(Jan. 1, 2009)

Barack Obama is being coy, as usual, artfully cultivating media speculation over the scope of his economic "recovery" plan. To put it more bluntly, Obama is a tease, a media flirt who knows that the shallow corporate press become hopelessly fixated on that which is withheld from them. How big will Obama's stimulus be? 850 billion? A trillion? As long as media attention revolves around the elusive figure, few journalists will pose the more fundamental question: How can the nation muster the resources to save itself from economic ruin, while continuing to feed the dogs of war?

The disappearance of trillions in notional and actual dollars has so dazzled the public, some seem to have forgotten about the Trillion Dollar War on Terror. That's the figure Time magazine places on George Bush's military adventures since 9/11. Others put the figure much higher. Former Clinton economic advisor Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Linda Bilmes' best-selling book calls Iraq a "Three Trillion Dollar War," when all costs are factored in.

Of course, there are costs that economists are no good at tallying, such as the cost of making the whole planet hate you, and wish you ill. There's a very big, long term price tag at the end of that militaristic road - a price that is paid when nobody in their right mind wants to have business or any other relations with your country. But the simple budgetary cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was already an unbearable weight, before the whole economic house of cards came tumbling down, just a few months ago. Better days are way beyond the horizon, even in the best of scenarios, but economic recovery is inconceivable if the U.S. continues to spend such a huge proportion of its treasure on war.

That's one reason not to be excited about whatever economic stimulus figure Obama's corrupt banker advisors pull out of their hats. The U.S. cannot pay for recovery and fund its wars, too. Had the financial system not collapsed so precipitously, the constantly escalating drain of U.S. resources to the military would have inevitably led to an economic and political crisis. Back in March, authors Stiglitz and Bilmes noted that war spending had already "crowded out spending on virtually all other discretionary federal programs." If the banker's had not done the economy in, the generals and war contractors would have eventually crippled the government.

If Barack Obama is to have the remotest chance to avoid full-scale economic depression, he must break his promise to the military industrial complex - an Obama promise that was always more firm and detailed than any he ever made to the public regarding health care or jobs or affordable housing. Obama must reverse his support for 100,000 additional soldiers and Marines - and cancel plans for new or expanded wars in which those troops were to be deployed. And get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. And that's just for starters.

The arithmetic of the current, overlapping crises leaves Obama no options. He can continue to finance a war machine that costs more than all the rest of the world's armies, navies and air forces, combined, or he can try to save what's left of the U.S. economy. He can't do both.

atheonews.blogspot.com/2009/01/no-economic-recovery-without-downsizing.html