Blowing Billions on War While American Workers Go Under

[unhappycamper]

Blowing Billions on War While American Workers Go Under
Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe
Producer, director, political activist
Posted: December 4, 2010 03:13 PM

When asked by USA Today's pollsters last week, sixty-eight percent of Americans said we worry that the cost of the Afghanistan War hurts our ability to fix problems here in the U.S. This week, we learned just how right we were about that. Friday's terrible jobs report shows that a crushing 9.8 percent of us are unemployed. And, millions of us are about to lose our lifeline because Congress refuses to extend unemployment insurance benefits. We're spending $2 billion per week -- per week! -- in Afghanistan while millions of people face going hungry during the holidays.

Do our elected officials not get it? We're drowning out here, and the administration is throwing money that could put Americans back to work at a failed war on the other side of the planet. In fact, that's where the president was when the jobs report came out this morning -- in Afghanistan, talking about "progress" again.

Now, it's great that the president met with wounded troops. Goodness knows they deserve our attention. Their pictures ought to be on the cover of every newspaper until this war ends. But it would be better if the president stopped sending them to get wounded for no good reason, and it would be even better if the hundreds of billions of dollars we're wasting each year over there were putting people back to work in the U.S.

Here's one way to think about it: just one Hellfire missile fired in Afghanistan costs $58,000.00. That's enough money to provide unemployment insurance benefits for almost 4 people for a full year. For the full cost of the war for one week, about $2 billion, we could extend unemployment insurance for about 6.7 million people for a week. What are the 2 million people who are about to lose their unemployment insurance benefits supposed to think when they hear senators yelling about the cost of keeping them from going hungry, while at the same time those senators shove enough money to keep the benefits going into that money pit of a war?

Do we care more about dropping bombs than we do about putting Americans to work and keeping them from going hungry when they get laid off? Are those the kind of people we're paying to represent us in Washington, D.C.?

[JonLP24]

1. K&R

Love your threads unhappy.

[HillbillyBob]

2. That would nearly pay for our house, or almost 4 Versas(our car)

buy groceries for how many families would that feed?
Medical care for how many needy patients?
It is also nearly 2x our present household income, it used to be nearly 2x what that bomb cost 10 yrs ago.
It would pay for a complete solar power system to run our house.
It would put in the irrigation system we need to make our little farm a going concern. It would more than build the buildings to make our little farm a going concern too.

[saigon68]

3. A Nasty Waste of Time, Resources and Talent

Enamoured by the Corporate Masters who apparently lead him by the Nose

[ixion]

4. "Do we care more about dropping bombs than we do about putting Americans to work?"

Short answer: Yes.

[Gravel Democrat]

5. puntapié y recomendamos

Here's another way to think about it:

Total Cost of Wars Since 2001
$1,117,426,556,963
http://costofwar.com

current population of the US:
310,858,000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States

Subtract 310,858,000 from $1,117,426,556,963= $1,117,115,698,963

the government could have cut a check for 1 million dollars to every citizen alive

and still spent one trillion, one hundred seventeen billion, one hundred fifteen million dollars on invading lands and killing natives 8,000 miles away. Not to mention creating hundreds of New Bin Ladens.

visualize a trillion bucks: (double stacked pallets of $100's note the man in red at left)

http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

[aquart]

6. How come we don't have war work?

My 91-year-old neighbor was a Rosie. She spent the war driving rivets into aircraft.

[ladjf]

7. Almost every decision coming out of the Administration seems

like bad news to me. I've been following American politics for many years. But, never have I had this feeling the the Country is definitely "going down the tubes". There is no concern for the elderly, the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the immigrants or anyone else who isn't rich, healthy, Caucasian, Christian, Jewish or heterosexual.