If we didn’t spend all our money on War, what would we buy?
April 4th, 2008 — -…and would we be foolish for doing so?
A European friend of mine (hello Janny!) asked me to think about the state of the US economy – its falling dollar, nauseous stock market, and defaulted home loans – in terms of the total percentage of funds spent on our military.
She then asked me to look, for the purposes of comparison, at the state of the European economy – it’s rising Euro, now replacing the US Dollar as the international standard – and its relatively spare military budgets.
The military budget for 2007 hovers at around $440 Billion dollars, (which does not include, I read online, Veteran’s affairs, Nuclear weapons research… or ongoing war – that is, Afghanistan and Iraq. So, add a couple hundred billion).
My friend in Bristol also pointed out that the Iraq war was in peril, because our military is hemming itself in to a tight pocket, asking the UK forces to keep open its lifeline, the one supply road through Basra, and flying hundred billion dollar jets over a nation whose insurgents have….no jets.
She also pointed out that should Iran become a target, or pressure the US (more and less likely, respectively), then we could lose, in a terrible way, because of the limiting geography.
I am no expert on our troubled Middle Eastern War, or local geography – but some of you are – and I would like to know if this is on point.
The Surge
If you’ve followed the PR, you’ll know that there’s been a re-framing of the reasons and rationale for the war, at least several times along the way. The latest I’ve heard, among my more conservative friends (and the talk radio I listen to) is a view of the war as a schoolyard challenge by a big bully – ‘we’ve got to stand up to them, and show them we won’t be intimidated.’
This translates, in practice, in terms of the surge, as “If we do everything we can, spend every dollar we can, send every man that we can – if we do all of that, (damaging our economy along way), maybe we can (please, please), finally “win” in Iraq…”
I hear this as, ‘If we don’t win, at this point…we lose… lose more than we feel we can afford to, more than dignity allows. More than ego allows – we lose face, lose our belief in ‘establishing democracy,’ lose our belief in ourselves, and our country.’
This is more than most people can bear to consider losing…and so, we fight on.
But some would say I’m being extraordinarily naive, and forgetting the reality of the geo-political situation. “We’ve got to stop them – bring it to them – before they bring it to us, again.” I hear a good many political analysts, from across the political spectrum, talk about the rise of Islamo-fascism.
I do believe in the presence of Islamo-fascism in the world, without a doubt, just as I believe in the existence of Liberal fascism, Conservative fascism, and any and every other form of social and religious totalitarianism. So, it exists, and there are certainly people in the world waiting to blow whatever they can up, as long as it looks American, English, French, or any other version of “Western”.
But I’ve never believed in the rationale for the Iraq war, and I still don’t. I still don’t believe that we’re liberating anything or anyone – and I still don’t believe that we will eventually benefit, socially or economically – from this war.
So…I don’t believe that calming the waters there for a short time will be worth the cost, especially when the state of affairs inside the borders of my own country begs for attention in so many areas…
“But what about the threat of Islamo-fascism?”, my more conservative, or neo-conservative friends will ask…
I don’t have a wonderful answer and solution to offer. I believe that there will always be these people, and that we will have to infiltrate their outfits, fight them, and attempt, through subtler economic means, to enfranchise them … as we, the West, the inheritors of Adam Smith’s after-school project (On the Wealth of Nations), have enfranchised much of the world.
If you can weigh in on any of these matters – the US’s military budget versus Europe’s – and our respective economies; the rationale and eventual outcome for the Surge, or the deeper predictable realities of the path of Islamic/religious terrorism… then please point me to some reading, or share your thoughts. I believe in an ongoing education.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Islamo-fascist is a term created by fascists (what the neocons really are) to disguise the fact that they are fascist. If we define fascism as a union of corporate and state interests with a dictator then that’s clearly what W and his supporters are after, trying to move all US government power to the position of president. The emotion that people don’t talk about is humiliation. Rich, largely christian countries have the weapons and they have control of the ’serious’ media. They don’t seem to understand that if you spend all your efforts on humiliating a target group of people in both big and little ways, they will fight back. And the ultimate humiliation is invading someone else’s country, implicitly telling them they don’t know how to run it themselves. The hypocrisy is, of course, that we, the west, put so many middle east strongmen in place, or propped them up, for the short term interests of the time (the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, the House of Saud). In the long term this often is a mistake but that’s okay because the West tends to have a short memory.
April 5th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Canada!
April 5th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Kidding aside…
I really think we’re past the point of no return. So, this question is a fun little fantasy question to be asking.
It’s being called “the permanent war economy”.
April 5th, 2008 at 10:30 am
I’ll go with David on the idea that an occupying army is never welcomed with open arms. WW2 offers the immediate counter-argument, of course. But we weren’t an occupying army, we were working with the European nations toward their desired liberation, not an idea of liberation we imposed.
There are Islamo-fascists, though, people who are fascistic and totalitarian in their worldview, whose worldview is a fundamentalist reading of the Koran.
“Humiliation” is the right topic to bring up, when talking about war - and David’s correct - it’s rarely discussed. Germany was broken and humiliated after WW2, but then permitted, with the approval and guidance (and enforcement) of its neighbors (and the US), to rehabilitate and recreate itself along approved guidelines. Japan suffered the same fate - terrible, brutal humiliation - and then rehabilitation. Both countries rose, phoenix-like, to international pre-eminence in technology and manufacturing in subsequent decades.
But humiliation must be the point of war, or war has no point. The Union general, William T. Sherman, put it more clearly and plainly, and bluntly, than anyone I’ve ever read - War is all hell - was his general sentiment, and the purpose of war, then, is to bring that hell as quickly, unequivocally, and unapologetically to those you feel deserve it. And because it is so terrible, so unavoidably brutal and horrific, war should never be entered into, or provoked, lightly, in jest, or under ill-advise or poor consideration.
Sherman chastised the South in his writing, for inviting a war that would tear the nation apart, and cause unbridled devastation. He then brought that devastation back to Atlanta.
His view was that there is no kind war, no nice war, and no nice way to wage it, and I agree. This is the mistake, in my opinion, made by the neo-Cons and neo-Libs (repubs and dems) who voted for and commenced the war; there is no “war of liberation,” (at least, not waged on people who are not asking - begging - for intervention and liberation), there is only war, and it brings the horror and humiliation that it is its very nature.
A century of warfare, we’ve now been promised, by Pres(?) McCain. I’m sure there are plenty in Washington who’d do anything to bring Hussein back, to put the lid back on, the cork back in the bottle…
April 5th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I feel that the sinking economy may be a greater danger for you guys in the US than the (Iraq) war.
Yes, the dollar has been a de facto international reserve currency since Bretton Woods, and yes, there is great technological genius in the US, but the physical economy has been in deficit spending for years now, with imports exceeding exports by billions every month. There are so many dollars out there that eventually will find their way back to the US, that you’re in danger of hyperinflation. And that could get very ugly for the people who are trying to pay their bills.
Your friend Janny is right about the Iraq war. The precarious situation of the US military can only get worse there. All bridges to reconstruction or reconciliation seem to have been effectively burned, and logistics for the military there could get very difficult, opening a lot of soldiers and contractors to a potentially nasty situation.
Should Iran really become a target, military problems would escalate.
But the real danger is the combination of the two - economic chaos at home and military humiliation abroad. Yes I know, no one likes to entertain such a scenario and the press certainly won’t foster discussion of it. Yet the current trends are all towards it.
Islamo-fascism? Much of what we could term the actions of islamic/religious terrorism is actually the work of intelligence services. Ours (i.e. Western countries’), not theirs, by the way.
I would worry more about the homegrown kind of fascism and its appetites for violent suppression of the people that might get in the way of government. The laws are in place. (Apparently the concentration camps are ready as well.) All that’s needed is the excuse to put those laws into effect and either problem - the economic and the military - could supply that excuse at any time.
I hope a miracle might happen - some way be found to reverse the trends, but it takes all my optimism to even entertain the thought.
April 5th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I hope a miracle might happen - some way be found to reverse the trends, but it takes all my optimism to even entertain the thought.
Sepp, it can’t happen here.
Now, I’ve got to go watch “Friends”.
April 7th, 2008 at 12:44 am
Sepp, it can’t happen here.
Never say never, to paraphrase James Bond … who knows, “Friends” might give you the spark…
;-)
April 7th, 2008 at 5:41 am
Oh, I think Dan was using some old American sarcasmo… it is the opinion of some here in my country that the television program in question represents the fulminated representation of all evil on earth…
But back to Sepp’s post, Sepp, point me to some reading here, where are there camps in place in the US? You mean detention camps?
April 7th, 2008 at 8:26 am
it is the opinion of some here in my country that the television program in question represents the fulminated representation of all evil on earth…
Hit the nail on the head.