No Economic Recovery Without Downsizing the Military

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

"Obama must break his
promise to the military industrial complex."

Barack Obama is being coy, as usual, artfully cultivating
media speculation over the scope of his economic "recovery" plan. To put it
more bluntly, Obama is a tease, a media flirt who knows that the shallow
corporate press become hopelessly fixated on that which is withheld from them.
How big will Obama's stimulus be? 850 billion? A trillion? As long as media
attention revolves around the elusive figure, few journalists will pose the
more fundamental question: How can the nation muster the resources to save
itself from economic ruin, while continuing to feed the dogs of war?

The disappearance of trillions in notional and actual
dollars has so dazzled the public, some seem to have forgotten about the
Trillion Dollar War on Terror. That's the figure Time magazine
places on George Bush's military adventures since 9/11. Others put the figure
much higher. Former Clinton economic advisor Joseph Stiglitz and co-author
Linda Bilmes' best-selling book calls Iraq a "Three Trillion Dollar War," when
all costs are factored in.

Of course, there are costs that economists are no good at
tallying, such as the cost of making the whole planet hate you, and wish you
ill. There's a very big, long term price tag at the end of that militaristic
road - a price that is paid when nobody in their right mind wants to have
business or any other relations with your country. But the simple budgetary
cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was already an unbearable weight, before
the whole economic house of cards came tumbling down, just a few months ago. Better
days are way beyond the horizon, even in the best of scenarios, but economic
recovery is inconceivable if the U.S. continues to spend such a huge proportion
of its treasure on war.

"The simple budgetary cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars was already an unbearable weight, before the whole economic house of cards
came tumbling down."

That's one reason not to be excited about whatever economic
stimulus figure Obama's corrupt banker advisors pull out of their hats. The
U.S. cannot pay for recovery and fund its wars, too. Had the financial system
not collapsed so precipitously, the constantly escalating drain of U.S.
resources to the military would have inevitably led to an economic and
political crisis. Back in March, authors Stiglitz and Bilmes noted that war
spending had already "crowded out spending on virtually all other discretionary
federal programs." If the banker's had not done the economy in, the generals
and war contractors would have eventually crippled the government.

If Barack Obama is to have the remotest chance to avoid
full-scale economic depression, he must break his promise to the military
industrial complex - an Obama promise that was always more firm and detailed
than any he ever made to the public regarding health care or jobs or affordable
housing. Obama must reverse his support for 100,000 additional soldiers and
Marines - and cancel plans for new or expanded wars in which those troops were
to be deployed. And get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. And that's just for
starters.

The arithmetic of the current, overlapping crises leaves
Obama no options. He can continue to finance a war machine that costs more than
all the rest of the world's armies, navies and air forces, combined, or he can
try to save what's left of the U.S. economy. He can't do both.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted
at [email protected].

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