KATHY KELLY: Pakistan needs help on a much larger scale. The U.S. has pledged 100 million dollars toward relief efforts. Two other disclosures about money budgeted for Pakistan should be considered in light of the unbearable burdens borne by close to two million new refugees.
CONGRESSMAN PETER DEFAZIO: Thank you for contacting me about the 2009 Iraq/Afghanistan Defense Supplemental Appropriations bill. This bill provides $96.7 billion, 87% of which would be to cover costs relating to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for the rest of this fiscal year. I voted for these funds because I chose to give President Obama time to implement his Afghanistan strategy and withdraw troops from Iraq. But it was not an easy decision.
REBECCA GRIFFIN: Here in Oregon, it’s instructive to look at Rep. Peter DeFazio’s letter to his constituents explaining his decision to vote in favor of more than $90 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. DeFazio is reliably progressive on foreign policy, and is likely to be an ally if we can address the concerns he and other members of Congress have about Afghanistan policy.
PETER BERGEL: In the past half year we have come to realize that our economic system is a lot more vulnerable than we thought, and that economic threats can come from directions most of us had never considered. While our government obsesses about terrorists of the Al Qaeda variety, we have recently been shown that an economic terrorist can attack us right where we live without firing a shot or awakening the retaliatory frenzy that 9-11 unleashed. Once again, we see that, as a nation, we are incapable of recognizing the real threats to our national security. Only threats that can be met by military force are deemed worthy of our attention. When a threat does get our attention, we respond with a “War on” something — drugs, terror, poverty, hunger — although that military approach has been shown over and over to be ineffective and even counter-productive.
NORMAN SOLOMON: To understand what’s up with President Obama as he escalates the war in Afghanistan, there may be no better place to look than a book published 25 years ago.
KEN McCORMACK: The Fourth of July is when “We, the people,†light up the sky with conspicuous consumption — blowing up millions of dollars because it’s pretty. Sometimes, it seems as though we are indeed only killer apes, as the anthropologist said, whose salient feature is a love of things that go “bang.” But the founders thought differently. They aimed their fireworks at bad government, at the “system” that enslaves the rest of us. So what are we celebrating? The trillions of our dollars transferred to the Power Elite in order to save their country?