The Legacy of Bush : Scheer

There seems to be almost no discussion of military and security expenditures during the campaign. There will be an astronomical debt when military expenditures, stimulus packages, and repairs to infrastructure and the health system are made. Social programs will probably be cut.

The Legacy of Bush IIhttp://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080205_the_legacy_of_bush_ii/Posted on Feb 5, 2008By Robert ScheerCurb your enthusiasm. Even if your favored candidate did well on SuperTuesday, ask yourself if he or she will seriously challenge thebloated military budget that President Bush has proposed for 2009. Ifnot, military spending will rise to a level exceeding any other yearsince the end of World War II, and there will be precious little leftover to improve education and medical research, fight poverty, protectthe environment or do anything else a decent person might care about.You cannot spend well over $700 billion on "national security,"running what the White House predicts will be more than $400 billionin annual deficits for the next two years, and yet find the money toimprove the quality of life on the home front.The conventional wisdom espoused by the mass media is that Bush'sbudget is a lame-duck DOA contrivance, but that assumption is wrong.The 9/11 attacks have been shamefully exploited by themilitary-industrial complex with bipartisan support to ramp upmilitary expenditures beyond Cold War levels. This irrational spendingspree, which accounts for more than half of all federal discretionaryspending, is not likely to end with Bush's departure. Which one of thelikely winners from either party would lead the battle to cut themilitary budget, and where would the winner find support in Congress?Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have treated the military budgetas sacrosanct with their Senate votes and their campaign rhetoric.Clinton is particularly clear on the record as favoring spending more,not less, on the military.John McCain, who previously distinguished himself as a deficit hawkand was almost in a class by himself in taking on the rapaciousdefense contractors, has thrown in the towel with his inane supportfor staying in Iraq till "victory," even if it should take a century.It is simply illogical to call for fiscal restraint while committingto an open-ended war in Iraq that has already cost upward of $700billion. Bush's request for $515.4 billion for the Defense Departmentdoesn't even include the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,which accounted for nearly $200 billion over the last budget year andwhich will cost at least $140 billion in 2009. Add to those numbers$17.1 billion for the Department of Energy's weapons program and over$40 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and other nationalsecurity initiatives spread throughout the federal government, andyou'll see that my $700-billion figure underestimates thehemorrhaging.McCain knows, and has frequently stated as a Senate watchdog, thatmuch of the military spending is wastefully superfluous for combatingterrorists who lack any but the most rudimentary weapons. Bush totallybetrayed his campaign 2000 promise to reshape the post-Cold War U.S.military when he seized upon the 9/11 attack as an opportunity toreverse the "peace dividend" that his father had begun to return totaxpayers. Instead, Bush II ushered in the most profligateunderwriting of weapons systems that are grotesquely irrelevant forcombating terrorism.The U.S. already spends more than the rest of the world combined onits military, without a sophisticated enemy in sight. The Bush budgetcuts not a single weapons system, including the most expensive ones,those designed to combat a Soviet military that no longer exists.Those sophisticated weapons have nothing to do with combatingterrorism and everything to do with jobs and profits that motivateboth Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It is not known whetherOsama bin Laden even possesses a rowboat in his naval arsenal, butthat won't stop Joe Lieberman from pushing, as is his habit, for anincrease in the defense budget to double the funding for the$3.4-billion submarines built in his home state of Connecticut. Nordoes the collapse of the old Soviet Union—and with it the need forenormously expensive stealth aircraft to evade radar systems theSoviets never built—dissuade congressional supporters of those planesfrom pushing for more, not less, than Bush is requesting. Nor doeswasting an additional $8.9 billion on ICBM missile defense haveanything to do with stopping terrorists from smuggling a suitcase nukeinto this country.The centerpiece of the Bush legacy is a "war on terror" based on avast disconnect between military expenditures and actual nationalsecurity requirements that the presidential candidates all fullyunderstand. The question is whether the voters and media will forcethem to face that contradiction or whether we're in for more of thesame—no matter how much the candidates go on about change.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer.Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.Copyright (c) 2007 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.Web site development by Hop Studios Hosted by NEXCESS.NET