"Considering that all that spending
was triggered by a ragtag group of airplane hijackers armed with box
cutters on 9/11, something just doesn’t add up. (Locks on flight-deck
doors and armed pilots would have averted the attacks.) As Thomas Paine,
the soul of the American Revolution, wrote in The Rights of Man about the
British empire, “In reviewing the history of the English Government, its
wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by
interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but
that wars were raised to carry on taxes.” "
9/11 and the National Security
Scam
by
Sheldon Richman,
September 9, 2011
National security is a scam an $8 trillion scam.
That’s the amount spent since September 11, 2001, on the military,
including the Iraq and Afghan wars, and “homeland security,” according to
Christopher Hellman of the National Priorities Project. If “veterans
benefits, future costs for treating the war-wounded, and interest
payments on war-related borrowing” are added, Hellman writes, the cost is
much higher: $11 trillion, by the estimate of Brown University’s Watson
Institute for International Studies. Hellman says by his reckoning, the
full cost of “security” is $1.2 trillion a year.
And yet officials say Americans must not let down their guard. The
mildest calls for cuts in the rate of growth in military spending
are met with panic by “defense” officials.
Considering that all that spending was triggered by a ragtag group of
airplane hijackers armed with box cutters on 9/11, something just doesn’t
add up. (Locks on flight-deck doors and armed pilots would have averted
the attacks.) As Thomas Paine, the soul of the American Revolution, wrote
in The Rights of Man about the British empire, “In reviewing the history
of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not
blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes
were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on
taxes.”
In America’s case, however, it is debt, not explicit taxes, that was
raised. On September 30, 2000, the national debt was $5.67 trillion.
Today it is $14.7 trillion, a 160 percent increase. But debt could well
represent future taxes or inflation, an implicit tax on cash balances
if the government thinks it can get away with it.
It is said that 9/11 changed everything, but in fact it changed nothing
whatsoever. Opportunistic politicians simply used the attacks to do much
more of what they had already been doing and were hoping to continue in
greater measure. Admittedly they were good at that. The attacks gave them
a unique chance to frighten Americans into acceding to whatever the
ruling elite wanted. As a result, those trillions were spent with little
real oversight the overseers were part of the conspiracy against the
taxpayers. Reports say that $60 billion in contract money for Iraq and
Afghanistan has been diverted to unknown recipients. The Pentagon
routinely loses track of billions of dollars.
The military-industrial complex has never been larger or more pervasive.
Thousands of companies exist to sell expensive things to the government.
Fortunes have been made. The post–9/11 period has been a feeding frenzy
at the taxpayers’ trough grand larceny of historic proportions.
The attitude was well illustrated by Rep. James Clyburn, a South Carolina
Progressive Democrat who worries that military spending might be cut
because of concern about the budget deficit. Does he worry because he
fears that security will diminish? No, he explained, he worries because
he has military bases in his congressional district.
And people wonder why the economy is in a rut.
Of course, that is only part of the story. Monetary costs aside, the
security fetish has cost Americans their privacy, turned the presidency
into a virtual autocracy, and further blackened America’s reputation
abroad with civilian-killing drone attacks and house raids in the night.
The image of the United States has been firmly set as The Invader and The
Torturer.
But isn’t all that, however regrettable, necessary because there are
people out there who want to kill us? That’s what the national-security
elite would like you to think. We’re told “they” attacked us because they
hate our freedoms. If true, they must surely hate us a lot less now,
thanks to the USA PATRIOT Act. Some say there is an intrinsic conflict
between Islam and the West.
That’s all self-serving nonsense. The 9/11 attacks were intended as
retribution for decades of U.S. policy that has inflicted death and
misery on Arabs through support for oppressive Middle East regimes and
direct military and CIA operations. The attackers committed mass murder,
to be sure, but Americans won’t be safe if they don’t comprehend the
danger. U.S. foreign intervention provoked the attackers, and the U.S.
response played into their hands by creating more people who seek
vengeance and by bleeding Americans financially.
Wherever Osama bin Laden is now, I suspect he’s laughing.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com1109j.asp
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