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The imperial war presidency printable version

30 Jan 2011: posted by the editor - United States

"Remember Obama ran as an Iraq war opponent? As president, he has ruinously escalated foreign military commitments"
By David Swanson
"So tonight, I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years." Thus spoke President Barack Obama in his state of the union speech on Tuesday. "Domestic" spending means non-war and non-military spending. Over half of our public spending in the United States goes to wars and the military. Even the president's own deficit commission recommended cutting $100bn from military spending.

Why leave it out of the freeze? This may be why: "And we've sent a message ... to all parts of the globe: we will not relent, we will not waver, and we will defeat you. That's going to be expensive, and President Obama promised lower taxes on corporations in the same speech. He's already signed off on tax cuts for billionaires, even while promising for the second year in a row to oppose them. Spending cuts will have to come somewhere else.

"Already, we've frozen the salaries of hardworking federal employees for the next two years. I've proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programmes. The secretary of defence has also agreed to cut tens of billions of dollars in spending that he and his generals believe our military can do without."

But those little cuts out of the $1tn we spend on the military each year are planned for future years, not this one. The president is expected to propose a larger military budget for the third year in a row next month. And he has thus far consistently used off-the-books supplemental bills to add more funding to his wars. Progressive groups have made so much noise cheering for the elimination of this or that weapon, that the overall increase in the military budget each year has been missed, just as it will be missed by any casual viewer of this week's speech.

But a group of hundreds of prominent activists, authors, and academics has recently released a statement outlining Obama's militarist record and committing to oppose his candidacy for the Democratic nomination next year unless he changes course. Nearly two thirds of US citizens believe that our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should be ended and that overall military spending should be dramatically reduced. Since he became president, Obama has had three opportunities to work with Congress to reduce military spending, but instead, has championed increases in that spending each time, despite the fact that this spending represents a clear threat to the economic future of our country. He has continued, as well, to try to hide the true costs of the wars by funding them with off-the-books supplemental spending bills, despite the fact that he campaigned against this very practice.

The president has escalated the war on Afghanistan, in which rising civilian deaths and atrocities have become routine. He has given the CIA even greater freedom of action to launch lethal drone strikes against civilian houses in Pakistan on the mere assumption of some connection with Taliban or other organisations, despite the warning from the US ambassador in late 2009 – revealed in a WikiLeaks cable – that such attacks could "destabilise" the Pakistani government; despite many reports that civilians, including children, are disproportionately victims; and despite the contention of the United Nations and many US allies that this practice is illegal.

Obama has approved an increase in covert operations by CIA-controlled Afghan troops into Pakistan, and his administration has remained silent while the US command in Afghanistan leaked to the New York Times plans for new special operations forces (SOF) raids into Pakistan aimed at Afghan Taliban targets. The president has expanded the use of SOF, operating in virtually total secrecy and without any accountability to Congress, in one country after another. SOF troops are presently in some 75 nations – 15 more than when Obama took office. President Obama has, on a later schedule than he campaigned on, finally reduced US troop presence in Iraq. But he has not fully withdrawn US combat forces from Iraq or ended US combat there, his claims to have done so notwithstanding. His vice president has suggested, without correction by the president, the possibility of a US military presence in the country even after the deadline for withdrawal under the US-Iraq withdrawal agreement, if only through the use of military contractors.

Of course, none of this is very troubling. After all, Obama speaks well and is not a Republican.

Reprinted from The Guardian

Tags: war

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