The latest
emergency appropriation to pay for the invasion of Iraq, $80 billion, could
instead have been used to construct 800,000 units of badly needed low and
middle-income housing, with no debt. Such expenditure would, by itself,
transform and indeed liberate urban America overnight. So why are the human
needs of ordinary citizens off the government’s radar screen? Because we have become a nation engorged on
military power and prowess.
Money spent on
war preparations hardly leads to socially useful and productive goods, services
and activities, the kinds of items that make life easier and better for the
average American. Once, magic bullets were made of penicillin; now they are
made from depleted uranium. Rather than improve the general welfare for the
many, our trained personnel, research, technical priorities and government
procurement have been massively misdirected.
Our former superpower rival, once among the world’s largest economies, collapsed under the weight of its unaffordable defense budget. America’s wealth too has been squandered; our civil sector subsidizes the military at unaffordable levels.
U.S. expenditures for defense, nuclear weaponry, veteran’s benefits and indebtedness related to past military activity are more than half again as great as all other discretionary federal spending put together. They exceed the military budgets of the next 25 countries combined.
We have failed
to invest in our own civil economy. It has undergone significant shrinkage and
de-industrialization, exposing the economy to unsustainable trade imbalances
and a depreciating currency. The infrastructure of America, its railroads,
sewers, mass transit, roadways, and water systems are in desperate need of
repair and modernization, but there is no money. Without bringing the permanent war economy under control, there
is no chance to rebuild and invest domestically for productive purposes or to
address the urgent needs in every community.
Every state and
city faces budget deficits of historic proportions. We cannot afford decent
housing, schools, healthcare, daycare, libraries in this environment. Massive
cutbacks are presented as the only solution, and blame is placed on the recession.
For a few
distracting moments, all eyes were riveted on images of our military’s devastating
firepower in Iraq. The clear message to the American people: believe that it
pays to spend your national fortune to have the world’s best weapons of mass
destruction.
But this belief is profoundly self-destructive and, ultimately, deeply
unpatriotic. It is no over-reaction to fear that our democracy, as we know it,
will not survive. The real road to security and freedom will be traveled only
if our wealth, our knowledge, and our muscle are directed to developing and
building weapons of mass construction, both at home and abroad.