Towards America’s Electronic, Troop-less Wars Future U.S Wars will involve Massive Use of Drones
by Prof. Marc W. Herold
Hat tip: Global Research
Abstract.
Future U.S wars in the Third World will involve massive use of drones to police the territory, employ local satrap[1] forces (like those of Karzai’s Afghan Army) and once the territory has been pacified sufficiently, the deployment of “Government Ready-to-Rule (GRR)” kits. The drones provide the critical and the weak link: critical insofar as they represent the ultimate American-style war where only the “Others” (opponents and civilians) die but weak insofar as this type of warfare only works against an opponent without any anti-drone/aircraft capability. In other words, this type of technological warfare can only be carried out upon weak opponents lacking independent industrial capacities (not against China, Russia, and India). This approach represents the culmination of disconnecting the delivery of deadly force – the rain of Hellfire missiles – upon the Others and incurring no human (physical or psychological – PTSD) costs. Or put in other terms, it represents the quintessential American way of “solving” problems with technological short-cuts, a military effort begun in 1942 with the Allied fire-bombing of German cities.[2] The current American war in Afghanistan is a harbinger of what is to come, America’s electronic, troop-less war.
Prophetically the first victims in 2010 of Obama in his Afghan war were a teacher in a government school, Sadiq Noor, and his nine-year old son, Wajid as well as three other persons. Both were killed on Sunday night, January 3, 2010 in a U.S. drone strike involving two missiles fired into the home of Sadiq Noor in the village of Musaki, North Waziristan in Pakistan.[3] During January 2010, a record number of twelve deadly missile strikes were carried out on Pakistan’s tribal areas. Three Al-Qaeda leaders were killed and 123 innocent civilians.[4] During 2009, 44 U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan killed 708 people but only five Al Qaeda or Taliban; that is for each enemy fighter 140 civilian Pakistanis had to die.[5]
Those who pull the gray trigger to fire are located in Nevada, Kandahar, or Pakistan.[6] As Philip Alston points out, “Young military personnel raised on a diet of video games now kill real people remotely using joysticks. Far removed from the human consequences of their actions, how will this generation of fighters value the right to life?”[7] In early 2010, the U.S. Air Force had more drone operators in training than fighter and bomber pilots.[8]
House Republicans Call for Bigger Deficits Than Obama
Hat tip: The New American
by Thomas R. Eddlem
February 26, 2010
An alternative budget proposal submitted by Congressman Paul Ryan (Wis.), the House Budget Committee’s Republican ranking member, would increase the federal budget deficit even more than President Obama’s bloated budget — nearly $1 trillion more — according to a February 24 analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Ryan’s “alternative policy scenario” would make no serious spending cuts, but it would institute three new tax cuts. CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf explained to Ryan that “the three changes to the tax policy assumptions are estimated to increase deficits relative to the baseline projections by $9 billion in 2010 and $3.4 trillion over the 2011-2020 period, mostly from lower revenues but also from increased outlays for refundable tax credits.”
Elmendorf continued:
“CBO estimates that, under the alternative scenario you specified, the deficit would amount to $1.2 trillion in 2020, about $500 billion more than the shortfall projected under baseline assumptions.”
Overall, the Republican budget alternative would increase the federal budget deficit by $9.4 trillion over the next 10 years, while President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget would increase the deficit by $8.5 trillion over the same period of time.
Ohio about to tank
Originally published as, “Ohio has no idea how to pay U.S. back for jobless benefits”
hat tip: Dispatch Politics
By Catherine Candisky
$2 billion-plus debt grows as leaders pass the hot potato
It has been more than a year since Ohio depleted its unemployment-compensation fund, and with the fund’s debt surpassing $2billion and growing, a fix is nowhere in sight.
No one has even proposed what should be done to shore up the fund – not the governor, not the General Assembly, not an advisory panel made up of business, labor and legislative leaders.
In fact, state leaders can’t even agree on who is responsible for solving the problem.
The Unemployment Compensation Advisory Council threw its hands up 15 months ago after it was unable to reach consensus; it said the legislature would have to figure out a solution.
GOP leaders in the Senate say Gov. Ted Strickland must come up with a plan. The governor has urged the council to take another crack at it.
Absent action from the Statehouse, Ohio will owe the federal unemployment trust fund an estimated $3billion by the end of the year. Interest payments on the loan, which begin to accrue on Jan. 1, are projected at $120 million a year.
Frustrations boiled over again in a Senate committee hearing this week when Republican legislators pushed the administration for answers.
“It’s amazing the governor hasn’t said anything about this,” said Sen. Keith Faber, R-Celina. “This is a problem that is not going to get any smaller. … It’s part of a big hole going into the next budget.”
Read the rest of the story here.
