Quote of the Day:
“The U.S. imperial project of the past 10 years has killed as many as 1 million people while displacing millions of others. It has nearly bankrupted the United States, and there are major costs still to come. It has rendered the world more unstable than it was in 2001. And it has made Washington hated by nearly everyone, everywhere. It is difficult to find a positive side to all this unless one is a defense contractor or a government employee. Because of all this the government has grown into a Leviathan twice as big and expensive as before. In short, there has been no benefit gained from the past decade.” – Philip Giraldi (paraphrased)
It’s been ten years since the tragic events of 9/11. The tragedy of that day has been compounded by the Federal Government’s completely reckless and irresponsible reaction to it. Even if you do not have a loved one killed or wounded in the wars, you have been paying a steep price in lost liberty and lost prosperity.
The hard-wired message says…
“I am not afraid of terrorism, and I want you to stop being afraid on my behalf. Please start scaling back the official government war on terror. Please replace it with a smaller, more focused anti-terrorist police effort in keeping with the rule of law.”
I added these additional remarks, which you may borrow from or copy.
There were two winners from 9/11…
- Al Qaeda, whose stated purpose was to lure the U.S. into a costly war; beyond their imagination, the U.S. started TWO wars
- The Federal State, TWICE as big and expensive than ten years ago http://original.antiwar.com/
giraldi/2011/09/07/a-10-year-reckoning/ Everyone else lost…
- On top of the 2,977 9/11 victims, 7,500 American service personnel have died, and tens of thousands wounded — many seriously
- Combined civilian deaths of up to a million in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus two million displaced
- From torture, to warrantless surveillance, to TSA molestations, to “wars of choice”… The values that once made us “proud to be Americans” were severely compromised, as was our stature in the rest of the world
The “unseen” costs of greater poverty and economic stagnation are incalculable. Defense specialist Winslow Wheeler summarized the data. When considering…
- The cost of military operations
- Current and future costs of veteran’s care
- Expanded domestic security costs
- The interest we annually pay for the DEFICIT spending that has financed the wars
… the total cost of the War on Terror by 2020 may be as high $5.4 trillion — “assuming everything in the future goes according to plan.” Between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion has already been spent. Here is a breakdown:http://costsofwar.org/article/economic-cost-summary
It is quite possible that the U.S. would have had very little or no deficit spending during the Bush years, if not for these wars. These wars continue to account for about a third of the deficits since the 2008 bailouts and 2009 stimulus.
Indeed, this unnecessary spending helped CREATE our struggling economy. As economist Joseph Stiglitz put it: (http://www.slate.com/id/
2302949/?wpisrc=obinsite )“(T)he wars contributed to America’s macroeconomic weaknesses, which exacerbated its deficits and debt burden. Then, as now, disruption in the Middle East led to higher oil prices, forcing Americans to spend money on oil imports that they otherwise could have spent buying goods produced in the U.S. The Federal Reserve hid these weaknesses by engineering a housing bubble that led to a consumption boom. It will take years to overcome the excessive indebtedness and real-estate overhang that resulted.”
Almost NONE of these costs were necessary to go after Al Qaeda and other anti-American terror cells. Instead, our wars served as RECRUITMENT tools for terrorists. What DOES work in the pursuit of terrorists?
- Targeted investigations
- Intelligence
- Special military operations
We did not need to give up our liberty in exchange for safety. We certainly didn’t need to invade other countries. And, we really didn’t need to lose $5.4 trillion to deficits that slowed wealth expansion. Just about every post-9/11 policy — from both parties — has been a disaster.
We can’t undo the past. But we can start NOW to make America a beacon of liberty and prosperity once again…
- Bring the troops home
- Abolish the Department of “Homeland” Security and the TSA
- Repeal the so-called “Patriot Act” and other post-9/11 monstrosities
In many ways, the past ten years have been one long national nightmare. It’s time to wake up.
You can send your letter using DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System.
If you agree that America needs to reverse its post-9/11 course, please share this with your friends. “Like” this and Tweet this message on our blog: http://bit.ly/rnOVLu
Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
