[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
The absolute disaster of the debt ceiling hostage deal continues apace as the President submitted his latest budget plan to Congress today. It didn’t seem to occur to the Executive branch hideously dragging out precisely the wrong thing to do for the economy over two months might hopelessly kink whatever politics they try to implement afterwards, let alone constantly remind a hurt, angry base of the reeking, lancing failure the whole debacle on a daily basis, but they didn’t. Bummer!
Something strange happened in the lead-up to this splat to arrive in Congress, this notoriously trial-balloon-addicted administration (a disgusting practice cloaked in fear and manipulation, enabled by the laughingly broken American journalism corps) sent up two mighty balloons fervently pumped with vapid DC gas, we will tax millionaires and raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67. The “Buffet Rule” of taxing millionaires landed gracefully into the plan, while the hideous idea of raising the Medicare eligibility age was thankfully shot down in roaring flames.
But wait a minute, right there in the New York Times it says the plan also counts a savings of $1.1 trillion from the ending of the American combat mission in Iraq and the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.
Hallelujah the wars would be over! The nyt’s article doesn’t include the math for the Buffet Rule, but surely it would pale to the $120 billion annual hideous cost of the wars. Money matters, yes, but we would no longer be in the insane spot of killing children with drones as some kind of human solution to some really stupid idea, firmly plowing that money back to our own people and country.
This is a huge deal of enormous political ramifications in multiple dimensions, how come it wasn’t leaked beforehand too?
Well, of course the President’s Plan is a path with a capital P, Congress alone draws up the budget and allocates funds. Almost all of this document is dead on arrival after losing the House in 2010 (bummer!), so it’s simply a political ploy, the first statement in negotiations with our cher Republican cousins. Apparently the Administration could not go before Congress and the little people and say we will ask for cuts in Medicare and Medicaid (bad enough, but not the politically insane eligibility age issue) and continue the wars.
There seems to be no other rationale for ending the wars, cost was cited by the Administration, not that little moral problem of blowing up kids by mistake, let alone sacrificing our own people for nothing. So will the wars really be over next year?
Of course not, whatever to vomit forth from this horrible evolution peace will not be in the final equation, it’s just some nice concept the Obama administration paid homage to out of whatever they construct as decency. 60 days is a political eternity from now, if they’re called on ending the wars by Congress (they know they won’t be), they’ll just say we asked Congress to stop the wars in the plan, they wouldn’t.
Such childish twaddle. The President is Commander in Chief of the armed forces (not me, obviously) and can simply, immediately order the divisions out of theatre. Congress would have to amend the constitution to stop him.
If it’s so easy and saves so much cash and stops the moral nightmare, why not do it? The President is afraid he’d be accused of giving up a country to the terrorists, wartime is a perniciously powerful tool for any Executive, and war serves the vastly powerful Defense lobby in DC. The President will make up any rationale in the election next year in classic politics-by-moment prancing to try and get away with it. He has so far.
The little people watching this whole nightmare and trying to decide what to do for next year get pummeled by Democratic and Obama partisans that the wars can’t really matter that much, the Supreme Court and women’s rights and the universe itself are at stake! The stacks of tens of thousands of corpses as a political byproduct for that defense of US citizen rights, well, it has to be worth it.
No, it freaking is not on many levels, and the moral stance of politically necessary war is hideously shameful.
So many millions of Americans have had their lives smashed in the last 10 years, careers and health and their children’s future in pathetic smithereens. Patience with DC is gone, and these “plans” for ending the wars only deepen citizen gloom and hostility. Perhaps if President Obama really wants to win next year he’ll order all of our people home from the wars now. Today. It’s up to him.