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It's not like he has a magic wand or is a dictator. Obama is beholden to the same group of monied interests as the rest of capitol hill. If the large banks, oil

It's not like he has a magic wand or is a dictator. Obama is beholden to the same group of monied interests as the rest of capitol hill. If the large banks, oil companies and corporations thought it would be in their interest to end the wars, the troops would be home. Plus what are you going to do with the sections of economy that depend on these wars? There's no plan to shift any funds or manpower to any peaceful purposes.

cryptoz 15y ago
> It's not like he has a magic wand or is a dictator. He does have a magic wand, in the form of a pen that he can use to veto new military spending. He hasn't used it. > If the large banks, oil companies and corporations thought it would be in their interest to end the wars, the troops would be home. No. If Obama chose not to renew the various war spending bills, the troops would be home. > Plus what are you going to do with the sections of economy that depend on these wars? This sentence is confusing to me. The wars cost us money, money that we don't have any more and that is causing us huge amounts of trouble right now. I'm not sure what will happen to those sections. But they didn't exist 10 years ago, they exist now for the sole purpose of killing people, and they are using money that isn't theirs. Surely we can do away with them.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  This sentence is confusing to me. Xradionut is using the broken window principle - if we break stuff and then rebuild it, we've increased GDP and therefore helped everyone. If we stop doing this, we might ruin the economy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window In other news, the Tsunami was great news for Japan.
  - jordanb 15y ago
    It's not that the military spending is good for the economy overall, but rather that it's good for a large group of very powerful people who wield far more influence than any one president.
  - xradionut 15y ago
    : rolls eyes : No. I'm a life long student of history and politics that was raised by a pair of history professors. I grew up watching news about the Vietnam War and the Nixon debacle. (Yes, I'm an old cynical fart.) Most people evaluate political news with the attention span of a day-trader or ferret instead of spending the time researching the causes and tracing the money. Obama can't fulfill his promises nor do the morally and legally right actions to "fix" the situation. His hands are tied by his political obligations. That's why the general public is going to be fked some more. We've basically turned back a generation of progress in a generation.
- xradionut 15y ago
  Politically he can't veto spending, even if legally he can. The reality is that the President is mostly a figurehead, bought and paid for just like Congress and trapped by chains of patronage and party. That's why nothing changes. Pay attention to who his advisers are. Notice who has benefited over the last three decades of political change. Read some real history. > Surely we can do away with them. What are you going to do with the military and their families? To the contractors and suppliers? And the jobs and businesses that relies on the war gravy train? You need a "real" stimulus and infrastructure program. Otherwise you are looking at an much larger number of unemployed group of people, many which are soldiers. We have some real big problems in the United States, which will not be solved, because it's not interests of the people in control to solve them.
- jbooth 15y ago
  > He does have a magic wand, in the form of a pen that he can use to veto new military spending. He hasn't used it. There's no such thing as a line-item veto. So, it's not that simple. But he's commander in chief and could just order the troops home, which I think he should do by early next year and make the Republicans howl about it in between howling about spending. Not that cognitive dissonance has stopped them so far.
freerobby 15y ago
The wars, combined, only comprise about $1T of our deficit.
- cryptoz 15y ago
  "only"? $1,000,000,000,000 is a lot of money, even in the context of $14,300,000,000,000. Also, do you have a source for that $1 trillion figure? I think it's higher than that. Not to change the debate, but if Obama really cared about saving money he not only would have ended the wars in 2009 but also cut military spending significantly - we could keep the largest military in the world and still cut its spending by $3 or $4 hundred billion. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...)
- DannoHung 15y ago
  Of the deficit? That's huge. What do they comprise in terms of the debt?

cryptoz 15y ago

> It's not like he has a magic wand or is a dictator. He does have a magic wand, in the form of a pen that he can use to veto new military spending. He hasn't used it. > If the large banks, oil companies and corporations thought it would be in their interest to end the wars, the troops would be home. No. If Obama chose not to renew the various war spending bills, the troops would be home. > Plus what are you going to do with the sections of economy that depend on these wars? This sentence is confusing to me. The wars cost us money, money that we don't have any more and that is causing us huge amounts of trouble right now. I'm not sure what will happen to those sections. But they didn't exist 10 years ago, they exist now for the sole purpose of killing people, and they are using money that isn't theirs. Surely we can do away with them.

yummyfajitas 15y ago
This sentence is confusing to me. Xradionut is using the broken window principle - if we break stuff and then rebuild it, we've increased GDP and therefore helped everyone. If we stop doing this, we might ruin the economy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window In other news, the Tsunami was great news for Japan.
- jordanb 15y ago
  It's not that the military spending is good for the economy overall, but rather that it's good for a large group of very powerful people who wield far more influence than any one president.
- xradionut 15y ago
  : rolls eyes : No. I'm a life long student of history and politics that was raised by a pair of history professors. I grew up watching news about the Vietnam War and the Nixon debacle. (Yes, I'm an old cynical fart.) Most people evaluate political news with the attention span of a day-trader or ferret instead of spending the time researching the causes and tracing the money. Obama can't fulfill his promises nor do the morally and legally right actions to "fix" the situation. His hands are tied by his political obligations. That's why the general public is going to be fked some more. We've basically turned back a generation of progress in a generation.
xradionut 15y ago
Politically he can't veto spending, even if legally he can. The reality is that the President is mostly a figurehead, bought and paid for just like Congress and trapped by chains of patronage and party. That's why nothing changes. Pay attention to who his advisers are. Notice who has benefited over the last three decades of political change. Read some real history. > Surely we can do away with them. What are you going to do with the military and their families? To the contractors and suppliers? And the jobs and businesses that relies on the war gravy train? You need a "real" stimulus and infrastructure program. Otherwise you are looking at an much larger number of unemployed group of people, many which are soldiers. We have some real big problems in the United States, which will not be solved, because it's not interests of the people in control to solve them.
jbooth 15y ago
> He does have a magic wand, in the form of a pen that he can use to veto new military spending. He hasn't used it. There's no such thing as a line-item veto. So, it's not that simple. But he's commander in chief and could just order the troops home, which I think he should do by early next year and make the Republicans howl about it in between howling about spending. Not that cognitive dissonance has stopped them so far.

freerobby 15y ago

The wars, combined, only comprise about $1T of our deficit.

cryptoz 15y ago
"only"? $1,000,000,000,000 is a lot of money, even in the context of $14,300,000,000,000. Also, do you have a source for that $1 trillion figure? I think it's higher than that. Not to change the debate, but if Obama really cared about saving money he not only would have ended the wars in 2009 but also cut military spending significantly - we could keep the largest military in the world and still cut its spending by $3 or $4 hundred billion. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...)
DannoHung 15y ago
Of the deficit? That's huge. What do they comprise in terms of the debt?