“While post-9/11 veterans are more supportive than the general public, just one-third (34%) say that, given the costs and benefits to the U.S., the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have both been worth fighting.” —Pew Research Center, “War and Sacrifice in the Post-9/11...
cost of war
How Many Wars? After Libya . . . ?
“From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli . . .” [ also at DailyKos ] We once made the sardonic observation that apparently the aim of the “war on terror,” rather than protecting the Homeland, was to inflame the entire Muslim world—or at least those...
10th Year of Afghan War Begins
America Slogs On, “Dead or Alive” Briefly, sadly noted: Today, October 7, 2010, begins the tenth year of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. How’s that hunt for Osama bin Laden going? How’s that expansion into Pakistan going? How much taxpayer-supplied money has the U.S....
Eisenhower on the Opportunity Cost of the War Machine
“Humanity hanging from a cross of iron” “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money...
Tax Day: How Much Have You Paid for the War?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTPKxjgw5N4&feature=player_embedded Most likely you’ve paid $7,334 of the $1.05 trillion that has gone to the Afghan and Iraq wars since 2001. Here is Tom Englehardt’s compelling introduction at TomDispatch.com to a piece (below the...
Approaching Five Years in Iraq, 4,000th U.S. Fatality
We don’t know how this will play out, but we can be sure that while the Clinton and Obama campaigns sharpen their knives against each other, American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will keep on killing and being killed—for what?—and the U.S. will still be borrowing billions monthly for those insatiable wars. And New Orleanians once able to afford rent or mortgage payments before the federal levees broke will still be homeless, encamped near City Hall and under the Claiborne Street overpass, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will still be late with its plan for Category 5–strength hurricane protection for New Orleans and vicinity.