Israel: Our Expensive Pit Bull

Although President Clinton's legacy to President Bush was a budget surplus, Bush destroyed this with massive war spending, leaving President Obama a budget deficit. Now we have a "tea-party" movement understandably concerned about our nation's fiscal security. While this movement vociferously opposes domestic spending on issues like health care, it seems to have an enormous blind spot concerning costly unnecessary wars.

Meanwhile, on 1/24/10, Osama bin Laden once again released an audiotape explaining why we are under attack and how to end this anti-American terrorism. He said, "America will never dream of security unless we have it in reality in Palestine." "God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue." "It is not fair that Americans should live in peace as long as our brothers in Gaza live in the worst conditions."

The billions we give in foreign aid to Israel each year are minuscule compared to Israel's overall cost. Historically, due to our support of Israel's illegal brutal occupations, we have suffered major losses, such as the Arab oil embargo in the 70's, terrorist attacks on our embassies abroad, etc, leading up to the two attacks on the World Trade Center. Following 9/11, Israel's cost has escalated as we have tried to emulate Fortress Israel and become Fortress America. Costs of our security industrial complex keep skyrocketing along with the costs of our military industrial complex.

Rather than addressing the legitimate grievances of the Muslim world, especially the plight of the Palestinians, we morphed into Israel and began invading and occupying Muslim lands, bombing civilians, and thus inspiring more anti-American terrorism. The long-term cost of the unnecessary Iraq War, for instance, which we were lied into by the Zionists who fixed the intelligence, has been estimated by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, to be $3 trillion. Our war costs have all been borrowed, largely from foreigners such as China. Long-term costs include paying interest on this debt, long-term health care for wounded vets, increased costs of military recruiting, replacing damaged and destroyed equipment, etc. This is why the real figure is much higher than the publicized one.

As we are now a clone of Israel, our actions have served to spread al Qaeda around the world, resulting in even more military spending. We now have the cost of our bombings in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and doubtless many more to come. In our bombing raids we inevitably kill civilians, thus creating more "terrorists," ie those who vow revenge. Add to this our so-called "nation-building" costs. Of course it is impossible to really build a nation in the midst of civil wars caused by our invasions and occupations. The chaos thus produced makes a country ripe for crime, such as the drug trade, kidnappings, etc, in particular, and corruption in general, all increasing our cost of "nation-building." And we must add to this the cost of paying off people, like the Taliban, to fight for us rather than to fight for the other side. On a more macro level, we must pay off entire states, such as Pakistan, to fight on our side.

Bin Laden applauded the Christmas Day would-be plane bomber, vowed there will be more, and now we must add to our security costs the cost of such things as body scanners at airports. And let's not forget the cost of the expected new cancer cases in passengers resulting from the radiation from these body scanners. It is time to rein in this expensive pit bull and push hard for Middle East peace.