“We are in this to win” — General David Petraeus
The country lost another great legislator with the passing of Robert Byrd this week, but fortunately there remain a few dedicated individuals whose first priority remains the average citizen and not the corporate one:
Dennis Kucinich on the giant fraud being perpetrated on this country called the Afghanistan War:
(and similarly here at the Huffington Post)
Bernie Sanders on Republican stonewalling on unemployment benefits while demanding the end of the estate tax, which benefits only the wealthiest of Americans:
Russ Feingold on the gutting of the Wall Street reform legislation:
It’s reassuring that for every Scott Brown, Mitch McConnell, Michelle Bachmann or Joe Barton there is still someone who can cut through the bullshit. It’s disappointing that these men are so few in the halls of power, and more disappointing still that the man in the White House does not stand with them.
And it has only taken ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!
As of September, 2009, the Taliban and affiliated warlords and insurgents dominate 80% of the countryside in Afghanistan, as indicated on the map above.
The cost of sending ONE soldier to Afghanistan for one year is $1,000,000 according to estimates used by the White House. The much-debated 40,000-troop escalation would add $40 BILLION per year to the cost of the war, which was already budgeted for $144 billion in Fiscal 2009, on top of the approximately $250 billion already spent (and note that these figures do not include the cost of the war in Iraq). According to this story at The Daily Beast, $40 billion a year would pay for about half of the cost of the health care reform bill being debated in Congress, or could be used to double the Department of Homeland Security’s annual budget.
Not considered in these calculations is the enormous cost incurred through fuel consumption. The per capita consumption of fuel in Afghanistan is 22 gallons PER DAY. And, according to that linked article, the U.S. Navy says the cost per gallon for that fuel is somewhere between $300 and $400, largely due to the expense of transporting the fuel to the battle theater. Based on those figures, the cost of fuel for 40,000 troops would be a staggering $112 billion per year.
Meanwhile, back in this country, a study conducted by researchers at Harvard concluded that 2,266 military veterans died last year due to lack of heath care, compared to 115 troops killed in-theater. Approximately 1.5 million veterans lack any sort of health care coverage, private or VA-provided.
Here’s a recent video essay from Bill Moyers, who considers the troop increase and the absurdity of this war, not just in terms of the billions of dollars being wasted, but also in the futility of the mission itself.
Ninety-one years ago, in a railroad car in Compiegne, France, an armistice was signed between Germany and the Allied Powers that ended the conflict we now call the First World War. Several months later, as Woodrow Wilson sailed to France to preside over the negotiations to formalize the peace and impose reorganization and reparations on the demolished empires of Europe, he did so with the promise that the conflict would become “The War To End All Wars”. His grand designs would, of course, sow the seeds of the Second World War to come twenty years later, which, in turn, would result in thirty years of confrontation that threatened a Third World War big enough to destroy the entire planet.
And so it comes to pass that today the Chancellor of Germany, herself a prisoner of that unwaged war, would become the first leader of Germany to stand side-by-side with the President of France at the Arc de Triomphe to commemorate the fallen soldiers of both nations in the very same week when she also stood in Berlin to mark the end of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the reunification of her country.
Though Wilson was disasterously wrong in his schemes at Versailles, in the long term the notion of a Europe in peace, with self-determination for many of the people who for centuries had been subjects of empires, has largely come to pass. Even the upheavals in the Balkans, which were the precipitating events that led to World War I in the first place, have not seriously threatened the security of the continent. Today, the European Union, largely driven by the co-operation of the French and the Germans, covers the breadth and width of the continent. As the last remaining veterans of that War To End All Wars have finally been laid to rest, perhaps so has a war-driven Europe once and for all.
Meanwhile, on this day we have co-opted to celebrate our military might rather than to reflect on the horrors of war, the current President of the United States stands poised to send tens of thousands of troops to a war initiated by his predecessor eight years ago, with neither an achievable objective nor a justifiable rationale for continuing a struggle that has cost several thousand soldiers their lives, bankrupted the nation, and called into question whatever moral authority this country might once have had. How many wars will this nation fight until it realizes that in the long term the way of peace is the only right one?
The BBC reports that the British department store Selfridge’s will officially roll out its Christmas shopping season this year on AUGUST 2. But American retail chain Toys R Us has them beat with a “Christmas In July” sale that runs this week. (although, as far as I can tell, that’s just a sale and not [...]
On Friday, I decided to stop having Facebook scrape and post my blog feed. I just don’t feel like blog posts fit the very ephemeral vibe of FB, and, frankly, it irritates the living crap out of me when people post comments about the blog posts on FB instead of posting them here. I am [...]
In my copious spare time, usually whilst sitting in the waiting area at Charlotte’s karate studio, I have been making slow but steady progress toward adding tags to all the posts on this site. As of right now, I have completed tagging all the way back to April 1, 2008. The current archive of this [...]
Just the other day I posted about a young man from Nepal who was trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest man in the world. He’s only 22 inches tall, compared to the 29-inch tall He Pingping of China, who is the current record holder. Well, WAS the current [...]
boobcheese tickle fights child actor suicides Betty White Zombie Farrah Fawcett Canadian pissing habits that milkaholic Lindsay ChatRoulette whatever half-assed thing Google did this week out-of-control Toyotas
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
I recently posted about the use of menhaden in making fish oil dietary supplements and the potential risk that poses to the entire Atlantic Ocean ecosystem. One of the alternatives to using menhaden for omega-3 supplements is algae oil, because algae is the primary diet of the menhaden and is actually the source of all [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
This week Barack Obama committed the United States to at least two more years of war, 30,000 troops in harm’s way for no other reason than saving face, and umpteen billions of dollars wasted FOR NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER and we are inundated with: Tiger Woods proving he knows how to put it in the [...]
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