David Petraeus Is No Longer Operating in Reality!

"If we don't need new taxes to fight two wars now, why do we need them for anything?- Frank Rich, in The New Yorker ('One Day: Ten Years')

Of course, New York Times columnist Rich has a point, and one I've made before. In contrast to all other campaigns and wars, we have for some reason stopped paying for them with taxes, and ceased asking the whole populace to contribute! As noted in an earlier blog:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/08/pentagons-credit-card-must-be-taken.html


anyone calling for no taxes during WWII would have been branded unpatriotic at best, and a traitor at worst. So you never heard anyone bitching, pissing and moaning when gas was rationed. Or when income taxes went up! It was manifestly accepted as one's patriotic duty! Not one person complained about heavy new taxes during the four years of the U.S. fighting in the Pacific theater, or in Europe, though we've seen no similar pay-go with over ten years in Afghanistan. Nor did people bitch in the immediate post-war period when the high taxes helped to finance the Marshall Plan - to help pay for the reconstruction of Europe. People were smart enough then to grasp that Europe's stability meant their own - and if they paid NOW (in higher taxes) they would be less likely to pay later in another war.

So what the hell happened?

As Rich himself put it last night on MSNBC's 'The Last Word' with Lawrence O'Donnell, after 9/11 all Americans were united behind Bush - aka Dumbya- and were fully prepared to make any asked for sacrifice. They wanted it and expected it! But what did Bush do? He threw them a dollop of pabulum and utter selfishness by telling them to just 'go out and shop'. He felt that after the most dastardly attack since Pearl Harbor Americans were entitled to blow out their wallets and pocket books in the malls rather than render any monetary sacrifice. By that I mean, paying higher taxes for what would later become an extended military involvement in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

The template choice of either sacrifice or selfishness presented itself, and this "leader" without vision opted for the latter - sending the nation on a path to what Rich called a "cancer of the political culture". This has since led to ten years of enormous debt, a bloated military budget that now consumes 58 cents of every dollar, and utterly stupid "nation building" in faraway Mideast lands while our own nation's infrastructure rots away! (The nation has now fallen from 5th in infrastructure to 23rd and is rapidly careening toward Third World status).

Was Bush's choice deliberate? Did it intentionally use 9/11 as a convenient device to empty the Treasury for any future domestic spending? Many of us believe so. We have known, since the 60s, that the Right has always targeted social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare and only later understood the only way to attack them was through the back door. Thus, the strategy became "starve the beast". At the top of most Rightist lists for doing so: waging costly and extended military campaigns, and formalizing large tax cuts year after year.

The optimum way to drain the Treasury was to combine both: extended and prolonged military ventures and simultaneous large tax cuts (Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts totalled $2.4 trillion up to last December - including interest. Then, incredibly, they were extended even with him long gone!) Thus, instead of emptying the Treasury in 20 years with just one of them, one could adopt the duo to do it in ten. THIS is exactly what's been done!

We know the military waste is there and has contributed to our dire financial predicament. The latest news, that $60 billion has been wasted in defense contracting (including $124 million to build a prison never used in Afghanistan, and $306 million paid to the Taliban in bribes) is merely the tip of the iceberg. Below it one finds monumental waste which was incepted all the way from the time Halliburton became involved in Iraq contracts, as well as Bechtel. We also know key estimates reveal up to $1 trillion may have been wasted, not only in kickbacks, but also in projects never completed, and other projects done with defects (including a faulty shower system at Bagrom). Indeed, the entire Iraq intervention can be considerd a monumental and singular wasteful exercise in its own right -since Iraq and Saddam were never part of 9/11.

Hence, the etimated total costs of $1.1 trillion can be considered total waste. Add on the likely future medical and other treatment costs for vets, and it may reach $2.2 trillion.

All of this is money the Pentagon either owes us back, as taxpayers, or must face in future budget cuts!

But what do we find? People who ought to know better, like (earlier) Leon Panetta (the new boy at the Pentagon), and now David Petraeus, warning that the military establishment which squandered so much capital (as well as lives) must somehow be protected from any cuts in the forthcoming budget talks. Are they mad, stupid, or what?

At Petraeus' retirement ceremony yesterday, he evidently said ('Gen. Petraeus warns against military cutbacks', Denver Post, today, p. 3A):

I do believe we have relearned since 9/11 the timeless lesson that we don't always get to fight the wars for which we are most prepared or most inclined. Given that reality, we will need to maintain the full spectrum capability that we have developed over this last decade in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere".

Which, of course, is madness, because we can't afford it! As a footnote, ask the UK where David Cameron is already implementing massive military defense spending cuts on the order of 20%! Cameron understands, as David Petraeus ought to, you can't expect to balance the budget on the backs of those already profoundly suffering, and on the ill, the elderly and the vulnerable!

Petraeus also ought to grasp, assuming he was serious in his remarks, the time for ceding that reality was when the front in Afghanistan first opened, and then higher taxes ought to have been called for to PAY for these interventions! But what did his C-I-C say? Go out and shop! Fuggedabout taxes!

So how can we take Petraeus seriously now, or any of his sidekicks and clones? They had their chance, and blew it. They accepted tax-less conflicts, invasions and occupations with a big smile but not once demanded any serious sacrifice for putatively serious "wars"! And now, they piously whine in their patriotic pseudo-fervor and self-righteousness and assert they shouldn't have to give any back! Indeed, the subtext of Petraeus' little speech is that there shouldn't even be a calling to account to build 2,443 F-35 bombers at a cost of $0.5 billion each (figuring in cost overruns from past history). Oh, and by the way, let's not forget the $1.1 trillion the Pentagon has misplaced since 1999, as noted by former defense analyst Chuck Spinney!(As noted on PBS' Bill Moyers 'NOW', televised in August, 2002)

Sorry, pallie, but you don't get it! YOU are the one bereft of reality! The fact is the military sacred cow must be up for cuts and indeed, "gored" like any other programs. You don't get to build your little toys, or pad the pockets of defense contractors while one in 4 kids in this country starves, 24 million remain unemployed or under-employed, and houses are still being foreclosed.

If you don't get that, then spelling it out for you likely won't help.

Still, it's incredible how, in a warped and toxic political culture, minds can so easily become warped, poisoned and detached from objective reality! One would have thought Petraeus - with all his medals - would not be one of those compromised, but then "military intelligence" has always been an oxymoron. His remarks yesterday merely reinforce the perception!