We suffer at home as foreign wars drain our tax dollars
By John Baer
Published: April 25, 2011
AS A CITIZEN, a taxpayer and a parent, I simultaneously was sickened and angered reading of the death of Pfc. John F. Kihm, of Northeast Philly.
The former Cardinal Dougherty High School honor student and athlete just killed in Afghanistan was 19.
He's the 86th soldier from the region to die in America's "operations" to bring "freedom" to Iraq and "enduring freedom" to or from Afghanistan.
The U.S. death count since all this freedom-finding began approaches 6,000.
The money count approaches insanity.
I try not to think about young, promising lives erased. I try not to rant against the monetary waste. But I can't help it.
We went to Afghanistan a decade ago to avenge death and devastation suffered on 9/11. But we never found accused mastermind Osama bin Laden.
We went to Iraq eight years ago to prevent mushroom-cloud diplomacy from the despot Saddam Hussein. But we never found weapons of destruction.
In the process, we so far have spent $1 trillion, an unimaginable amount.
Afghanistan alone costs $2 billion a week.
In Libya, where our "operation" was supposed to quickly bring freedom to citizens suffering under Moammar Gadhafi, who's ruled for more than 40 years, chaos continues.
We spent $600 million in one week on our nonwar there.
We're pumping in $25 million more for "nonlethal" aid to Libyan rebels: medical supplies, protective gear, boots, food.
(It occurs to me that lots of people in America could use such stuff.)
We're sending in not so "nonlethal" drones to up the firepower.
And Sen. John McCain, visiting Libya last week, said we should do more, including provide rebels with weapons.
"Operation Odyssey Dawn," whatever that means, looks like more than a one-time, $600 million giveaway and a lot more than the "rapid, but responsible, transition" President Obama promised when we started bombing five weeks ago.
All this is under a commander-in-chief who as a senator voted against the Iraq War, who as a candidate pledged to "end the war" and who as president was handed a Nobel Peace Prize.
Unless the Norwegian Nobel Committee responsible for nominating and selecting prize recipients holds a variant view of what constitutes "peace," and unless "end the war" can be parsed into some other meaning, I honestly think the world's gone mad.
So as violence spreads in Syria, here's the question: For how long and in how many places will we sacrifice our young, strain our military and spend our money on causes as ill-defined as "freedom" or "Odyssey Dawn?"
Arlington National Cemetery is expanding ($35 million; 26,000 new graves) because veterans of past wars keep dying and victims of current wars keep coming.
When is it enough? When will live-in-a-bubble Washington focus resources on its own citizens rather than millennia-old Mideast issues?
American cities and states are slashing budgets for education, child care, public safety, libraries, homelessness, museums, the arts and more.
States brace for new cuts in federal funds for health and human-service programs, a result of the recent D.C. deal to keep the government from shutting down.
And billions of dollars in further cuts are coming in upcoming budget battles.
Even if one can't grasp the numbers or their import, it's clear that our foreign policy drives our tax dollars away from our needs and into the sands of foreign wars.
The complacency with which most Americans accept this waste is as stunning as the scope of the waste itself.
When we're told there's no money to fix our schools, make streets safer, repair roads and bridges, update decaying infrastructure, protect the most vulnerable among us, it's a lie. There is money. It's just spent in the wrong way.
And the heartbreaking byproduct is the loss to families, friends, communities and the nation of too many young people like John F. Kihm. It's sickening.