Breaking America's Addiction to War and Debt: Out with the Enablers (Op Ed News, 2-22-10)!

By Marcy Winograd

As we face a trillion-dollar military budget, we must break our addiction to war by electing progressive candidates who refuse corporate money from the weapons industry.

To sell the American public on perpetual war, subsidized by the country we vaporized at the end of WWII, the Pentagon is rebranding the Iraq war and occupation, changing the name of Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn. Dawn connotes daybreak, a new beginning rays rising from the ocean; gold ripples lapping our shores; poetry. Sounds better than permanent bases, oil grabs, and soldier suicides.

To pay for all of this, including the marketing campaign, our nation must increasingly borrow from Japan as China recently dumped U.S. treasuries, leaving Japan to surge ahead as the largest foreign holder of US Treasury bonds. And deeper into debt we sink, while Republicans clamor for slashing the deficit, calling for all- too-powerful commissions on fiscal responsibility to "study" Social Security all the while forgetting to mention we have over two trillion dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund and that it's perpetual war, not Social Security, that drives our deficit.

If only the world had a 12-step program for war addicts.

Seriously, It's time to break the addiction -- and to vote the enablers out.

Now, more than ever before, we need progressives in Congress who will challenge bloated military budgets which bleed our treasury of money better spent on jobs in mass transit, renewable energy, infrastructure repair, education, and health care. A 2007 University of Massachusetts study (pdf) stated that a billion dollars spent on transportation would result in twice the number of jobs than if it were spent on military contracting.

I will seek diplomatic solutions to the world's problems. Rather than accepting thousands from those invested in war, I will support a war tax so that pay-as-you-go applies to military spending now obscured in supplemental appropriations not considered part of our defense budget.

To lead in Congress... to break America's addiction to war and to debt - I need your support.

Seize the moment for real progressive change. Here's to breaking our addiction to war and building a peaceful tomorrow. ## ##