Wednesday, July 27, 2011

War is a Racket



A couple of weeks ago I heard about how it was costing us 20 billion dollars to aircondition Afghanistan.

That's cool.

But now I'm hearing that the wars there and in Iraq may cost as much as 5 trillion dollars.

And I'm thinking that's way too much given that we defeated the enemies in both about 8 years ago.

So why are we still fighting there? Why are our soldiers still filling those red, white, and blue coffins? And how many coffins will 5 trillion dollars buy?

Read this essay by Amy Goodman called "War is a Racket."

Here's the link: War is a Racket

One of the things that people always ask me is "What can we do in the face of so much war?"

Kurt Vonnegut said that trying to stop a war was like trying to stop a glacier. He said that and then he wrote a book that tried to stop a glacier, Slaughterhouse-Five.

It didn't stop the glacier of war, but he tried nevertheless.

It's what we all have to do.

2 comments:

Filligree Humbert said...

Thanks for this reference. Amy Goodman is a national treasure, her news show (Democracy Now!) is just about the only honest news out there, and yeah, the wars are a total travesty, worse than ever, worse than other wars, much worse. The ruling classes are getting so good at bamboozling the rest of us. Where's the anti-war movement? I want to sign up, now.

Michael Meyerhofer said...

Well done, my friend. I especially like your comment about Vonnegut. I've been thinking lately that in any given age, the best and brightest of the human race have almost always been in the wings, shaking their heads and speaking to a few while charismatic halfwits drive the machinery of war. Wow, I'm starting to sound like a Pink Floyd song...