Maddow dedicates her new book"Drift" to Dick Cheney who refuses to be interviewed by Rachel.9/11 has led us into Kabul at a rate of $5 billion a month over ten years and counting.It is still one of the four poorest countries on earth.In Kabul,there is a rich neighborhood(Wazir Akbar Khan) built by the Afghan elite with profits from the international influx of cash that accompanied the mostly American influx of war that is used to house Western aid agencies,journalists,politicians,diplocrats and private contractors who need a place to stay.You'll find properties renting for $7,000 to $25,000 a month.Of course,the elite who built these mansions are absent landlords living in Dubai,U.S and Europe.
One could also consider the water treatment plant built in Fallujah by a South Carolina company with an initial $33 million contract that was completed for $108 million seven years after its start.The project only managed to support one fourth of the city as residents labeled it "the big stink".
In the U.S.,9/11 has produced the crown jewel of sprawling intelligopolis called Liberty Crossing that houses the National Counterterrorism Center.After 9/11,the annual intelligence budget of $30 billion was increased 250% that has info gathering from 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies coordinated by the Center.The Center is slated to double in the next decade.All this,with little or no debate.
Thomas Jefferson was against a standing army.He was guided by history.The Greeks and Romans didn't have standing armies the majority of the time.As President,he cut the army by a third and left the defense of the nation to militias under the control of municipalities.He understood armies were expensive and the country's resources could be easily exhausted.Jeffersonian prudence held sway for 150 years. The professional military was an institution of limited reach and power;in times of peace we kept the regulars busy building defense works,ports and bridges.When the country went to war,the entire U.S went to war.No nation's military demobilized faster when the fighting was over.
After WWI, Congress completely dismantled The American Expeditionary Forces and reduced the active-duty military from four million to pre-war numbers of less than three hundred thousand.In 1945,there were twelve million active duty soldiers;five years later there were one and a half million.Of the 535,000 troops in Vietnam,1% were national guard and reserves.A political decision by Johnson kept them home and away from danger.He increased the draft instead avoiding the clamour from congressmen and prominent constituents who didn't want their sons in the jungles of Southeast Asia.We went to war in Vietnam in a way that we'd never gone to war before and no one liked the way it turned out.Creighton Abrams,US commander from 1968-72, changed this direction with what is known as the Abrams Doctrine-The Total Force Policy-put American politicians in the position of being"designed out"of waging war in a way that was dislocated from the everyday experience of American families.The War Powers Resolution of 1973 would be an explicit reassertion of the prerogative spelled out under Article 1,Section 8,"to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States" that Congress-and Congress alone-had the power to declare war.The Congress had allowed Johnson to push more than a half million troops without taking the case through Congress and the American people.An incensed Nixon vetoed the War Powers Resolution,but the House and Senate overrode that veto with votes to spare.The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had to go the the next President in 1975,Gerald Ford,to rein his ambitions in and disallow the executive request for $722 million to continue supporting the war.Forty years later,Ford's chief of staff,Donald Rumsfeld,would still be complaining bitterly about that "congressional backlash" and the War Powers Resolution.
Reagan increased the military budget by 20% in 1981(peacetime) and announced a strategy to double the defense budget in five years.He did so while reducing taxes by the largest amount in American history.That strategy increased the deficit by $62 billion and was sure to hit $112 billion in five years.According to Reagan,the 'evil empire"Russia,had to be stopped.
In Reagan's eight years in office,military expenditure doubled as projected from $150 billion to $300 billion which represented 30% of our overall annual budget( not counting health,medical injuries,previous debt and retirement benefits that pushed that percent towards 50%.).At the same time,Soviet general Secretary Leonid Brezhnev stated"It is dangerous madness to try to defeat each other in the arms race and to count on victory in nuclear war".Russia was already teetering badly by the time Reagan took office.Reagan ignored CIA reports that felt increasing threatened by the U.S. during this time period.Reagan's annual budget deficit ballooned from 2% to a record 6.3% of GDP in his first two years in office.His yearly budget shortfalls grew from $50 billion to $100 billion to $220 billion as the self-proclaimed conservatives just kept asking for and getting more dollars for more weapons.As a result, the country neglected its schools,cities,roads, bridges and health care system.From the world's greatest creditor nation to the world's greatest debtor nation.America during these years also imported twice the amount of oil than 1973(33% to 60%).They didn't listen to Jimmy Carter who wanted to reverse these percents.
More from Maddow soon.
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