and Attorney General Eric Holder has made clear that the Justice Department will not permit cases against US military officials brought by foreign victims to proceed in US courts to go forward. So, what does it mean to be accountable for civilian deaths? Public apology? Press conferences? A handful of courts martial?

Obama praised US forces for their restraint in Afghanistan, saying, "Because of Gen McChrystal's direction, often times they're holding fire, they're hesitating, they're being cautious about how they operate even though it would be safer for them to go ahead and take these locations out."

But how does that square with recent, heinous instances of civilian killings in Afghanistan? In February, for example, US special forces shot and killed five people, including three women who collectively had 16 children. The US military tried to cover it up and blame it on the Taliban, saying coalition forces "found the bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed." The New York Times reported that military officials had "suggested that the women had all been stabbed to death or had died by other means before the raid, implying that their own relatives may have killed them."

Later, General McChrystal's command admitted US-led forces had done the killing, saying it was an accident. This was hard to square with reports that soldiers may have dug bullets out of the dead bodies to try to cover it up. The head of the Joint Special Operations Command, Vice Admiral William McRaven, eventually apologized to the family of the dead Afghans and offered them two sheep as a condolence gift. Was this accountability?

Or, what about the incident last May when US warplanes bombed civilian houses in Farah province killing more than 100 people? The dead, according to the Red Cross, included an "Afghan Red Crescent volunteer and 13 members of his family who had been sheltering from fighting in a house that was bombed" in the air strike. US Military sources floated the story to NBC and other outlets that Taliban fighters used grenades to kill three families to "stage" a massacre and then blame it on the US.

"War is tough and difficult and mistakes are gonna be made," President Obama said today. Part of the problem, though, is that when "mistakes" happen and civilians are killed, attempts are made to cover them up or to blame them on the Taliban."

commondreams.org

Please don't rip away people's brain-dead celebrity-worship with actual information. They just wanna talk about how good the first couple looks in designer clothing.

belated welcome to DU!

not killing enough civilians with the old dough

duly noted.

nt