$15 billion for Afghanistan; not $2 billion for Detroit
President Obama's announcement that our war in Afghanistan ends this December 31st should not fool us into believing the Afghan money pit, draining our treasure, is will dry up. Keeping a residual force of just 9,800 soldiers there next year for training purposes will cost a cool $15 billion, adding to the staggering $700 billion cost in the 14 years of warfare. The people don't want this expense and they don't want 9,80...0 GI's there to add to the 2,400 already killed and the hundreds of thousands wounded, injured or suffering PTSD. But the war party does and the President is reluctant to further infuriate them due to his proven record of opposing their endless military adventurism around the world. They've never forgiven him for pulling out of Iraq and they oppose his ending the Afghan war. They still lust for war with Iran, want to arm the extremists fighting Syrian President Assad and gleefully engineered a coup against the elected Ukraine president to snare Ukraine and its abundant resources for the West.
On the home front we've learned that civic and business leaders in Detroit seek a paltry $2 billion to essentially level the blighted third of the city which perpetuates Detroit's decline like a virulent cancer. The numbers are daunting:
•78,000 buildings are vacant or dilapidated including 560 factories
•114,000 parcels of land are vacant
•90% of publically held parcels are blighted
But those numbers can be erased if Uncle Sam will take less than 15% of the $15 billion he'll squander on Afghanistan next year to revitalize Detroit. That $2 billion will all be spent in Detroit, providing desperately needed economic stimulus. The leveling and rebirth of a blighted Detroit should be the start of a $trillion effort, not to demolish countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, but to rebuild America, suffering from neglect that would have been unimaginable in the 1950's. Then, a Republican president who loathed war and warned against the Military Industrial Complex, created the Interstate Highway System which became the economic circulatory system of the thriving country I grew up and prospered in.
Detroit may always be Motown. We need to remake it into Moretown.
On the home front we've learned that civic and business leaders in Detroit seek a paltry $2 billion to essentially level the blighted third of the city which perpetuates Detroit's decline like a virulent cancer. The numbers are daunting:
•78,000 buildings are vacant or dilapidated including 560 factories
•114,000 parcels of land are vacant
•90% of publically held parcels are blighted
But those numbers can be erased if Uncle Sam will take less than 15% of the $15 billion he'll squander on Afghanistan next year to revitalize Detroit. That $2 billion will all be spent in Detroit, providing desperately needed economic stimulus. The leveling and rebirth of a blighted Detroit should be the start of a $trillion effort, not to demolish countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, but to rebuild America, suffering from neglect that would have been unimaginable in the 1950's. Then, a Republican president who loathed war and warned against the Military Industrial Complex, created the Interstate Highway System which became the economic circulatory system of the thriving country I grew up and prospered in.
Detroit may always be Motown. We need to remake it into Moretown.
posted by Walt Zlotow at 5:56 AM
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