Showing posts with label the United States National Debt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the United States National Debt. Show all posts

April 21, 2017

Like Fine Crystal in the Book-burning Moonlight

Dwight Eisenhower, on the Subject of Military Spending

It is important to once again take to heart what was spoken by President Dwight
D. Eisenhower, the man most experienced in war and its tragic aftermath, stated
in 1953, fifty years before Bush II began his course of taking the US to the brink
of its own economic destruction:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, and every rocket fired signi-
fies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed;  those 
who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money,
solely.  It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and
the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this:  A modern brick school in more 

than 30 cities.  It's two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000
in population.  It's two fine, fully equipped hospitals.  It's some fifty miles of 
concrete highway.  We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of 
wheat.  We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed 
more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has 
been taking.  This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.  Under the 
cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Take note that Ike's 1953 Iron Cross speech isn't his famous January 1961 Military
Industrial Complex speech.  He knew the devastation of war.  He was aware that
exorbitant military spending is assault and battery on the nation doing the spend-
ing.  American military spending of the 1950s was proportionally higher than it is
today, in as far as concerns spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product.
 However, in the 1950s, America was a manufacturing nation that was erasing its
post war debt, on account of the many well paid taxpayers.  Furthermore, 's out-
rage of the $695+ billion per year military budget consists in that the U.S. has
spent, in one recent year, as much as the next 23 highest spending nations com-
bined.  Plus, there is the matter of environmental red flags in this era of deplet-
ed uranium ordnance.  This means that even conventional warfare is no longer
conventional.

Of course, it is true that the American military budget is merely a jobs programs.
Circumstantial evidence consists in the fact that there was the congressional push
to place more tanks in the U.S. arsenal, despite the fact that the Pentagon already
stated that it needs no more cavalry tanks.  Thus, there would be the maintenance
cost of something viewed as a burden on the military.

Years ago, in a political science class, the professor informed us that Southern con-
gressmen, as a matter of course, use the military budget to get taxpayer dollars into
their low income constituencies.  Therefore, this disingenuous habit of Southerns
was recognized decades ago.  All in all, the military budget was a way to get money
into the economically backward South.  This budget has little to do with "patriotism."

As a qualifying statement for the right winged paranoid, a $480 to $520 billion milit-
ary budget or so would be rational, if the United States congress would put a stop to
the runaway Trade Balance Deficit that empowered a ruthless Maoist China via the
by slave labor profiteering of the Walton clan of Arkansas and numerous other self-
seekers.  It's when the budget exceeds $550, $600, and $650 billion that such spend-
ing becomes a future count in a future Nuremberg-type trial.  Such spending literally
becomes criminal, especially depending on the medical verdict of depleted uranium
upon health and the environment.

The fatal error of Southern politicians is that they think that they will be immune for
the privation they have caused America.  This includes the Obstructionist 112th Con-
gress which was the most do-nothing congress in U.S. history.  Republicans need to
study history, as in the Cromwell Regicide trials, Andersonville, Nuremberg, Tokyo,
and even the recent trial of African war criminal Charles Taylor.  So, think.  Reading
Ayn Rand is not the answer.  Reading on how Atlanta was burnt by northerners who
were be undercut economically by the South's no-wage workforce would help too.
If the Republicans insist on remaining functionally illiterate, they who relive history,
as opposed to make history.  Even as the DowJones rises, one can't but help to notice
further diversionary tactics on the part of the Republicans on air and in congress.
Overspending results in too much rust. 
Republicans display chicken hawk contempt toward youths who don't help increase
the United States' run-away national debt which is augmented via exorbitant military
spending.  The irony today is that the newly enlisted youths who take the oath to de-
fend this nation are helping to destroy it with the amount of military spending that
a heavily indebted and non-manufacturing-based United States is forced to accrue,
on account of the stereotypical Republican Gun-toting TEA Party supporter.

It's predictable to see chicken hawks such as Limbaugh, Boehner, O'Reilley, Gingrich,
Beck, Cantor, Hannity, and Dr. "I'm Banned in England" (who never spent a minute
in boot camp) get on the megaphone and then badger America's youth to do what the
chicken hawks avoided doing.  Those youths are merely pawns in a money making
scheme.  This brings us back to Ike's fatherly warning to America, as in the warning
about the Military Industrial Complex.  Ironically, he was a Republican.  Yet, the Re-
publicans of today ignore him.  Of course, they only ignore him because they are
Southern Democrats at heart.

The oxymoron is that, when enlisting to protect the United States, an American youth
ends up financially pounding the final nail in America's coffin.  Due to George WMD
Bush and his Republican cohorts, America can no longer afford GI Joe.  The Republi-
cans weakened a nation by acting tough with the blood of others for consecutive years
at a time.  Soldiers of the National Guard were being forced into foreign tours of duty,
a couple of continental plates away.  However, the National Guard is designed to al-
ways stay home and be the last line of defense for a nation.  It shouldn't be traveling
over an ocean.  In fact, the National Guard is that well formed militia mentioned in
the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, so designed to prevent the government
from becoming a tyranny.  It didn't work.  The tyrant George Bush sent the National
Guard packing to a desert far far away.

In addition, American soldiers of the regular armed forces were forced into two and
three tours of duty thousands of miles from home.  This was ruthless, and as a result,
Corporate Bailout Bush drained and weakened the United States by playing the role
of Mr. Bring-it-on.  Eight and ten years of wasted time were spent on two theaters
of war, along with $1.6 trillion spent.  Yet, there was not a single tank battle or naval
encounter throughout that entire time.  There wasn't even a single aerial dog fight.  In
fact, the Aussies and Americans ended up finding Iraqi aircraft in poor condition, on
the ground and even under the ground, buried.  So, why was all the money spent?

Despite this fact, those two wars accounted for one quarter of the national debt that
has accumulated since 2001 ... according to the Christian Science Monitor.  Iraq has
accounted for 4,487 American deaths, while Afghanistan accounted for 1,863.

Then comes wounded military personnel.  Even in December of 2011, casualties in Af-
ghanistan were mounting.  In the Year 2010, while America was watching TV house-
wives and certain celebrities of no particular talent, 700 United States soldiers died in
Afghanistan.  Americans act as if they don't even care.  Maybe it's because they don't.

In the same time span and at the same theater of war, 5,000 U.S. troops were wound-
ed.  Young men of America, listen:  Don't die for ungrateful people who obsess them-
selves with Botox Barbies.  And don't die for the sake of someone's war profiteers. 

The Enduring Cost of a Freedom that Didn't Endure

Then there is the cost of the aftermath of war, for years to come.  The same Christian
Science Monitor stated that $600 to $900 billion in long-term medical care and disa-
bility compensation is already owed by the United States to the veterans of both pro-
longed wars.  In 2008, U.S. Medicine reported that 600,000 Americans were treat-
ed at Veteran hospitals.

In the failure of the George Bush War years, one needs to be reminded that he and his
staff violated every premise of Sun Tzu's Art of  War.  Sun Tzu would never have wat-
er boarded anyone, in the first place.  Secondly, the terrorists were criminals and NOT
soldiers.  This is because, if they were soldiers, then they violated the Rules of Engage-
ment and became criminals in the process.  They let civilians be targeted.  Stated for
the record, you're not permitted to target civilians, including those in New York sky-
scrapers.

There was another costly after-effect of the Reagan Close-down-industry Complex.
Reagan manipulated the economy in such a way that the only way in which a number
of young Americans could get a job was to join the military.  This now translates in-
to highest of all government price tags ... the pension ... both government and military.
the bills which sent America's manufacturing base to Sweatshopville were the United
States' suicide notes.  American manufacturing employees paid much more tax and
spent more on multiplier-effect enhancing products than do coffee shop barristers
absorbed in college loan debt.

Why was so much taxpayer money wasted on the military industrial mind set?  The
Bible which used to be read in America stated, "Blessed are the peace makers;" not
the war makers.  Yet, Reagan had the audacity to call a nuclear missile a peace mak-
er.  Well, it didn't make peace.  It merely delayed a more concentrated and devastat-
ing series of wars in the future.  Meanwhile, Chicken Hawk Reagan let many neglect-
ed things eventually blow up in the face of society.  He left behind a land mine of so-
cial ills.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0908/US-response-to-9-11-contributed-to-causes-of-current-debt-crisis

At present, the United States is in need of research engineers and environmental ex-
perts who can benefit health and daily civilian life, in the States and American terri-
tories.  If there's no appreciable life for millions of indebted civilians, then what is
there left to defend?  It's the 1% who destroyed the American Dream.  Giving your
military service toward those greed-stricken people would translate into a nightmare
for you.  Ask the three-tour Iraq/Afghan vets.

When military expert Wesley Clark said "re-deploy" to a place outside of Iraq, pushy
Chicken Hawks of gutless wonder called him a sissy.  You need to be reminded that
General Clark was the commander of the NATO alliance, and unlike chicken hawks,
he did attend boot camp.  He knows what thousands of chicken hawks don't know.
However, he was ever so coincidentally a democrat.  Thus, he was bashed, despite
the fact that he had the money-saving and life-saving answer at the moment of chaos.

America needed to save its ordnance and dollars for a real war.  The Bush II years
were the ones that were slowly making the United States defenseless, in the name
of Patriotism and "free market" economics.  The Bush version of  "free market eco-
nomics" resulted in a lot of people losing their freedom in foreign labor camps.  In
the process, he elevated military spending via two wars, all the while lowering the
tax rate for those rich made their money through the ultimate form of parasitic con-
duct ... namely, of off sweatshop laborers cheated of the rightfully due wages.  Thus,
Bush did what it took for America to be unable to pay for war against an enemy
that had zero navies, zero air forces, zero armored divisions, zero paratroopers,
etc.

You need to know that Iraqi Christianity was NOT the Ann Coulter-type thereof.  For
those of you who don't care ... or who are clueless ... Iraqi Christianity is known as the
Chaldeon Rite of Catholicisim.

All that the Republicans accomplished by invading Iraq was to have true Christians
on this earth persecuted to literal car-bombing death.  Incidentally, the authenticity
of Iraq's Chaldean Christianity comes from the fact that it can be traced to the origi-
nal apostles who were NOT money-grabbing TV evangelists whose ancestors saw
many a black man left hanging deader than death on tree branches located near lead
infested moonshine stills of brain damaging fame.

The Similarities Between
the Territory-grabbing Nazi Party and Money-grabbing Republican Party

There are further parallels between the Nazi Germans and the American Republicans.
Whereas the Nazi Germans sought to take the infirm to concentration camps, the Re-
publicans seek to take them off Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.   Whereas
the Nazi Germans sought to dumb-down its citizens by book burning, the Republicans
seek to do so by cutting education and even by deleting the Department of Education
itself.  This is typical for a party whose candidates include those who were unable to
name one Supreme Court case, who could not remember the cabinet positions desig-
nated for axing, and who could not refrain from cutting a State fire fighting budget dur-
ing a drought of Biblical proportions which torched a landmass larger than the entire
State of Connecticut.

Finally, whereas the Nazi Germans used the radio to spread its lying propaganda, the
Republican Party uses the radio to spread its one-line slogans and multiple diatribes.
In sequence, whereas the Nazi Germans sought to eliminate all opposing radio voices,
the American Republicans cut off National Public Radio from government funding.
The only thing that has kept the Republicans from entirely destroying this nation is a
few remaining checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution. Even at that, there is the
Florida case where a person testing the voting machines found that his votes for dem-
ocratic candidates registered as votes for Republicans.

As far as goes the socialist element, it was the Republicans under Bush II who gave
$700 billion to the corporate cronies known for donating money to Republican poli-
ticians.  In fact, the Republicans were actually bailing themselves out.  Now, as far
as goes the word Socialist in Nazi German title, there is nothing social about taking
the disabled to gas chambers.  Nazi Germany wasn't very socialist.

The Napoleon Maneuver

The Nazi Germans were draining their nation's economy through military spending.
The game plan was to steal the wealth of the nations that its troops would conquer.
This included the oil fields of Ploesti Romania and the art of Europe.  In as much,
the road that Republican America has been traveling is the same one that Nazi Ger-
many traveled.  The United States was on the brink of bankruptcy during the years
of Bring-it-on Bush, when two wars were being waged and when unneeded tax cuts
were enforced for the very greedy who caused an elevation in the chronic trade bal-
ance deficit that continues to drain American money into a Communist dictatorship.
This ensured that there would not be the revenue needed to pay for two wars which
endured twice as long as the Second World War.  When an army's congress stops
delivering it paychecks, what does that army do?  Throughout history, pillage and
plunder was the modus operandi of armies.  Napoleon was infamous for it.

When the marching band music begins to echo off the buildings of Main Street, and
when the majorettes start to twirl their batons, you can rest assured that in very close
proximity will be a Republican politician equipped with warmongering diatribes that
we in America can recite in our sleep.   You can also rest assured that lobbyists will
be equally near the Republican politician, waving his flag on Main Street for him.  So,
if the Fuhrer's black boot fits and if his propaganda minister's monocle shines like fine
crystal in the book-burning moonlight ... 

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