Why are we going bankrupt?

From The Pornography of Power
by Robert Scheer

"The Gift of 9/11:

"It cost between $400,000 and $500,000 for Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda to pull of the 9/11 attacks... But within days of the hijacking, [President George W.] Bush demanded fifty thousand times that amount—$20 billion—in emergency appropriations from Congress. By the time he leaves office, trillions of dollars will have been spent on what he dubbed the global war on terror (GWOT), with no end in sight and no logical connection between the money spent and the problem at hand. In this respect, Bush's reaction to 9/11 was all too typical.

"The one thing they know how to do is spend money. For those who run the federal government, tragedy can be opportunity, and none so fortuitous than that represented by a frightful threat from abroad. Some wise political leaders have had the temerity to warn about the consequences of exploiting the foreign 'entanglements' cited in George Washington's Farewell Address. Others caution as to the dangers presented by the 'military-industrial complex,' that amalgam of the vast defense industry and U.S. military bureaucracy noted in Dwight Eisenhower's own parting presidential speech to the nation. But the norm is to begin to line the pockets of those who claim to defend us form the enemy at the gates with few questions asked about where the money is going.

"It proved to be too good an opportunity for George W. Bush to pass up. Although he had de-emphasized foreign policy in his campaign and seemed to embrace the 'new world order' of his father, favoring trade and diplomacy over military intervnetion, the post-9/11 Bush quickly recast himself as a 'war president,' as he put it. While he had campaigned as a fiscal conservative and had promised a more modest defense buildup than the Democratic Gore-Lieberman ticket, he suddenly turned the spigot on full blast for Pentagon spending..."