Has Anybody Seen Our Priorities?
Finally, more and more people are coming around to "no nation-building"; at least not until we get a few things built, or built back up, in our own nation. I think we need to stop acting like the America of decades past and notice that we're now the America that's owned by the Chinese. Bob Herbert writes in The New York Times:
So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.
Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.
The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.
Nearly 14 million Americans are jobless and the outlook for many of them is grim. Since there is just one job available for every five individuals looking for work, four of the five are out of luck. Instead of a land of opportunity, the U.S. is increasingly becoming a place of limited expectations.
The place we need to limit ourself, for starters, is in the "Let's have a foreign war that's of no direct interest to us!" department. Next we need to cut spending.
Also, regarding our forays into the Middle East, haven't we learned yet? You can't spread democracy like it's peanutbutter!
I refuse to be shamed into anything by the likes of Bob Herbert. Having said that, the basic point is valid: regardless of what we think about trying to liberate foreign nations, right now we have pressing matters at home..
Cousin Dave at March 27, 2011 8:32 AM
A thing I never understood about republicans and "moral" conservitives.
Welfare is bad for the american people as it encourages dependence on the government and stifles personal responsibility and so on and so forth - so they say, and it happans to be a point of view I agree with.
SO why is it international welfare(ie nation building, armed conflicts on behalf of {insert here}, medical supplies bought with borrowed chineese money) isnt just as bad and morally questionable?
Also why does it take "just a dollar a day" to feed, cloth, school, and medically maintain the health of millions of african, indian, and south east asian children but ONE pescripton bottle of opiate migrane pills costs me $250 above insurance costs?
lujlp at March 27, 2011 11:31 AM
Well, the idea was supposed to be, "OK, we'll come in and take out your oppressors, but the rest is up to you." We nearly blew that deal in Iraq in several ways. And actually, the outcome there remains in doubt, but it's been ten years and if the Iraqis really want a nation, it's long past time for them to start standing on their own two feet.
My idea of Libya is that if we were really going to do the job there, we'd send in the CIA to assassinate Khaddafi and his top advisors, bomb the living shit out of whatever his version of the Revolutionary Guard is, and then dust our hands off and return to our business. Kill people and break things. After that, the Libyans have to stand it up themselves. But if we're not going to do the job right, we should leave it alone.
Cousin Dave at March 27, 2011 6:06 PM
5% of the worlds population and 50% of it's military spending.
nuzltr2 at March 28, 2011 8:28 AM
But can you spread it like Nutella?
NicoleK at March 28, 2011 9:07 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/03/27/has_anybody_see.html#comment-1970529">comment from NicoleKBut can you spread it like Nutella?
Hah!
Amy Alkon
at March 28, 2011 9:13 AM
5% of the worlds population and 50% of it's military spending.
Posted by: nuzltr2
Thats because we supply 95% of the worlds security
lujlp at March 28, 2011 10:10 AM
The Federal government have no business in education, internal improvement etc etc. The way to do that is to cut the amount of money the federal government can siphoned off the local economy and let taxation questions be decide on the local level. End the income tax, assign only one area of taxation allow to federal taxation.
Minh at March 28, 2011 1:49 PM
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