11 December 2009By
Eric Margolis
American would not have won independence from Great
Britain without generous military and financial
support from France and its monarch, Louis XVI.
But France spent itself
into bankruptcy supporting the American colonists.
France's financial ruin was a major cause of the
ensuing French Revolution that cost the unfortunate
Louis his head.
Wars are hugely expensive. Money plays as great a role
in them as soldiers and weapons.
US Congressman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat who is
chairman of the powerful House Appropriations
Committee, has come up with a novel idea: American
should pay for the wars they are currently waging.
Obey's proposal, which is backed by other congressmen
of both parties, sounds startling – until one realizes
that both the Bush and Obama administrations have
never properly financed their foreign wars by forcing
Americans to pay for them through higher taxes.
Instead, Washington has deferred the $1 trillion to
date costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars by simply
adding them to the national debt, and paying interest
on the balance owing. President Lyndon conducted
similar financial slight of hand with the Vietnam War,
inflicting serious injury and instability on the US
economy.
Few Americans feel the real financial costs of these
wars. Future generations will get stuck with the bill.
But this kind of deceptive national accounting is
becoming increasingly difficult in the face of
President Barack Obama's $1.4 trillion deficit this
year, and his imminent decision to send some 30,000
more US troops to Afghanistan.
Each American soldier in Afghanistan costs at least $1
million per annum, according to the US Congress
Research Service. Thirty thousand more US troops will
thus cost $30 billion in additional war costs on top
of the $200 billion annual cost of garrisoning Iraq
and Afghanistan – now the second most expensive wars
in US history.
Much of this money will have to be borrowed from China
and Japan.
Obey and his allies want to impose a graduated surtax
on Americans of 1-5%, depending on their income level,
to fund the actual costs of what are now Obama's wars.
Otherwise, warns Obey, the huge cost of sending
keeping up to 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan will
`destroy the other things we are trying to do in our
economy.' Chief among which is health care.
In a clear choice between guns or butter, Obey
estimates ten years of war in Afghanistan will cost
the same $900 million as providing a comprehensive
health plan for all Americans.
Unfortunately, chances of a war surtax passing
Congress are nil. While the Afghan and Iraq wars are
increasingly unpopular among Americans, a tax increase
at a time of over 10% unemployment will ignite the
same kind of furious reaction that met President
Obama's proposed national health plan, and endanger
Democrats facing midterm elections.
As the Obama administration appears set to escalate
the war in Afghanistan, the real costs of Afghanistan
and Iraq are still being concealed from the public and
Congress.
A billion here; a billion there; suddenly, we are
taking about real money.
The $200 billion annual cost for both wars is only a
part of the growing expenses faced by Washington.
The annual bill for US intelligence, which employs
over 200,000 people, has doubled to $75 billion, in
large part to support foreign wars and operations
against anti-US Muslim groups.
Costs of occupying Afghanistan rose to $300 billion
this year, and will increase sharply next year.
Operations in Iraq will total $684 billion in 2009.
President Barack Obama's plans to withdraw all US
troops from Iraq by 2011 may encounter serious delays
and snags as resistance resumes and the underground
Ba'ath Party become more active.
Washington spends $25 billion funding foreign armies,
the bulk of which goes to the Mideast, Afghanistan,
Iraq and Pakistan. Aid to Islamabad will rise to $15
billion over the next five years, including secret
`black' payments.
The US supports 168,000 `contractors' in Iraq, many of
them gunmen. CIA runs 74,000 mercenaries in
Afghanistan. The new fortified, 104-acre US Embassy in
Baghdad will cost $700 million; the new embassy in
Islamabad, $800 million. Islamic militants call them
`crusader castles.'
Add to these costs the expense of maintaining fleets
in the Gulf and Indian Ocean, and military bases in
the Gulf and Diego Garcia to support operations in
Iraq and Afghanistan; hugely expensive military
airlift; $400 per gallon fuel delivered to US forces
in Afghanistan; and, of course, financial inducements
to many smaller nations to send handfuls of troops to
Afghanistan and Iraq. Also an important part of the
annual $93 billion in veterans benefits.
Thus the real cost of Afghanistan and Iraq are much
higher than $200 billion annually. Yet President Obama,
heedless of such costs, appears determined to expand
the Afghan War. It seems clear that Obama has fallen
increasingly under the influence of America's powerful
military-industrial -financial complex and
neoconservative war party. In short, the same calculus
of forces that guided the Bush administration.
Even America's mighty economy cannot for long support
waging wars across the Muslim world. Unaffordable wars
have been the ruin of many an empire, and the American
Raj seems headed in the same direction as Nobel Peace
Prize winner Barack Obama plunges ever deeper into the
Afghan quagmire.
©
EsinIslam.Com
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