The Casualties of War
By: Susan Scharfman
The U.S. Congress has just approved an emergency $82 billion war chest for Iraq and Afghanistan. The minimum wage remains at $5.15 an hour and the same U.S. Congress will not vote to raise it. Yet they just voted themselves a pay raise.
Dissenters to raising the minimum wage say raising it will not make a dent in the economy since only unskilled workers and students are within that demographic. Pooh on those invisible people of color that sweep the floors in the malls and clean out the toilets. Those who do want to raise the minimum wage say it will help that little guy make a living. Do you know of any American citizen workers that can live on $5.15 an hour in the United States? We’ve seen how migrant workers do it but ours is not a Third World Country.
As the market price of oil rises to near $71 a barrel, depending on where you live you are paying close to or more than $3.00 a gallon at the pump. Now we hear that the perception of small business owners is that U.S. economic growth is slowing down. The National Federation of Independent Business’s chief economist, William Dunkelberg agrees with the slowdown perception, but he says the economy will pick up again in the last quarter. Perception is everything.
With the perceived slowdown in economic growth and inflation creeping back into the American economy, the Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates the end of this month. Are you puzzled when you see headlines like “Stocks Fall on Worries of Economic Growth,” and the next day “Stocks Rise as Housing Data Eases Growth Worry?” How about those Leading U.S. Economic Indicators? What do they tell us? Let’s be real here. The average American consumer does not keep up with much less understand all of this; he and she are working longer hours and sleeping less hours. Yes, perception is everything, but whose perception should the country believe?
What has all this to do with casualties of war? Everything. The whole country suffers the consequences of war. The heartbroken relatives of the two soldiers murdered in Iraq are casualties, as are the remains they must bury, as are the other relatives of all the other Americans who gasped their last breaths in battle—because their country cleverly and deliberately led them to perceive the righteousness of going to war for the wrong reason. The millions of parents and their children who do not have health insurance are among the casualties of war. Where is the righteous in that? As the American wealthy and lower classes continue to grow, the American middle-class is an enormous shrinking casualty of war. As long as the richest (?) country in the world can do nothing with its wealth but squander it and its magnificent youth on war, the bulk of its citizenry will continue to be casualties of war.
The recent vote on the Senate floor on withdrawal of troops from Iraq was a good thing, a righteous thing. The right to dissent, to disagree with the majority is the American way. It is not the “unpatriotic way,” it is not the “cut and run way” to a failed policy that continues to chant its worn out brainless phrases because it thinks it can fool all of the people all of the time.
“Simplicity-Courage-Humor-Soul”®
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