Let the President and Congress know big cuts to Defense ARE ACCEPTABLE!

[sad sally]

This request will probably fall on the same deaf ears (both here and in D.C.) as previous posts that point out the bloated defense department's budget, but hearing Secretary Panetta say cuts over $350 billion in the next 10 years are “completely unacceptable," drives me nuts. He went on to say:

“When you look at national security, I think you have to look at the broader context. It’s not just dependent on the defense budget. It is also dependent on the quality of life in this country."

Does he or the President know or care what almost 10 years of being a Country in Wars All Over the World has done to the quality of life here, and in Iraq and Afghanistan (plus all the Countries we indiscriminately send predator drones to that carry weapons of destruction)? The military industrial complex is financially and morally bankrupting us, yet the Secretary (who speaks for the President) says cuts to the military are "completely unacceptable."

A peaceful world is an illusive dream and lasting peace seems to be the hardest thing for people to achieve. Peace is desperately needed, today, more than ever, if this fragile planet is to survive. What happened to the idea of diplomacy? Use of high high-powered diplomacy seems to have become a dirty word; war seems like an easier solution.

from his last column for the New York Times:

Losing Our Way
By BOB HERBERT
Published: March 25, 2011

So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.

Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.

more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/opinion/26herbert.html?du

[MichiganVote]

1. Simple. We want the military tax money spent in THIS Country

[Bonhomme Richard]

2. The downside is that most that I know working in manufacturing...

are dependent, in part, on military contracts.
We have really put ourselves in a pickle. Cut DOD spending and hundreds of thousands out of work.
I don't know the answer.

[Merlot]

4. Exactly - our economy depends on wars.

If all the soldiers from all the wars came home right now, do you have any idea what it would do to the unemployment rate? Supposidly thats one of the reasons the draw down is so slow.

However, for the military contracts to blaXEwater, that would be money that we could save right away.

[Mnemosyne]

3. K&R

[woo me with science]

5. They will not make significant defense cuts.

The Third Way "Democrats," including this President, are still trying to maintain the illusion that they want to end the wars.

It is flat-out misrepresentation. They do not want to end the wars, because the wars are extremely profitable for the banks (because the wars run on borrowed money) and for the corporations who provide arms and technologies.

At this point, enough people still trust in a Democratic Party anti-war stance that they are trying simply to maintain that illusion through carefully chosen words that mislead. At a certain point, as their actions become increasingly undeniable, they will have to shift to a full defense of increasing the military, just as they have shifted from denying that Social Security and Medicare cuts will happen to defending those cuts as necessary.

But for now they are playing games. They talk about "troop drawdowns," but that is an illusion and a sham, because troops are increasingly being replaced by paid private mercenaries who earn two to ten times as much.

The Pentagon budget is increasing, not decreasing, despite all claims to the contrary. All promised cuts to defense are conveniently to happen sometime in the future and are not reflected in President Obama's own budget for next year.

And remember this post: What are being described as planned deep cuts to the Pentagon budget actually reflect an increase in planned levels of financing. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=439&topic_id=1639452

We are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in several more countries, as well. The budgets continue sky high. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=439&topic_id=1402614

The Third Way Democrats will not end the wars. They have no intention of ending the wars that profit banks and corporations. Again, follow the actions and the money, not the pretty words.

[sad sally]

6. As I said, my anger falls on deaf ears - including the two Democratic

Senators in this State, and the war supporters here at DU. Someone above posted that the big manufacturers left in the US are defense related and that unemployment would soar if the wars actually ended.

What a sad commentary on what Democrats think about war - can't end them because they create jobs.

Wars don't stimulate the economy, wars stimulate the MIC. Think of all the positive jobs that could be created if the money that the government spent on wars was spent on nation-building in the United States. It's government money that funds wars.

The money spent on wars and the MIC means money not spent on other things; money spent on wars and the MIC increases the national debt; money spent on wars and the MIC will mean increased taxes and drastic cuts to everything else to pay for them.

Military spending relies on government spending; mercenary armies such as the State Department's and CIA's rely on government money to operate. Military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment.



Why Is America In So Many Wars?
Written by Sherwood Ross
Sunday, 07 February 2010 16:55

http://atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/12739-why-is-america-in-so-many-wars.html?du

America is “a nation that seeks war” and if it doesn’t change it could end up destroying itself, a law school dean warns.

Given all the wars the United States has waged, “It is preposterous but true that we do not see ourselves as a nation that seeks war,” writes Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. “We see ourselves as a peace loving nation” and that message is constantly drummed into the public by government and media.

Since World War Two, an indisputably necessary conflict, Velvel points out the U.S. has fought the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, secret wars in Laos and Cambodia, the First Gulf War, Afghanistan, and the Second Gulf War in Iraq. It has also invaded, bombed or “quarantined” Panama, Grenada, Cuba, Haiti, Somalia, the Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia and Libya, and has “declared” a global war on terrorists.

“If the United States were a man instead of a country, we would say he must be schizophrenic, or at minimum deeply mentally disturbed, to believe he is peace loving in the face of a record like this,” Velvel writes in “The Long Term View,” a journal of informed opinion published by his law school.

--

Among the reasons USA fights so often, Velvel writes, are economic imperialism, a desire to remain preeminent, the glorification of war by the media, hubris, the stupidity of the nation’s leaders and the failure to prosecute them for their war crimes, and the inability to learn from past errors.

[joshcryer]

9. $50 billion less cuts than the original proposal makes the $350 billion not significant?

I guess we use the word differently.

While I agree the defense budget won't be cut, it'd be interesting to see the Democrats simply say "no how, no way" and call their bluff and get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan immediately (note: the cuts won't happen until 2013 so they'll be pulling the troops back as the deadline nears).

Meanwhile the money that is currently budgeted for the Pentagon, which would be saved be the immediate troop draw down might be able to be diverted to the social programs that would get slashed.

[sad sally]

11. ...truth cannot be permitted to intrude “because it would destroy our self image.”

Velvel further notes the U.S. today spends more on military than perhaps all the rest of the world put together and definitely more than the next 21 highest-spending nations combined, including China, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Israel.

Not only do Americans always appear to be at war but they believe they fight only in good causes, he writes. “We believe we at all times fight only to do God’s work, and that we therefore have to fight or democracy, freedom, and economic affluence will be lost,” Velvel writes. He says truth cannot be permitted to intrude “because it would destroy our self image.”

“Certainly much of the rest of the world---probably most of the rest of the world---does not see us as peaceloving.” Gulf War II, Velvel notes, is having the opposite impact on public opinion the U.S. intended. “It has caused Muslims---the Arab ‘street,’ in particular---to hate our guts even more than they already did.”

[joshcryer]

7. I wanted to start a thread "would you give up a big chunk of Medicare and social programs to end...

...the wars?"

But then I decided not to do it because it's really really controversial and people would shit themselves trying to figure out if their anti-war sentiments were more important than their pro-social spending sentiments.

[sad sally]

12. I don't think you have to worry about anti-war sentiments.

America as a waring nation is acceptable by many. Call a war a humanitarian effort, hide the cots in the bulging defense budget, send in the drones, keep the American casualities at a reasonable level, never admit to how many people are killed - all is well.

Among the reasons USA fights so often, Velvel writes, are economic imperialism, a desire to remain preeminent, the glorification of war by the media, hubris, the stupidity of the nation’s leaders and the failure to prosecute them for their war crimes, and the inability to learn from past errors.

[dflprincess]

8. I imagine if any cuts are made to anything related to the military

it will be veterans' benefits.

No way are they going to cut off the MIC.

[spanone]

10. i predict they will be exempt from cuts...in the near future