Where War Has Gotten Us - A Simple Math Lesson

As we sit today wondering whether or not those in Congress and the Executive Branch of our government will sit down and decide what to do with our debt ceiling, just consider a few inconvenient truths, one only recently come to light thanks to Wikileaks.

We've been at war in the Middle East for twenty years now. A war propagated by neocons convinced that reshaping the Middle East was in the U.S. interest. Think this is conspiracy theory driven fallacy? The Wikileaks dump of over 400,000 diplomatic missives has certainly caused much in the way of public embarrassment for the U.S. and it's allies, but there are a few choice and damning tidbits, like how we gave Iraq the green light to invade Kuwait just to give us an excuse to brand Iraq a threat worthy of invasion. I find it curious how not only the mainstream press but the American public can ignore this damning fact, given that it was revealed on the floor of the House Of Representatives earlier this year.

What does this have to do with a budgetary crisis? Our own General Accounting Office still pegs military expenditure as roughly 20% of our annual budgetary expenditure. The government has been playing this "trick" with accounting ever since the Nixon Administration, from which we also got our modern healthcare system, subsidized farming, and things like the WIC program, all moves to take critical financial issues off the table of political discussion. Thanks a lot Tricky Dick!.

The problem with this lies in the accounting itself, because the GAO includes the Social Security Trust Fund as part of its budgetary calculation. Keep in mind the important but often forgotten fact that the SSTF is fed by FICA taxes and not Income Tax.

If we do a few things the budgetary problem becomes much different. If we take the SSTF, Social Security, and FICA off the table a very different picture emerges. And let's just forget the looming insolvency of the SSTF for now. It is a concern, but not a pressing one in the immediate term.

If we do this and run the numbers against the U.S. Governments own accounting figures, the Military and all of it's obligations end up being around 54% of the annual expenditure. 54% of an expenditure where we are also borrowing roughly 40 cents on the dollar to pay for it.

So the question becomes, why are we at war?

This isn't some juvenile "peacenick" play, hating on the brave men and women serving our country, but a real and critical question about the motivations behind war. Patriotism can easily become foolishness when you're fighting for the wrong things, based on entirely wrong reasoning.

Agree with me or disagree with me as you see fit. Indeed I encourage and want more debate on this subject, just be sure to come up with compelling arguments to explain away the grade school math at work here.