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Al Jazeera (English)
    Baghdad Burning Blog (by Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl)
            Dahr Jamail's Blog from Baghdad
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

If We’re Really in Danger,
Why Doesn’t the Government Act as if We’re in Danger?
By Robert Higgs - The Independent Institute

President George W. Bush, vice president Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, homeland security adviser Tom Ridge, and other government leaders rarely miss an opportunity nowadays to remind us of the grave danger we face. In a speech on July 16, the president declared, “We are today a Nation at risk to a new and changing threat.” Noting that “the terrorist threat to America takes many forms, has many places to hide, and is often invisible,” the president emphasized “our enduring vulnerability.” Evidently, the danger has not diminished much lately. I have just checked the threat indicator at the Web site of the Office of Homeland Security and found it, as of October 27, to be yellow, signifying an “elevated” level. Obviously, we’re in a world of trouble. Equally obviously, the government accepts full responsibility for allaying the threat its leaders say we face. As the president himself put it in the July 16 speech, “The U.S. government has no more important mission than protecting the homeland from future terrorist attack.”

But you’ve got to wonder. If we are really in such danger, why doesn’t the government act as if we are? Danger is supposed to focus the mind and sharpen one’s responses. The actions of the federal government, however, continue to be anything but focused. “Scattered to hell and back” describes them more accurately. Consider, for example, that not long ago Congress passed and the president signed a farm bill that will increase spending by some $83 billion over the next decade. All disinterested parties recognize that the greater part of this vast sum constitutes nothing but welfare for rich landowners and related agribusiness interests. Regardless of how we might characterize it, however, one thing's for sure: every dollar spent on agricultural subsidies is a dollar not spent on fighting terrorism. If terrorists menace us so seriously, why is the government squandering precious fiscal resources on welfare for agribusiness?

posted by A Curmudgeon 4:56 PM