[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today, just before Tax Day in the U.S., we again welcome guest contributor John Hess, who writes about the financial consequences of war.]
In the mid-1960s, I saw the initiation of social programs that promised to transform and improve America, making it truly the land of opportunity and giving it the rough equality that we like to think it should have.
Those social programs were far from perfect, but they were a promising start. Yet that promise was never achieved because of Vietnam, a war that sapped the country’s resources and took them away from social programs and into destruction.
The same is true today. The U.S. has already spent some 1.1 trillion dollars on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with no end in sight. Indeed, we are spending roughly $8 billion a month in Afghanistan alone, and it is estimated that we will spend at minimum another $125 billion if we do not withdraw until 2014 (if then).
You all know what that money could do if even half of it was spent here: public higher and k-12 education, infrastructure, Medicare and Medicaid, and on and on.
I am no great fan of President Eisenhower, for I know of his reluctance to honestly deal with segregation and integrating schools. Nonetheless, Eisenhower was a warrior, one greatly sobered and humbled by the savagery and slaughter of WWII. Though he did little to nothing to stop its growth during his tenure in office, he gave us a famous warning in his “Farewell Address”:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
That military-industrial complex weighs so heavily upon us today. The Tea Party movement has shown how effective grass-roots efforts can be at cutting budgets, but has chosen to attack vitally important social programs, not the overbearing military-industrial complex.
What will it take to get tax-payers to preserve needed social programs while stopping the engines of destruction?
John Hess, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston