Put Your Money . . . .

The National Jobs for All Coalition (made up of mainly religious and non-governmental agencies) http://www.njfac.org/ reports in a current mailing that roughly 40% of our tax dollars now are being directed into present (and past expenses for) military activities. As their figures are based on sources prior to the latest Bush expenditures for Iraq and cutbacks in essentials for the working poor, children, battered women, students, and other 'non' essentials, I imagine that this proportion will grow:

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/TaxDay2004/pdf/us.pdf

And where are we now? It looks as though our military is bogged down in Iraq where we discovered no WMD, but are busily bringing democracy (or civil war?) to those beleaguered people who were dominated by a brutal dictator who was our guy -- until he got out of line and we did not need him any more. In the meantime it looks as though North Korea is boasting of its nuclear weapons and Iran is insisting that it has the same rights to nuclear power as the bulk of the developed nations -- as oil is a limited resource that they wish to maintain for their benefit for as long as possible.

Something here drastically does not compute. It looks to me as though it is our current national policies. Somewhere along the line I think I recall being taught that the ancient Greeks and Romans also bankrupted themselves with a combination of wars, military budgets, and aggressive pursuit of empires not found to be sustainable. There may be barbarians at our gates, but given all our violations of human rights of late, I suspect that the barbarians are already here -- having taken over both the White House and the Congress. Have you seen the casualty counts for Iraq? Didn't we keep daily tallies of those for Viet Nam?

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Beware the Ides of March!