Obama Spreading War Flames to Engulf the Middle East

[unhappycamper]

Obama Spreading War Flames to Engulf the Middle East
by Sherwood Ross | January 16, 2010 - 3:36pm

As President Obama steps up the war that is inflaming ever wider sectors of the Middle East, USA continues its rapid slide toward Third World status. The two developments are not unrelated. Spending on war does not boost an economy as does domestic spending---and the Pentagon has been spending trillions on war.

At the start of the last decade, the U.S. was producing 32 percent of the world's gross domestic product. At decade's end, it was just 24 percent, conservative columnist Patrick Buchanan observed. "No nation in modern history, save for the late Soviet Union, has seen so precipitous a decline in relative power in a single decade," he writes.

Buchanan cites the George W. Bush Republicans for turning a budget surplus into a huge deficit with tax cuts and social spending. He also faults GWB's two wars, adding, "the huge U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq serves as (al-Qaeda's) recruiting poster."

This is the desperate situation President Obama is compounding by dispatching 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, building up U.S. and NATO forces there to nearly 140,000. To this figure add 100,000 U.S. contractors, making the actual number of military-related personnel about a quarter million. All at the expense of the American taxpayers!

"The war---once mostly limited to Pakistan border---has spread to nearly every corner of the country" and "penetrated" the capital Kabul "with car bombings and spectacular attacks," the AP reported January 10th. Its headline: "Afghans Losing Hope After 8 Years of War."


Rest of article at: http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/26112

[Fumesucker]

1. 32% to 24% in a decade.. That's just stunning..

I knew it was bad but I'm appalled that the numbers are that bad..

We are well and truly screwn, I thought getting Dem supermajorities and a Dem president would at least slow the slide into the abyss but I now fear I was whistling past the graveyard.

Thanks for posting.

[tbyg52]

4. >>I thought getting Dem supermajorities and a Dem president

What's happened in the last year is proof that what we have is two wings of the same corporate/military-industrial party.

[AndyA]

2. It's almost as if our leaders are DEAD SET on destroying the country.

How long can we continue borrowing to finance a war that we shouldn't be fighting in the first place?

How long can we keep losing jobs to outsourcing, giving incentives to American businesses to offshore American jobs?

Who they hell do our elected officials work for anyway? :shrug: (Unfortunately, I fear I know the answer.)

[Vidar]

3. K&R.

[TexasObserver]

5. recommend

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Damn

But at the very least, maybe this will wake the loyalists up.

[invictus]

7. K&R

[Mari333]

8. sigh. knr

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

9. Don't tell the Mods that you're posting flamebait....

Um...Never Mind.