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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jules Witcover
In Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, Americans have been reminded in recent weeks of one of our own great tactics of the past to force change: massive public protest.
Going way back, the original
Most recently, we saw it materialize again in the tea party movement, in town meetings and Main Street demonstrations against what participants saw as runaway federal spending and intrusive social engineering, especially the health-care reforms passed last year.
Currently, the new
President Obama, while voicing willingness to engage in serious negotiations, so far has held his own hand on major cuts in mandatory entitlement spending. At the same time, he is insisting on more spending in education, infrastructure, energy and new innovations for future growth.
In all this, both sides blithely ignore the huge elephant in the room: the continued financing of the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still being underwritten largely by this country, in what now is the longest period of war in our history. After nearly 6,000 American deaths and many thousands more wounded, and at a cost so far approaching a trillion dollars, the American people tell pollsters the wars were a mistake and not worth the price.
Yet where is the massive public protest that sent Americans pouring into the streets as during the Vietnam War, and where is the heated debate in
President Obama, who ran and won in 2008 against the war in Iraq and promised to end it, has officially ended the U.S. combat role in Iraq and says he will start doing the same in Afghanistan this summer. These actions have effectively kept the lid on any significant street protest so far. But pressures from the American generals have already produced administration agreement to keep some U.S. presence in both places for some time to come.
Huge and extensive construction facilities bankrolled by American taxpayers in both countries are still being maintained, and more are being built in Afghanistan to facilitate training of indigenous police forces. Only the other day, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urgently called on the
Two longtime anti-war House members, Democrat James McGovern of Massachusetts and Republican Walter Jones of North Carolina, wrote the other day in The
In the context of the current debate over federal spending that has fired up the Republicans and their tea party cohorts, the elephant in the room of the two wars is missing in action, in
Yet the deficit hawks have their knives sharpened for the social-welfare entitlements. And as long as there is little public outrage against the huge spending for wars the American people don't want, that's where the budget fight will continue to be focused.
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On Taking to the Streets | Politics
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