Nation crumbles under massive debt

Gather round everybody. Who wants to hear the story of the America that could have been? In this story the U.S. could have stabilized Social Security for the next 50 years, or sent 160,000 under privileged students to college for a year, or secured the Mexican border by hiring 11,000 border patrol agents, or secured our cities by hiring an additional 14,000 police officers.

A lot of great options right? Any of those of options would have cost a mere fraction of the $2 trillion, and still rising; the war in Iraq has cost the U.S. The U.S., mainly the taxpayers, will be feeling the effects for decades after the end of the seemingly endless war. 

Since the beginning of the Iraq War, the national debt has increased by $2 trillion and that is not a typo.

I have never been an advocate of leaving a job unfinished, but it is in the best interest of the American economy that we pull out of Iraq as soon as possible. Waging a war is just too expensive. There may have been a time when war was good for the economy, as in World War II, when the war created hundreds of thousands of jobs for the men and women who stayed back home.

With the cost per military serviceman or woman once steadily rising and the cost of rockets increasing by 130%, it would be hard to believe that the U.S. can sustain itself in Iraq without further crippling its economy much longer. The U.S. has resorted to using an unheard of amount of reservists, members of the National Guard and over 100,000 paid, independent contractors to continue fighting in Iraq.

It is not just the current expenses that will be the downfall of the American economy. With every war, there are hidden or unexpected expenses that have lasting effects on the nation for decades to come. For every member of the armed services that is hurt in combat, he or she will be eligible to receive disability benefits.
 
The first Gulf War lasted approximately a month and 700,000 troops were deployed. Forty percent of those troops, that is 280,000 troops, were eligible for disability benefits after that month. The Iraq war is nearing its five-year anniversary, that is almost 60 times as long as the first Gulf War, with millions of troops deployed, (almost 4,000 killed overseas) and worst of all, there is no end in sight.

Economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz believes that by 2017, the war alone would increase the national debt by an additional $2 trillion dollars.
If the U.S. wants to, in the words of Spock “live long and prosper,” it must pull out of Iraq and make sure that it’s economy gets back on the right track.

Granted, the U.S. will be caught in a storm of blame and the opprobrium of leaving a nation, that it tore apart, in shambles will follow it for centuries, but these are all necessary sacrifices for the well being of the American economy.

Anyone can see that when a nation is $9 trillion dollars in debt and could be headed for an additional $2 trillion, something is not right.

So as the primaries and caucuses are nearing their end and we find out who our two major candidates are, the question to ask will not be “who will give us universal healthcare?” or “who will protect our Second Amendment rights?” but “who will prevent the U.S. from sliding into a recession and who will keep the debt from growing?”

If only there was some way we could get Bill Clinton back in the White House.