We can't afford to be imperialists, but how do we stop?

[eridani]

http://www.truth-out.org/tom-engelhardt-call-politburo-were-trouble-entering-soviet-era-america60467
But here was the strange thing. In the midst of the Great Recession, under a new president with assumedly far fewer illusions about American omnipotence and power, war policy continued to expand in just about every way. The Pentagon budget rose by Bushian increments in fiscal year 2010; and while the Iraq War reached a kind of dismal stasis, the new president doubled down in Afghanistan on entering office -- and then doubled down again before the end of 2009. There, he "surged" in multiple ways. At best, the U.S. was only drawing down one war, in Iraq, to feed the flames of another.

As in the Soviet Union before its collapse, the exaltation and feeding of the military at the expense of the rest of society and the economy had by now become the new normal; so much so that hardly a serious word could be said -- lest you not "support our troops" -- when it came to ending the American way of war or downsizing the global mission or ponying up the funds demanded of Congress to pursue war preparations and war-making.
Even when, after years of astronomical growth, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates began to talk about cost-cutting at the Pentagon, it was in the service of the reallocation of ever more money to war-fighting.

Here was how the New York Times summed up what reduction actually meant for our ultimate super-sized institution in tough times: "Current budget plans project growth of only 1 percent in the Pentagon budget, after inflation, over the next five years." Only 1% growth -- at a time when state budgets, for instance, are being slashed to the bone. Like the Soviet military, the Pentagon, in other words, is planning to remain obese whatever else goes down.

Meanwhile, the "anti-war" president has been overseeing the expansion of the new normal on many fronts, including the expanding size of the Army itself. In fact, when it comes to the Global War on Terror -- even with the name now in disuse -- the profligacy can still take your breath away.

Consider, for instance, the $2.2 billion Host Nation Trucking contract the Pentagon uses to pay protection money to Afghan security companies which, in turn, slip some part of those payments to the Taliban to let American supplies travel safely on Afghan roads. Or if you don't want to think about how your tax dollar supports the Taliban, consider the $683,000 the Pentagon spent, according to the Washington Post, to "renovate a cafe that sells ice cream and Starbucks coffee" at its base/prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Or the $773,000 used there "to remodel a cinder-block building to house a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant," or the $7.3 million spent on baseball and football fields, or the $60,000 batting cage, or a promised $20,000 soccer cage, all part of the approximately two billion dollars that have gone into the American base and prison complex that Barack Obama promised to, but can't, close.

[stray cat]

1. We let Afghanis and Iraqis practice survival of the fittest

anyone left alive after they duke it out between each other within each country gets to rule and do anything they want to any remaining survivors

[Ken Burch]

2. Not much different than what's ALWAYS happened there, really

OR than what we're doing now.

[Ozymanithrax]

3. Until history removes us from that position...

All empires decline and fall.
Our time is coming.