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Prolonging the War is a "Threat to Our National Security"
Congressman Kucinich said today:
America
is in the fight of its life and that fight is not in Afghanistan --
it's here ... We are deeply in debt. Our GDP is down. Our manufacturing
is down. Our savings are down. The value of the dollar is down. Our
trade deficit is up. Business failures are up. Bankruptcies are up.
The
war is a threat to our national security. We’ll spend over $100 billion
next year to bomb a nation of poor people while we reenergize the
Taliban, destabilize Pakistan, deplete our army and put more of our
soldiers’ lives on the line. Meanwhile, back here in the USA, 15
million people are out of work. People are losing their jobs, their
health care, their savings, their investments, and their retirement
security. $13 trillion in bailouts for Wall Street, trillions for war;
when are we going to start taking care of things here at home?
Is he right?
Well,
the director of U.S. national intelligence, retired Admiral Dennis
Blair, said in February that the economic crisis was the biggest
national security threat to the United States. See this and this.
And - contrary to common beliefs - economists say that prolonged wars increase unemployment, shrink the economy, and cause rather than solve recessions. See this, this and this. And to those who say that deficits don't matter, please read this.
As ABC notes:
U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country...
With
100,000 troops in Afghanistan at an estimated yearly cost of $30
billion, it means that for every one al Qaeda fighter, the U.S. will
commit 1,000 troops and $300 million a year.
And TalkingPointsMemo reported
yesterday that - in addition to the troops - the US now has more than
104,000 defense contractors in the country. So that drives up the cost
per al Qaeda fighter even higher.
Moreover, a leading advisor to the U.S. military - the very hawkish Rand Corporation - released a study in 2008 called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida". The report confirms what experts have been saying for years: the war on terror is actually weakening national security.
As a press release about the study states:
"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."
As one blogger commented in response to a previous essay:
If
we continue to react as we did after 9-11 then al Qaeda will win. This
primarily being a financial site, everyone here should understand ROI
[return on investment]. They invested less than a million and made us
spend 1 trillion+. They could pass the collection plate around at the
average mosque in Pakistan and bankrupt us with 1 more operation. Even
if you are not convinced that we are creating more extremists than we
are killing, we simply cannot afford to "win the war on terrorism".
Fighting fire with fire just makes things burn faster...Keep in
mind as well that most empires that have been defeated were not
annihilated on the battlefield, but rather in the bank account.
Kucinich is right.
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ubl is in indonesia.
What utter bullshit! Is this the best that Zero Hedge can do?
What WOULD you have done after 9/11? Apologize? Wish that 65 years had not happened? Thrown Israel under the bus? Do you think that throwing Israel under the bus would have accomplished anything?
These pissants have hated the west and have been attacking it since before we were a country. Hell they destroyed the last remnants of the Roman Fucking Empire and you are saying do NOTHING except to turn around and hope they kiss you the next time they fuck you?
Goddamn it WHAT would you do? They hate us because we are changing their world into something that attracts their young away from their religion. Our movies, clothes, laws, culture are in direct opposition to their desire to chop hands off, crush little boys arms and stoning women for having the audacity to be raped. Did they attack our merchant ships during Jefferson's time because of our support of Israel or because we were in Saudi Arabia...
But what is the most outrageous lie being perpetuated by the lunatic left and the Paulians is this idea that ONLY THEY hate war...fucking clowns. We ALL hate war but most of the adults realize that when someone turns you around and fucks your entire country that some response besides apologizing is in order.
I would have arranged for Saddam Hussein to have his way with Saudi Arabia.
After the Saudi Royals had been decimated, I would then undertake a "humanitarian intervention" - but only after the sincerest requests from the UN.
Then I would keep 300,000 soldiers in the country like forever and turn the whole place into a combined Bar & Brothel - the Philippines on speed!
unless/until we are willing to respond to an attack like this, the modern day "Pearl Harbor" in the same manner as we responded to the original, we have no business going to war.
As long as the narrative is promulgated from Hollywood by an editorial executive that the "western white man" is to blame for all ills, we will never achieve the critical mass necessary to galvanize public opinion to take this step.
The response against Japan was to prosecute total destruction of their people, their homeland, their culture, everything. We did the same to the Germans. We were willing and engaged in the process of killing every single one of them until we forced their total surrender and submission to OUR way.
It's as simple as that. There was nothing that could be done when 30% of our population have the steadfast belief that some kind of "patriarchal" society is the problem, that men are the problem, that whites are the problem, that WE and our way are the problem, and that we "had it coming" because of how awful WE are.
As far as Israel, let them fend for themselves. 911 had nothing whatsoever to do with Israel, yet the zionists and jew power structure LEAP to the Israel/911 connection every fucking time 911 is brought up. Our world and our way does not revolve around Israel.
We need a non-jewish-centric message to popularize around our relationship with the world. It is not the fault of the vast majority of gentiles that jews have had a historical inability to integrate.
We should not fight wars for Israel.
As for 911 it was based more on the fact that we have troops in Saudi Arabia and we are only there because of one thing - oil. We should pursue a policy of strategic disengagement from the middle east, and cease our national economy's revolvement around oil and consumption. Simple as that.
Nations that do not pursue imperial postures do not get attacked by insurgents. If the Chinese had a base in the US and their soldiers walking around with a state of diplomatic impunity, I guarantee you that there would be insurgent attacks against them. Most Americans cannot even wrap their heads around what a foreign occupying military force would be like yet this is the reality for a lot of the rest of the world.
We need to get out - of everywhere.
They hate us because we are in their neighborhoods and calling in drone attacks to kill one bad dude with 34 collateral damage issues when the actual terrorists were in Hamburg and Florida flight schools. These places we did not attack. Cheap training camps set up in Afghainistan could be evacuated to a week back to Pakistan, where we have nothing to do. You 'd like to encourage a Muslim-Christian Holy War to replace the 100 al-Quaeda plants of our failed Muhjahadeen mission so we can takeour eye off the two-party state in the former British protectorate of Palestine, partitioned on 11-29-1947 that you wish to prevent. It's so transparent; your rant is old. FAIL.
Spot on! That may just be the finest succinct summation of the past thousand years of conflict between the Islamic world and everyone else, that I've seen anywhere!
"...Thrown Israel under the bus?"
One can dream, no?
+1000
George Washington, you need to change your name. You are acting nothing at all like your namesake.
I suggest you grow a pair.
Let me tell you something, you lousy little pissant. The REAL George Washington crossed the Delaware River in the dark of night and beat the crap out of his enemies. The REAL George Washington was faced with defeat time and time again and the situation seemed far more hopeless than you can imagine. The war in Afghanistan is being handed to us on a silver platter by comparison.
AND HE DID NOT GIVE UP.
We're all here to urge more fiscal conservatism, but not at the expense of victory.
Not at the expense of the future of the people of Afghanistan.
Not at the expense of the victory that our armed forces have worked so hard to achieve.
Not at the expense of losing a war that we're on the verge of winning.
Keep this leftist liberal crap off of Zero Hedge, please. It detracts enormously from the otherwise high-quality journalism on this site.
I believe Washington also advised us to stay out of foreign entanglements and intrigue.
Fighting land wars in Asia are a bad way to operate (unless you have Halliburton stock).
P.S. I don't think you actually give a $h!t for the avg Afghan, so let's just avoid the crocodile tears.
This post makes me laugh. the thing to realize is the british were fighting a war on "foreign territory", a long way from home, against and army that did you use their tactics (they fought from under cover and ran away avoiding large set fighting). they british lost and we won.
We are the "British" and the "Afghans" are us in the revolutionary war.
Missing Link,
If you are so in favor of us continuing a killing/revenge ratio of at least 50 to 1 (and in all likelihood much higher), why not enlist and go fight over there right now. I hear our military is still accepting volunteers. There is so much empirical and anecdotal evidence currently in existence which directly contradicts the "we are over there fighting terrorists and making the US more secure" meme. If you stopped walking on your knuckles long enough to take a look around you, you might realize how badly many of our leaders have sold US citizens out to pursue a relentless campaign of bombing indigent foreigners back into the Stone Age so Halliburton, et al can profit from rebuilding those poor, unfortunate countries.
As an aside, I read somewhere that poppy production in Afghanistan has increased 600% since we invaded and, allegedly, installed some of our troops to guard the poppy fields. Just sayin'.
++ Afghanistan is all about pipelines and poppies. The prior guard was killing all the producers. We need the underground economy. Hell, it's the only economy left. The CIA has helped run drugs for a long, long time. Missing Link you need to read more recent and not so recent history and quit pretending that we're the good guys and they're the bad guys. Do you have any idea who and how we pay people off over there? It's all one big joke...that's on us.
The troglodytes come out of the cracks! wow! and so aptly named "missing link" So go fight keyboard warrior.
Thanks for trying to focus and organize ALL OF US.
You don't need to change your name. You're still a cheap rippoff of the Pan to peter pan archetype.
You wouldn't know a silver platter from a charger.
Well, then again, the REAL George Washington warned against ...
Your idiotic comparison between a defensive war on US turf against the premier world power of the time--and a pointless game of whack-a-mole 6,000 miles away against a desperately poor, 3rd world patchwork of tribes that lacks an army, navy or air force--couldn't be more laughable.
Go back to playing with your George Bush action figure doll you witless ferret.
"Victory" as the objective of WWII could be defined as killing Hitler and forcing the surrender of Germany and Japan.
I have three questions for you:
1) What the hell do you define as "victory" in Afghanistan?
2) What evidence is there that we're on the verge of achieving it, whatever it is?
3) If Rumsfeld couldn't achieve it(?) in 5+ years, how many more years should we pursue it, whatever it is?
I just want to be educated so that I can quit siding with the leftist liberal crap on this matter.
not you. you obviously love war andhave some derranged bigoted and warped view of history against Muslim culture. Probably why you dont mind seeing so many of their women and children killed.
Dont you think your warmonger glee at us killing way more of them than every supposed terrorist act in history combined MIGHT be a little reason why they (quite justifiably) hate pigs like you??
I promise if you leave them alonr and stop killing an torturing innocent people in that part of te wolrd and mind our own damn business thye will leave us alone. promis. gurantee. why not try it? Becuase im right and then you wont have the excuse you crave for mass murdr.
Racist. Fascist. Pig.
Love war? You are a fucking idiot. I have 3 children who may have to face it. But sometimes you have to fight...
So then genius what would YOU have done after 9/11?
look for the real perps..read the latest 15 questions. 9-11 was a false flag operation. 19 Saudis hiding under Saddam's bed?
A Deeply Flawed Book
By
David R. Griffin
http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Truth-Untold-America-Attack/dp/1594488940/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259355013&sr=1-1
9/11 Truthers are simply cowards who cannot face the fact that there is a group of folks that want to murder them. They would rather believe it is all some conspiracy...
So go fight keyboard warrior.
Gee, maybe the U.S. could have
gotten the Taliban to turn over Bin Laden.+1
Novice Cesena pilots fly sophisticated jet liners into buildings and their passports magically survive and found nearby. PierreleGrande you are the fucking idiot and if you could take your head out of your ass you might actually have an appreciation for what happened that day.
and NORAD's insane response, first steel structure high rise to collapse from these conditions, Tower 7, the building owners freudian slip on tape that "we pulled it," BBC announcing Tower 7s collapse fifteen minutes before it happened, the immediate and illegal removal of all steel debris evidence, the amazing pentagon hole and on and on and on......
It always amazes me that a good deal of the public has now come to accept that our government deliberately lied to us to get us into a war in IRAQ, a war that has destroyed over a million lives (including many of our own) and that they did it all for oil. But at the same time, many people can never accept the possibility that our government would create a false flag and kill a mere 3 thousand to get the ball rolling. This especially when history has already documented that our government has both suggested and accomplished false flags in the past. This also when we know that they know that we know that, never in a million years would we have ever supported these wars without first being a "victim."
It reminds me of my line of work, criminal law. There is one type of crime where the defendant almost never admits his crime and the family members almost always support his story. Incest and child rape. It is just too much to psychologically handle no matter how overwhelming the evidence. It's the same thing here.
The only thing I thing I think this disgusting mess proves is just how dire the peak oil problem has become. In that sense, I think those "who are responsible" justify their ugly means. I think it is also the mantra that those currently in power use to avoid the truth.
Well gee maybe you are just a fool who cannot answer a simple fucking question.
What would you have done after 9/11?
Remember the rules assclown. You cannot wish for a different policy to have occured the last 65 years. You cannot in anyway change the circumstances that were reality at 10:00am Eastern on 9/11.
Now wow us with your briliance.
How about have a decent fucking investigation and go after the INDIVIDUALS that committed the crime. You haven't a fucking clue what we are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. You think this is about catching bad guys? Gimme a fucking break. Wake up.
By your posts, I wonder if you know what the circumstances are. We can all agree it was tragic - the question is, "Is the investigation complete?"
Until then there is no point debating because debating with the Feds is like debating with a Mack truck. The American public has seen this kind of thing before - right after getting smacked in the head they cling with terror and teary eyes to the very parent that abuses them for they have nowhere else to seek comfort.
Get creative, not offensive.
Remember the rules assclown. You cannot wish for a different policy to have occured the last 65 years. You cannot in anyway change the circumstances that were reality at 10:00am Eastern on 9/11.
Here is where your argument breaks down completely. You seek to frame the debate in the manner in which your points are granted fait accompli. This is a very old and well-known tactic in debate, but you should not expect us to let you get away with it.
The policies that have existed for those past years are exactly the thing that must be changed, because they are what has failed and put us all at risk. Continuing along your path and accepting your past-as-future argument will guarantee that we continue to do the same things while expecting different results. Nowhere in this fact is embedded the idea that we are unwilling to fight for liberty or to defend American shipping or American citizens abroad. I am actually quite confused by your insistence that it is.
Of course Americans have a right to defend themselves, from all enemies foreign and domestic.
We are exhausting our military into uselessness with this constant state of undeclared war. We continue expending American lives with an occupation that no longer serves any purpose other than hardening the resolve of those we occupy to make us leave. Any remnants of any alleged terrorist group that might be implicated in the 911 attacks has long since gone or melted into the countryside. How many Americans and Afghans must die to slake your blood lust? When will it be enough? Your aggressive posturing guarantees ongoing Islamic support for Iranian defiance and ongoing war.
One final point: War is economic. You win a war by making it impossible for your opponent to field an opposing force. This ME war, along with other government-led stupidities, has broken the bank. The dollar is in collapse. The army is coming home from the ME soon whether your want it to or not. When the dollar collapses our military capability collapses along with it, leaving us more vulnerable, not less. By advocating an acceleration of the war you advocate my becoming more vulnerable, and I take exception to that.
If you respond, please try to do so without your usual cursing and childish name-calling.
Here is where your argument breaks down completely. You seek to frame the debate in the manner in which your points are granted fait accompli. This is a very old and well-known tactic in debate, but you should not expect us to let you get away with it.
The debate starts with our response after 9/11. George Washington seems to believe that no response was the correct thing to do. I am challenging that idea.
We can probably both agree that we have mismanaged the war. But George isn't arguing about the management. He is arguing about going to war at all.
Well that is absurd...ergo the question being posed to him. What would he have done after 9/11.
Then to deal with your idea that our changing policies is what we need to do alright then which policies? And can you show that following such policies would result no attacks.
We differ in that I do not believe that Islam is a moderate religion. I believe it is a very violent. Much more so than Christianity since the leaders of both sects are very different individuals...that led very different lives and gave very different examples to their followers.
I do not believe that there is anything we can do to moderate Islam. We will always have bloody borders with them.
The debate starts with our response after 9/11.
Why, because you say it does? The debate starts with "how do we keep from getting here again?"
We differ in that I do not believe that Islam is a moderate religion..
I never said I believed that. You assume I do. Shall we make war on everyone who means us harm? If so, we should invade Saudi Arabia right away, the hotbed of radical Islam, home probably to more radical Madrasah Isl?miyyah per square mile than anywhere else (except maybe Detroit.) In fact, the proper place for a Neocon Preemptive Invasion (Cheney Doctrine, Bush isn't capable of adding two and two) has been proven to be Saudi Arabia, and we should have done so even before we invaded Afghanistan, and certainly before we invaded Iraq. If we will always "have bloody borders" with Islam, then perhaps you believe we should have preemptively invaded Saudi Arabia and "pacified" it, maybe we could have killed the 911 hijackers before 911. Or maybe, just maybe, we would have pissed off the Muslims enough to do it anyway, or something worse, or more sustained.
I know how I would respond to UN troops bearing arms on US soil, driving around in Humvees, kicking down the door to my house and searching it.
I do not believe that there is anything we can do to moderate Islam. We will always have bloody borders with them.
Then why are we in their countries? Shall we kill them all? Doesn't this quickly break down into "kill everyone who 'threatens American Interests' as defined by the corporatocracy, and then to "everyone who disagrees with us is a terrorist"?
(*HIGH FIVE*)
BILL
Excellent
I like that part about throwing Israel under a bus, instead of letting AIPAC and some powerful Semites on both sides run our country.
Here a country the size of New Jersey, for 50 years the Power holds the people, the treasure, our whole way of life under its thumb.
Yeah. The hell with Israel. And it's long overdue.
So since the Fed turned us around and fucked our entire country, WHAT would you do?
Tar and Feathers was a popular punishment for assclowns that robbed us or were traitors in the past. I favor that...
+1000
So long as it is televised... a la Running Man
That's saucy! Thanks for the cold splash of reality Pierre.
The more we spend, the more the terrorists win.
End the Fed, and End the War!
Fucking BS. If he really wants to finish this War then he should have voted and promoted for the increase troops in Afghanistan. And let our Generals do their jobs instead of getting in their way.
Zerohedge should have someone to write a counter agreement instead of a one way childish naïve liberal anti-war propaganda.
Sorry, but he cites studies to back his point by conservative groups. therefore it isn't liberal propaganda. Ever since Bush the right wing just prefers to ignore any evidence that does not support their own view. evolution, just say no, global warming, "chastity", WMD in Iraq, Iraq had uranium, iraq was tied to 9/11, "no we didn't have plans to attack Iraq before 9/11"
You know why they let Osama go at tora bora. after the cold war ended the military industrial comples needs a new villian. let they guy go and all the cronies get their hardware. Cheney and haliburton. great way to enusre all the military contractors keep the lobby money flowing.
If you disagree you should post data and evidence to support your conclusion instead of attacking others. You don't.
Unfortunately too many people think with their hearts in this country instead of their head and that's why we are so screwed up.
My advise to you is to stop listening to the propaganda and actually do some research, not listening to Rush on the radio.
learn about the common threads of what destroys empires. A good start to understand the relationship is the PBS series a history of money by Nail Ferguson.
Dude...LISTEN to what you are saying!
The generals DO NOT HAVE an answer for this.
We have already WON THE WAR, ok?
The war is OVER. WTF are we doing there? Generals cannot give good strategic advice on how to BUILD SOCIETIES; that is not what they do.
What is the end-state here? If you think that these people whose IQ probably averages freakin 90 or so at best have the CAPACITY to have a society like ours or Norway or something, then you're a fool!
There is no army opposing us in Afghanistan; we're not fighting an insurgency, we're providing a target for people who have NOTHING BETTER TO DO WITH THEMSELVES than go die in the jihad!
Look, man, we are dealing with people who approach war in the same manner that serfs in the feudal period in Europe did! Or the civil war. You ever ask yourself WHY these men marched into certain death? They had strong religious faith and a sense that this was just their lot in life.
Afghanistan and the entire muslim world cannot be changed until they have their own renaissance.
+100, jdun
Exactly what does "finish this war" mean?
Please elaborate. There isn't anything stopping you from providing the counter argument.
Rand is very hawkish and more right-wing than left.
And as American historian, investigative journalist and policy analyst Gareth Porter writes in the Asia Times:
The goal was never focused on destroying Al Qaeda. As just one example, the U.S. let Bin Laden escape in 2001 and again in 2007.
Indeed, the goal seems to have more to do with being a superpower (i.e. an empire) than stopping terrorism.
As Porter writes:
the very day of 911, Rumsfeld and the administration were making statements connecting the event with IRAQ. That is old news now.
i would change my mind and be %100 behind what you are trying to say if you could only do one thing:
define the 'Win' scenario.
-quasinagy
(*THUMBS UP*)
BILL
Al Queda is nothing compared to the FINANCIAL TERRORISTS at the Fed, and on Wall Street.
They are imploding our nation from within for their own short term, personal gain.
We can't solve the years of fraud and corruption with more of the same.
Every unemployed person in this country should be in the streets of DC protesting, instead of behind a keyboard!!
Until these protests become REAL to DC, they will just continue their reign of destruction!
There is only Al Banka