Laurence, the single-bullet theory woefully misunderestimates the “American Way.” You see, wars are “supposed” to cost a lot — the more the better — and the more war, the more patriotic you are!
You see, there are manufacturers, contractors, and subcontractors carefully distributed among the vast majority of congressional districts who morph into Pavlovian screamers every time their defense contract is threatened. The local representative is terrified that his “no” vote might “lose jobs in his district.” That’s where those billions go (what’s left of them, of course).
AM General, a company in my hometown district (Indiana 2nd), got a $660 MILLION contract last summer for Humvees — for the Afghan army and police forces (they may as well have been dumped into the ocean on the way over — they’d be gone in 6 months, sold across the border or to drug lords). The cash came in just in time to re-elect an Obamanite by a very slim margin, and then — Lo! — after the elections they had layoffs because they didn’t need so many after all. (The company had just hired a new CEO — from Boeing, natch!)
Every agency in government LOVES to shove this “job loss” canard right in the teeth of their critics (as well as us enemies). A couple of years ago, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama (ahem — whom some on this site might know a lot better than I do) had to eat crow, courtesy of the Agency for International Development — which dispenses “Foreign Aid.” Conservative, “pro-family” Sessions was forced to lobby hard to keep a prophylactic manufacturing facility in his district to save a couple hundred jobs — AID churlishly thought it proper to buy cheaper Chinese condoms instead to send around the world and reduce the surplus population, courtesy of American freedom-loving humanitarian bomb-droppers. Sessions got his factory, but the cunning apparatchiki made their point, big time: we run the joint.
The children of darkness are indeed wiser in the ways of this world than the children of light.
5:06 pm on March 29, 2011
