Do your budget priorities match the Pentagon’s?

War versus domestic programs.  You decide.

We found the numbers in this Bloomberg report on the war costs in Afghanistan stunning.

Let’s grab just a few to make a point.

Since we invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, the U.S. has spent $468.5 billion or $3.4 billion per month on the war there, excluding reconstruction projects, State Department funding and intelligence.

That number has risen to $5.9 billion per month for the current fiscal year.  Not sure why, since we’re supposed to be winding that mess down.  But that’s a discussion for another day.

But think about what we might have spent those Afghanistan war dollars on rather than an occupation that has done nothing more than 1) shoo al-Qaeda into neighboring Pakistan because we failed to complete the search for them in Afghanistan; 2) put a corrupt, but fairly western-hegemony-complicit, regime in Kabul; 3) kill at least 16,725 innocent civilians caught up in the violence; and 4) kill 2,227 U.S. servicemen and women, as of this posting.

On the other hand, we did add untold billions to defense contractor coffers.  And that was good for the economy, right?  The U.S. economy, not the Afghan’s, for which we care naught.

We took at look at some figures from the amazing site of the National Priorities Project and found that for a month’s worth of fighting in Afghanistan ($3.4B), we could have provided a full year of federal funding to these programs in our home state of Oregon:[1]

Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF); Pell Grants; Head Start; U.S. Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP); school lunch program; section 8 housing vouchers; special education grants; renewable energy research and development; adult education; College Work Study Program; Food Stamps; Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program; WIC;

… and still had over a billion dollars left over.

Without the Afghanistan invasion, maybe we could have actually boosted funding to some of the critically underfunded programs and those that now appear on the sky-is-falling-deficit-problem chopping block.  In poll after poll, the public says it would prefer higher education and health care funding in place of Pentagon bloat.

But instead we have Afghanistan…like an albatross hanging around our collective necks for the next who knows how many years.

The next time we’re about to launch a war of choice, demand your legislators respect your priorities.  If you still think we have a democracy, use it.

Final note:  Don’t get us wrong.  We love the people of Afghanistan and feel we should do our best now to make their lives whole where possible.  So reconstruction and public safety programs have some merit.  We should continue funding those as we depart as quickly as possible.

Click image to go to National Priorities Project site for other data searches.

[1] Figures based on 2011 data.

Mohammad Mossadegh Awareness Tour

“Mossadegh Awareness Begets Sanity in Foreign Policy”

Veterans For Peace Linus Pauling Chapter 132 and the Mossadegh Legacy Institute invite all lovers of peace to this talk by Moji Agha, founder of the Mossadegh Legacy Institute.

Friday, May 17, 7pm, Corvallis Public Library, 645 NW Monroe Ave., Corvallis, OR

Time Cover Credit: BORIS CHALIAPIN

Mohammad Mossadegh has been called the Iranian “Gandhi” and was named Time magazine’s man of the year for 1951.  He was the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953 when his government was overthrown in a coup d’État orchestrated by the British MI6 and the American CIA.

Admission is free, although tax-deductible donations will be gratefully accepted.

For further information, please use the “contact us” menu item above.

Leah Bolger delivers annual Pauling Peace Lecture

“Waging Peace” in Corvallis and beyond

Leah Bolger, VFP Linus Pauling chapter member and former national VFP president, delivered the annual Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture for World Peace at Oregon State University (LaSells Center) on April 30, 2013.

Her talk, entitled “Waging Peace,” is available to view online at the OSU media site here:  http://bit.ly/waging-peace.

A preview article in the local Gazette-Times newspaper is here.

“Grand Bargain” neither grand nor a bargain

Critical time to demand Pentagon cuts and preserve social security & veterans benefits…what you can do

Two caveats here first…

1. We prefer to post original content here, but this story from Robert Naiman in the April 19 Common Dreams is a compelling call to action and a very simple explanation of the upcoming “Grand Bargain” legislation, proposed by President Obama, and
2. We don’t normally recommend these online petitions.  They’re at least partially intended to build their email database and fund raise.  But we make an exception in this case.  Please consider signing here if you want to cut wasteful Pentagon spending rather than Social Security or veterans benefits.  It’s sponsored by MoveOn and Just Foreign Policy.

Naiman did an excellent job of laying out more details in this April 9 HuffPo post.  It debunks some of the myths surrounding Pentagon budget cuts.

From the Common Dreams piece:

All we have to do to cut the bloated Pentagon budget and use the money for human needs instead is kill the “chained CPI”…

The reason it has become this simple is that President Obama and Congress have made it this simple. The “grand bargain” that President Obama is seeking with Republicans who want to protect the bloated Pentagon budget would do three key things: 1) protect the bloated Pentagon budget 2) cut Social Security and veterans’ benefits and 3) raise taxes.

If the President’s effort to achieve a “grand bargain” with Republicans who want to protect the bloated Pentagon budget fails, then these three key things will happen instead: 1) the bloated Pentagon budget will be cut 2) Social Security and veterans’ benefits will be spared 3) taxes will not be raised.

© 1979 – Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

Again, please have a look at the petition, sign, and pass it on.

Tag, you’re it!

“Alternatives to War” site back online

Welcome back, Alt2War!!!

It’s great to see the Alt2War site back up and running.  These sites are a bit of work, but so important to a vital, active community and to our progress toward peace and justice.

Alternatives to War is a Corvallis-area group; a coalition of activists and organizations working to end war.

Veterans For Peace, Linus Pauling Chapter, is a proud partner of Alternatives to War.

Besides the fine history of the group at their “about” page, you can check out these resources for more info on Alternatives to War:

Corvallis Gazette-Times story from the 10-year anniversary of the daily peace vigil, running non-stop since October 7, 2001.  The only continuous daily peace vigil in the world, as far as we know.  Incredible.  You can join the vigil any day of the week, rain or shine, between five and six p.m. in front of the Benton County Courthouse, 4th St., Corvallis.

The Peace Vigil Blog:  Chronicling observations from the vigil in front of the Benton County Courthouse.

An AP story done around the eighth anniversary of the vigil.

And here’s a video from the vigil on the 10th anniversary of the start of the war on Iraq.

 

Thanks, Alt2War, for all you do for our town…and the world.

Rick Bowmer – AP

Bradley Manning: Robust support in the U.K.

WISE Up staying very active

From the beginning of Bradley Manning’s and Julian Assange’s ordeals, their supporters with WISE Up [1] have held vigils and public education events, many of them in front of the American Embassy in London.  They are joined by our Veterans For Peace Chapter in the the UK.

Here’s a great post from the WISE Up web site on Bradley’s current status and a call for action this Friday, April 12 in London.

Another good source of information about Bradley is his support network site, where you may donate to his defense fund.  You can also visit and “Like” the “Save Bradley Manning” Facebook page.

[1] WISE Up Action = Welsh, Irish, Scottish, English solidarity with Bradley Manning and Julian Assange

How much do I work for the Pentagon?

by Bart Bolger, Linus Pauling Chapter 132, Veterans For Peace

The Global Day of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS), a.k.a. “tax day,” is approaching and I have to work that day.  So I began wondering just how much of my paycheck, how many minutes of my work day, go straight to the war budget.

Sparing you the math, thirty five minutes of every workday, I work for the Pentagon.  For those thirty five minutes, I’m helping build U.S. empire, funding the murder of innocent civilians and irreversibly damaging our planet’s ecosystems.

I am not happy about this.

Doing your own math is not going to turn you into a war tax resister or even get you to write your reps in D.C.  But these facts should “shock & awe” you into action.

• The Pentagon absorbs 57% of the federal discretionary budget.  That leaves a paltry 2% for transportion (can you say, crumbling bridges?) and 1% for food programs (e.g., school lunches for poor kids), as examples.
• We are spending more now on “defense” than we did during the Cold War, in today’s dollars.
• While military contractors and the right-wing ideologues whine about destroying America’s defense through budget cuts, we find that, even if the sequester kicks in fully, the Pentagon budget will continue to grow, but at a more modest rate, over the next 10 years.  ”Devastating” our defense, Congressman McKeon?  I think not.

Now, what about the argument that cutting defense will cost us jobs?

According to a 2011 study by The Political Economy Research Institute at UMass Amherst, $1 billion of federal military spending creates about 11,000 jobs while the same $1 billion would generate about 17,000 clean energy or health care jobs or over 27,000 jobs in education.

As former labor secretary, Robert Reich, said:

“Wouldn’t it be better to have a jobs program that created things we really need — like light-rail trains, better school facilities, public parks, water and sewer systems, and non-carbon energy sources — than things we don’t, like obsolete weapons systems?”

And speaking of obsolete systems, here’s my favorite target for Pentagon cuts:  Strategic nukes and their command and control systems.  [Full disclosure: I used to work in that field while in the Navy.]

According to the Arms Control Association update of November 2012, the U.S. has about 5,113 strategic nukes–those are the really big ones.  About 1,722 of those are actually deployed on their respective delivery systems, the subs, bombers and ICBM sites. With that goes an incredibly expensive command and control system, requiring an enormous, redundant–and what those in the business call, “survivable”–communications network, maintenance and enough admirals and generals to fill a large concert hall.

We don’t even know how much all that costs, since much of it is buried in highly classified budgets.

There is simply no reason why the U.S. cannot lead the way in reducing the nuclear stockpile while we aggressively urge our allies to reduce and eventually eliminate theirs. Oh yeah, I forgot about the campaign contributions from military contractors.

One of my favorite bumper stickers from Veterans For Peace says, “Peace is Patriotic.” Just as patriotic would be shifting Pentagon funds to domestic programs which would put more people to work rather than lining the pockets of military contractors.  That shift in spending priorities would make this country not only stronger economically, but far more respected as a leader in something other than armaments and destruction.

Don’t get me wrong.  Some of my best friends are military contractors [or at least they were until they read this post.]  I’m not suggesting they all lose their jobs.  And I don’t expect this tectonic shift to occur overnight.  I just feel this industry needs to lose a bit of it’s fat around the middle and that those contractors could be retrained and shifted into more productive and peaceful endeavors.  After all, isn’t that what we all agreed was the answer to the American workers left unemployed by outsourcing millions of their jobs overseas?

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made his first major speech to the faculty and students of the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.  Mr. Hagel is a veteran and a true patriot.  He is also a pragmatist and sees the budgetary handwriting on the wall.  In his speech, Secretary Hagel said, “We need to challenge all past assumptions, and we need to put everything on the table.”  Here, here!  The question is, are the Defense Department program managers listening–the ones who take the “requirements” written by contractors and turn them into taxpayer-funded profits for those same contractors.

For more good info, see David Sirota’s fine piece on Pentagon cuts in Salon (dated Feb. 14, 2013).

The Global Day of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS) is coming up on April 15.  How much are you sending the Pentagon each day and what can you do about it?  And would you rather be paying a peace tax?  As for me, I think I’ll take a thirty-five minute coffee break and make a few phone calls to the President, Mr. Hagel, my representative and senators.