Attacks on U.S. convoys carrying fuel are just the latest examples of a vicious circle in which oil begets war and war begets oil.
How Green Grows My War Economy
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Pentagon
Gorbachev of the Pentagon?
The United States is facing a Soviet-sized crisis. Where is the Gorbachev who can rein in our military?
‘They’ Are Not Taking ‘Our’ Jobs
My neighbor two doors down flies a Confederate flag alongside his more conventional stars and stripes. He drives a pickup truck, sports a number of provocative tattoos, and is about as white as Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich. I don’t know if he would vote for either Sarah or Newt, but he’s a pretty conservative guy. Still, he gets along reasonably well with the interracial couple who lives between us. And his son-in-law, an immigrant from El Salvador, just spent the last two weekends replacing our damaged shed with one that looks a whole lot better than anything Home Depot offers.
Dealing With Iran
It seems to be an open-and-shut case. Nuclear weapons are bad. It’s best for the world if no more countries acquire nuclear weapons. Iran is currently engaged in uranium enrichment that could eventually produce a nuclear weapon. It built a secret facility to advance this program and might now be building another one. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government makes all sorts of threatening statements about Israel, the United States, the West. We should therefore do everything possible to prevent Iran from going nuclear.
Where’s Our Money?
I have a simple question for Robert Gibbs, the outspoken press secretary of the Obama administration, where’s the money?
A Unified Security Budget for the United States, FY 2011
Somewhere on the list of 2010 milestones should be this: It was the year that unified security budgeting won the endorsement of the U.S. executive branch’s top leadership. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton first made this endorsement in May, during the Q&A following her speech supporting the new National Security Strategy. Joining her in the endorsement, she said, were Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Adm. Mike Mullen, who both “wrote really strong letters to the House and Senate leadership and the appropriators and the budgeteers to make the case that we have to start looking at a national security budget.”
When Reality Shows Collide
The big news in the reality TV world is the intersection of Sarah Palin and Kate Gosselin. The Alaska governor is preparing her own show called “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” while Kate Gosselin runs her own pimp-my-children show called “Kate Plus Eight.” Kate has reportedly brought her kids up to Alaska for a big scramble through the woods that will be filmed for all to see in the fall.
War in Eastasia
July was the deadliest month yet for U.S. forces fighting in Afghanistan. In Iraq, while political factions continue a five-month squabble over who will lead the government, insurgent violence is growing. The WikiLeaks info-dump of more than 90,000 documents, in addition to proving to the few who had not yet realized that the United States is in deep doo-doo, have shown that our ally Pakistan is collaborating with the Taliban and al-Qaeda to plan attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.
A Way Forward: Reexamining the Pentagon’s Spending Habits
The U.S. has spent a trillion dollars since 2001 on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, it is being estimated that another $800 billion plus will be added to the tab before the wars are ended, yet it’s questionable what the return on that investment is. New ideas and new perspectives are needed to rebalance a deeply dysfunctional system.
The Pentagon’s Runaway Budget
With his decision to boost defense spending, President Obama is continuing the process of re-inflating the Pentagon that began in late 1998 — fully three years before the 9/11 attacks on America. The FY 2011 budget marks a milestone, however: The inflation-adjusted rise in spending since 1998 will probably exceed 100 percent in real terms by the end of the fiscal year. Taking the new budget into account, the Defense Department has been granted about $7.2 trillion since 1998, when the post-Cold War decline in defense spending ended.