Barack Obama concludes a press conference announcing sanctions on Russian and Ukrainian officials over the crisis in Crimea. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
America Is Too Broke to Rescue Ukraine -- Peter Beinart, Defense One/The Atlantic
If only America were fighting more wars, Russia would never have taken Crimea. That’s basically the argument John McCain made last Friday in The New York Times. “For five years,” he complained, “Americans have been told that ‘the tide of war is receding’.… In Afghanistan and Iraq, military decisions have appeared driven more by a desire to withdraw than to succeed.” As a result, “Obama has made America look weak,” which emboldened Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.
I have no earthly idea what McCain means by ‘succeeding’ in Afghanistan and Iraq, but we can be pretty sure that in addition to claiming more American lives, it would require a lot more American money. Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a 2013 report by Linda Bilmes, a public policy lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, are the most expensive wars in U.S. history, costing the U.S. between $4 and $6 trillion when you factor in medical care. For Ukraine’s sake, McCain believes, that number needs to go up.
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My Comment: It is easy for Peter Beinart to blame two wars for America's decline .... the truth is that it is more than that. The U.S. has experienced wars before .... and in some case wars that were far more bloodier and MORE EXPENSIVE than Iraq and Afghanistan combined .... but the U.S. always came back .... and in almost all cases far more stronger and more capable than before. It is different now because the political culture and national priorities have changed .... nationalizing healthcare and committing to trillions in spending (much of it borrowed) is OK .... national security/creating a favorable business climate/balanced budgets/etc. .... not OK. A crisis in Ukraine .... it would have been a top priority for any administration in the past .... today .... it is not the priority for this White House or Congress .... their focus is elsewhere .... and more to the point .... they have the own projects to finance .... not Ukraine's. Repeating myself .... the U.S. is not broke to rescue Ukraine .... the U.S. has tons of money. Instead .... the U.S. is facing a moral bankruptcy .... the American people have grown tired of losing blood and treasure in today's many conflicts. Their focus is elsewhere .... starting with themselves.
2 comments:
"The U.S. has experienced wars before .... and in some case wars that were far more bloodier and MORE EXPENSIVE than Iraq and Afghanistan combined .... but the U.S. always came back .... and in almost all cases far more stronger and more capable than before."
Then why does the US rank lower on many social scales then other developed countries?
In his new book "The Measure of a Nation: How To Regain America's Competitive Edge and Boost Our Global Standing" (Prometheus, 2012), Howard Steven Friedman, a statistician and health economist for the United Nations and an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, compared the US' standings on a variety of metrics concerning health, safety, education, democracy and income equality to those of 13 carefully chosen competitor nations: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain and the UK. All of them are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); all have populations of at least ten million, and mean GDPs per capita of at least $20,000.
Friedman rated the top-performing countries as Stars, the worst-performers as Dogs, and the middling performers as Middle Children.
His bottom line? On most metrics, the US is a Dog.
My comment was done with a look at the past century. But I concur that the in the past 20 years the U.S. has been in decline on every level. That is one reason why I live in Canada.
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