- FEBRUARY 10, 2010
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AFPAK
Why We Shouldn't Listen to Gen. McChrystal
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MEIN KAMPF
Discrediting Hitler's Tome
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IRAN
Regime Change Isn't Coming
Quote for the day
Posted By Stephen M. Walt
Thursday, September 10, 2009 - 3:31 PM
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Not my favorite line from last night's speech, but it still caught my eye....
...the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years - less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration.
Keep that in mind when your local school district is forced to cut a few more programs or lay off a few more teachers, when your car hits another pothole on a bridge that needs repair, when your public transit system cuts service or raises fares, and when the federal budget deficit continues to rise. Stupid foreign policy decisions don't just cause problems overseas; they undermine our quality of life here at home. And as I said once before, it remains a puzzle why the GOP is eager to tax us to pay for ambitious social engineering projects in faraway lands, yet loathe to fund programs designed to benefit Americans here at home. It's equally puzzling (to me at least), why Americans have gone along with this idea. So far.
Jason Reed-Pool/Getty Images
Normally the federal government wouldn't be paying for that work anyway, that's more a result of state governments attempting to get by on far less because A. their leaders rarely try to create honest budgets and B. anyone who wants to win elections in this country has to commit themselves to lowering taxes. I won't deny that the wars have probably been a drastic drain on local money, but I'm not quite ready to blame the GOP for all of it just yet.
This is a perfect, unanswerable quote.
Bravo to Obama and Walt.
Why have Americans gone along?
Because Americans are susceptible to threats and paranoia associated with the great unknown abroad.
Most of us are dumb and wallow in our dumbness -- even a college education is almost meaningless. College graduates don't know crap about geography or even when WW I and WW II happened. Being educated is bad -- if you are educated you are a suspect elitist. It's easier to bomb away -- and good for the defense industry.
Except the GOP isn't taxing us to pay for faraway projects; the Democrats have been in control of Congress, which controls tax policy, since 2006.
Good management has been rare in this country in recent decades, but it's a bipartisan problem. Neither the man who bankrupted three oil companies nor the Community Organizer in Chief is the kind of individual I'd expect to run a country well -- but the last good administrator we had was Bush Senior, and look what happened to him. Not just that, look who he lost to.
America, please, get your drama from action movies and elect Presidents who know what they're doing!
(CAPTCHA: "last aside" -- our action heroes in chief aren't even producing impressive action movies, it's speechmaking instead of hunting the Grail.)
Why were my remarks removed from this thread after they were posted yesterday? Please email me a response within 24 hours.
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
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