Ending the war could fund jobs here at home...it's simple,

[mother earth]

we find money for guns and bombs, but we can't take care of many needs here at home.

[NewJeffCT]

1. The trillion dollars we've spent in Iraq the past 10 years

would have paid for "Obamacare" and then some.

or, could have gone to infrastructure improvements.

[PassingFair]

2. War IS the southern economy.

Expect a fight.

[Chan790]

3. War is still the economy of much of the rural NE too.

If we ever got close to the desires of the anti-war crowd, you'd lose some of the most liberal rural areas of upstate NY, NJ, PA and New England for a generation. We'd lose Congress and the Presidency too.

When you look at districts 2 and 5 in CT for an example and you see that they used to be, as recently as 10 years ago and going back 100 years, GOP districts and now they're as blue as Berkeley by voting numbers...ask yourself who votes in those districts?

I'll give you a hint... more than 20% of the career-track non-service-sector jobs in those districts are working for places like Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon, Sikorsky, Hamilton Sundstrand, Electric Boat, Smith & Wesson, Colt and a hundred smaller defense manufacturers. Most of those are union jobs. Another 15-20% are jobs dependent upon those jobs. They're socially-moderate people who like the middle-class lifestyle and social safety-net. They distrust people who speak publicly about faith. What do you think happens if we scale back war spending? Those people will vote "jobs" and to preserve their lifestyle just like everybody else would...they'll vote GOP to bring back the defense dollars...they'll pull the GOP left in doing so and cost us votes everywhere else. Social policy voting takes a backseat when their lives are threatened. They did it once because they were afraid of "wimpy" Carter and we all suffered 8 years of Reagan and 4 years of Bush.

Cutting defense spending doesn't do crap if it costs us the ability to get elected to the Presidency or hold majorities in either chamber of Congress...it just kills the rest of liberalism that much deader.

[PassingFair]

4. Ah yes, the land of Lieberman and "enlightened self-interest".

"Those people will vote "jobs" and to preserve their lifestyle just like everybody else would...they'll vote GOP to bring back the defense dollars...they'll pull the GOP left in doing so and cost us votes everywhere else. Social policy voting takes a backseat when their lives are threatened. They did it once because they were afraid of "wimpy" Carter and we all suffered 8 years of Reagan and 4 years of Bush."




We in the rustbelt didn't have the luxury of leverage.

I still think we need to pull back on defense spending
and cut the throat of the military industrial complex.

[Shagbark Hickory]

5. But then the gun and bomb makers would be out of a job.

:silly:

[taterguy]

6. The war over the best place to get Italian food in New York?

That's really the only war we're concerned about in the Lounge

[Chan790]

7. I disagree. Some of us care about this one too.

[mainegreen]

8. Sbarro of course..

Olive Garden people are weirdos.

[mother earth]

9. What was I thinking?