Compare that to the George W. Bush wars. The latter were financed, on the margin, by Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke. Had Washington not been knee deep in the regime of central bank interest rate pegging, the huge Bush war deficits would have driven interest rates sky high in an honest free market. Stated differently, Congress would have been dragooned into the unpleasant business of cutting domestic spending and raising taxes in order to finance the $2 trillion cost of the Bush wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and numerous less places. And that’s to say nothing of also financing the massive ballooning of the spying apparatus and so-called homeland security budgets. The latter alone soared from less than $25 billion to more than $100 billion. Exempted from their constitutional duty to take the cost of war home to their voters, the Incumbents Club which resides on Capitol Hill had unlimited discretion to succumb to the anti-terrorist hysteria and islamophobia that was cranked up after 9/11. And that suggests the second reason why the historical aversion to foreign wars which long resonated on Capitol Hill has been transformed into enthusiastic complicity. Divorced from the voters back home, Washington has taken on the mindset and mores of an imperial capital. The time has long passed since there was a real debate about how to define the “national interest” and how to determine among the unpleasantries, upheavals and out-cropping’s of evil which constantly arise around the world—-which ones truly jeopardize the safety and security of the citizens of Springfield MA and Lincoln NE
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 02:46:03 +0000
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