The War is Making You Poor

The War is Making You Poor
Alan Grayson: A progressive who gets it
by Justin Raimondo, June 11, 2010

Complain, complain, complain – that, it seems, is what anti-interventionists often seem content – or, rather, condemned – to do. The world is in a bad state, and getting rapidly worse, this guy is evil, that one is a tool – all right already, my critics answer, but what are we gonna do about it? We know what you're against, but what, pray tell, are you for? 

I hear this a lot, and it makes my eyes roll back in my head. After all, why, 'fer cryin' out loud, do I have to be for anything, aside from being left alone? On the other hand, these critics do have a point: an entirely negative program, while it can be emotionally satisfying – as well as entirely justified ­ has the great disadvantage of being inherently demoralizing. If there's no solution to the problem, then it seems futile to rail against it: a positive agenda can be energizing. That's why I'm so enthusiastic about a bill Rep. Alan Grayson – yes, that Alan Grayson – has offered in the House, H.R. 5353, known as the "War is Making You Poor Act," which would 

• Limit funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
• Eliminate the federal income tax on the first $35,000 of every American's income ($70,000 for married couples), and
• Cut the Federal deficit by $159 billion.

During the Bush years, war funding was "off budget" – a bit of fiscal trickery that masks the real costs of these conflicts – and the Obama crowd promised to put an end to that practice. However, so far the Obama-ites are going the Bush route of submitting "emergency" supplementals to our misnamed "defense" budget in order to cover the costs of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. This time around the "emergency" funding comes to $159 billion: H.R. 5353 would eliminate that entirely and make our solons fund their war out of the remaining $549 billion earmarked for the Department of Defense. 

Simple, clean, and clearly illustrating how our elected representatives fool us ­ and themselves ­ into believing the costs of their wars are less than they really are, the four-page bill already has bipartisan support.  As Grayson points out on his web site, "the original cosponsors, who joined to support the bill even before it was filed, are Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Walter B. Jones (R-NC), as well as two committee chairs (Veterans' Affairs Committee Chair Bob Filner and Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers), plus peace proponents Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), and Barbara Lee (D-CA)." Grayson is no Don Quixote on a one man crusade: there is plenty of disaffection with the war in Congress, especially among Democrats and increasingly from Republicans, and his bill could easily galvanize it – given support from the voting public.

Let's be clear: the $549 billion figure is, by itself, more than all the other nations of the world combined spend on defense. The $159 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan is over and above that exorbitant sum. We spend five times more than China, ten times more than Russia, and the first runners-up in this spending extravaganza are our NATO allies, who aren't likely to be attacking us any time soon. 

So what's the purpose of all this spending? What is it buying us?

Well, it's buying a lot of value for the shareholders of the companies that make up what Dwight Eisenhower called the " military industrial complex." It's garnering lots of hefty campaign contributions for their congressional amen corner – remember that Eisenhower's original phraseology was the "military-industrial- congressional complex." It is also buying us an overseas empire that is more trouble than it's worth, but you don't have to buy into the complete anti-interventionist shtick in order to support this bill: all it asks is that that US government stay within its budget and make the kinds of cuts and bows to fiscal austerity that we all have to make in these hard times. 

The energy and resources it takes to produce weapons of war constitute a net drain on the civilian economy: our attention and capital are diverted away from productive work and into a project that can only end in the destruction or quick obsolescence of the end product. Missiles are launched, and self-destruct. Helicopter gunships crash, and burn. Rifles jam, and are discarded. Warships, fighter planes, flak jackets, counterinsurgency strategies – all become obsolete with dizzying rapidity, in part because that's the nature of human warfare, and also because it's planned that way. 

In short, war, quite aside from its dubious moral justification, is a losing proposition economically – and a policy of perpetual war, such as we are now committed to, is economic suicide. A nation cannot drain the lifeblood from its veins indefinitely. As the world economy teeters on the brink, and our once matchless productive forces are having a collective fainting fit, what we need is a major transfusion. H.R. 5353 will revive the economy, and send the Obama regime a very strong message: enough is enough!

I know I've been pretty hard on my progressive and liberal readers lately, in part because, after all, it's your guy who's in power, and your guys (and gals) who have a congressional majority. So I'm glad to proffer a change of pace and say: Alan Grayson is one progressive who definitely "gets it." 

He's not only good on foreign policy, for the most part, he also understands the key role played by the Federal Reserve in redistributing the wealth from the people to the elites, and its crucial part in maintaining the empire. That's why he was one of the first co-sponsors of Rep. Ron Paul's historic bill to audit the Fed, and raise the curtain on this mysterious instrument of organized thievery: he's no libertarian, to be sure, but at least he understands how power works in this country, and how the powerful use the instrument of government to keep their privileges, pelf, and perks. 

As the Obama cult drains the energy from the Left, and renders it impotent, it's good to see there are still signs of life in that seemingly infertile terrain. This is something to be cultivated. As the tendrils of dissent rise up and blossom into active opposition to the status quo, perhaps we'll see a new "Prague Spring" which will free us from the rigid left-right, progressive-libertarian, red state/blue state paradigm that freezes thought, divides the antiwar community, and gives the War Party free rein to rampage over half the earth. 

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/06/10/the-war-is-making-you-poor/