subject: A New War Worth Waging [print this page] A New War Worth Waging A New War Worth Waging
Today, on just about every news outlet, politicians make noise about the national debt. Their concern is that the U.S. is spending too much money that they don't have. I suppose that American's should applaud their honorable efforts. According to Babylon.com, the national debt is a bit over 13.6 trillion dollars and growing. But here is a bit of other relative news, according to costofwar.com, the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq adds 1.6 trillion dollars to the debt.
War proponents continue to say the war is a necessary means to an end. They also believe that the wars should continually be funded to support the commitment that the U.S. made with the two embattle countries. Meanwhile the citizens of the United States is bracing themselves for the eventual cuts in funding to domestic programs, as the new conservative movement moves into the House and Senate.
Attention, politicians and American citizens, Poverty should be the new war. According to, FeedingAmerica.org, in 2008, 4.8 million citizens used food assistant programs, that works out to 4.1% of the U.S. Citizenry. Similarly to the claims that international war-proponents make, inaction on poverty causes death as well; little or no health care causes serious decisions to be made, often leading to death; malnutrition resulting in ill health and depressed and frustrated communities increases the statistics of victims of violent crime. The depression of 2008 has pushed unlikely Americans in to the poverty class. Some of the new impoverish have never saw their incomes grow be low a middle class income, they now themselves asking the government for help to feed their kids or buy medicine.
A slew of ultra-conservative elected officials are ready to slash programs, make laws that further depressed communities. All this, to curtail spending and slow down the deficit. If not, generations of Americans will have the debt hanging around their neck many years after the death of the citizens who created the debt. It is a noble and necessary cause.
Isn't equally important to feed, clothe and provide shelter, for the present citizens? The new lawmakers have a choice to make; do they decrease social programs and continue to fund international ones? or simply, cut both significantly. Clearly, whatever is done, more people will suffer if America drawback its money, support or manpower toward the wars. That is, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, because the war against poverty has hardly been started.
Contributing information from this article was provided by
http://feedingamerica.org/faces-of-hunger/hunger-101/hunger-and-poverty-statistics.aspx, FeedingAmerica.org Nov 10, 2010
