The Democrat-controlled US Senate approved a bill on Friday authorizing hefty budgets for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without demanding any timetable to pullout the overstretched and visibly demoralized American combat troops.
This is the largest military budget in US history after the Cold War. Earlier the opposition Democrats had vowed to reject any new funding for the protracted conflicts along with the so-called war on terror America simply cannot win until George Bush provides a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq.
However, they finally agreed to let Bush have the money that has been taken away from education and health program to fuel the deadly war machine to which there seems to be no end.
As seen several times over the past year and after wining big in the Congress elections, the Democrats have failed to fulfill their promises to the war-weary people before the vote.
With the yes-vote in the Senate, the Pentagon’s budget will reach close to $700 billion. Of this amount, about $190 billion will go to the failed “war on terror“ being waged in pauperized Afghanistan and Iraq. The balance $510 billion will be used by the huge military establishment for its financial needs. All the $190 billion will actually not be expended on the useless fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The amount will be used to also fund US military assistance to other countries allied to its anti-terror activities.
However, analysts predict more than 80 percent of the amount will be funneled into the bottomless Iraq quagmire.
In 2001, Bush had promised to reduce military spending to $500 billion within five years (2006). However, all that turned out to be fairytales. Allocating half a trillion dollars to the military alone suggests, above all, the formidable trend in American militarism across the world, Middle East in particular. While Americans in unusually large numbers grapple with a range of economic woes and the federal government continues to slide into the red with multiplying layers of deficit spending, the Senate approves the unprecedented war budget to spread violence and instability in one of the most sensitive parts of the world.
In 2008, budgeting for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will reach its highest point in seven years. If finalized, it will authorize the embattled war president and his successor to spend more than $15 billion a month (nearly $500 million per day) to keep on fighting in the Middle East.
To put it differently, American taxpayers should pay $21 million an hour for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is while no one on the face of the earth can predict when the two wars in the two Muslim countries engineered by the Pro-Israeli ultra-neocons in Washington will end.
Even those who tend to see the half full side of the glass believe the fighting that has made the region more unstable than before will continue for the foreseeable future.
This argument is based on the premise that even if the Democrats take the White House in next year’s presidential elections, US war strategy (controversial presence in Iraq and Afghanistan) will not be reversed.
American experts and economists of various persuasions see the status quo and systemic rise in military spending as “very dangerous“. One thing is taken for granted about which little if anything is mentioned: American tax payers foot the war bill along with loans from other countries and by selling US holdings to foreigners.
To plug the deepening budget deficits, the Bush administration is forced to either borrow trillions from domestic and foreign financial sources or improve the attractiveness of big US enterprises for foreign investors.
As if all this is not enough, the USD is in a permanent state of decline compared to all the other major currencies, and has weakened the financial status of the self-styled superpower.
The economic chaos has come at a time when the Democrats, despite their flowery speeches and hollow promises, continue to support the present warmongering occupants of the White House.
Democrats had vowed not to compromise on the key issue of demanding a timetable for the pullout of troops from Iraq. But now they are functioning in tandem with their Republican rivals by fueling Bush’s war machine with new funds that will spread death and destruction in this part of the world.
Despite all the deafening antiwar rhetoric of the Democrats, money for the illegal fighting continues to flow without any obstruction. Such trends will only infuriate the US antiwar movements the consequences of which will very likely be a bolt from the blue for the Democrats and their backers in the next presidential elections.