June 8, 2015

How we helped create ISIS and the rest of the Mid East mess

Progressive Review - Missing from virtually all mainstream media coverage of the Mid East are a number of questions including: 
  • What the hell are we up to?
  • Why hasn't it worked?
  • Why do we respond by constantly doing new things that don't work either?
It may help to review a few facts that the mainstream media forgets to tell you. For example, the Nobel Prize winning Physicians for Social Responsibility has estimated the first ten years since 9/11 resulted in a death toll of at least 1.3 million and perhaps as high as two million. This may help to explain the creation of ISIS.

This is the longest war America has ever fought with the exception of the early 20th century occupation of Haiti.

According to the Washington Post in 2013, "The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting, according to a new study by a Harvard researcher. According to Kiplinger publications in 2011, $1 trillion is enough to pay the average income of 19 million families. Fox Business News estimates you could put 8 million people through four years of college for $1 trillion.

More impressive is that we could have spent the money on improving economic conditions in the Mid East  and actually made some friends there instead of constantly creating new enemies such as ISIS. As an example, if we had used the money we spent on killing Muslims on a program like the highly successful European Marshall Plan we could have had program, in today's dollars, 33 times larger than the post World War II version.

2 comments:

Kevin Carson said...

"We"? The capitalists' state may have done these things -- just as it bombed Dresden and Hiroshima and overthrew Allende -- but I sure as hell didn't.

Anonymous said...

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting results different than the last every time. Very often not being of the
acceptable mainstream of thought and action makes that "oddball" much more sane than
the mainstream. I think the majority of the public would not have done of this if they actually had a real say. The elites are playing the control the oil/money game, it is sad the war and carnage never ending if you have any heart.