Waking up angry

Common sense is finally catching up with the American people. They are beginning to see what we have been pointing out for a few years now, that all ethics and morals aside, the war machine is eating them alive. Even some of their representatives are beginning to notice.

Money spent on the Pentagon creates fewer jobs than money spent on virtually any other sector of the economy and the BushObama Pentabudget continues to set new spending records annually. We are experiencing a massive Duh Moment as the old lies die, writhing and lashing out defensively.

Lie #1: War is good for the economy. No, it is good for the economies of the rich ones who own obscenely profitable war profiteering operations and inexorably drains the rest of the economy.

Lie #2: With a war, unemployment goes away and only the indolent can't find work. This only requires opening our eyes to witness that precise opposite of that.

Lie #3: Failure to have boots on the ground and bombs in the air makes us vulnerable isolationists. In fact, more Americans volunteer to do completely nonviolent civil society work for others all around the world, boosting our national image, while the US military, on balance, enrages more people than any other US policy.

Lie #4: If the US isn't the military enforcer for democracy, dictatorships take over. Ask the people of Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Philippines, and other nations how they feel about this. US military or military aid has been what has achieved precisely the opposite in many cases. We have overthrown democratically elected governments and installed our military puppet dictators. We have sent the weapons to keep monarchs and despots in power. Where we have installed "democracies" at gunpoint, they are corrupt and violent.

So we may at last see a drawdown of the war budget, even though most media and the majority of politicians have avoided even mentioning it ("So, will we balance the budget by cutting education or Social Security?"). That will be a Good Thing.

But it needs to go far deeper. Cutting the first few percent of the Pentagon budget that goes to wage war in Afghanistan (and Iraq, which is still sucked more than $71 billion from US taxpayers last year, while Congress argued bitterly over a $30 billion difference in the Democrat and Republican budgets), that will help. But our real national discussion about the war machine is just starting. The preparation for war and the power projection is the vast majority of our bloated, anti-jobs Pentagon spending. Peace educators have been pointing at this for years. We hope the American people start leading on this as well.