$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.

The real VA scandal

It should be no surprise that the VA is so overwhelmed with vets seeking treatment that some VA bureaucrats "cook the books", hiding the long wait time for patient treatment to make the problem, in their mind, "go away". This was graphically highlighted by the CBS 60 Minutes story Sunday "The War Within: Treating PTSD". It followed the intensive seven week VA treatment given to severe cases of PTSD, estimated to afflict 400,000 Iraq and Afghan war vets, 20% of all those who served. The new program, which forces PTSD victims to repeatedly relive their traumatic experiences over and over till they can achieve some form of closure, is modeled on intensive therapy given rape victims. Listening and watching outwardly tough soldiers break down sobbing till they had to walk out of the filming was heartbreaking enough. Even more heartbreaking is the primary truth that this handful of victims and the 400,000 others were mentally shattered in totally senseless, unnecessary wars. The 60 Minutes story gave only one reason for this massive number: repeated deployments in both Iraq and Afghanistan with little recovery time in between. It would have been impolitic for CBS, a loyal member of the Fawning Corporate Media which never investigates the American war party, to offer this primary reason for a 20% PTSD rate. Economists have estimated that the real cost of these needless wars is several trillion more in long term health care to the soldiers duped into fighting them. This cost will last for much of the 21st century. That is the real VA scandal. The war party can strong arm Congress and a gullible populous for a trillion dollars or two to fight their phony wars, but they can't get either to face up to the long term dollars needed to repair the infinite misery they inflicted on the brave youngsters who fought them.

Every politician and pundit planning to use the dueling treatment-time books to score political points against the administration should ask themselves what they did to end or prevent senseless wars, and what they did to fund adequate treatment for its victims. If they did there would be deafening silence about the current VA scandal.