Phil Valentine on Useless Wars

Phil Valentine, a nationally syndicated radio host based here in Nashville, had a fantastic Op/Ed in today's Tennessean.

I haven't read the Tennessean in years, so I have to thank my wife for sending this along to me.

According to Valentine, the Op/Ed was written as a response to the following statement made by a Democrat friend regarding George W. Bush: "He got us into two useless wars that created the terrorists."

I bolded the phrase "useless war" because this phrase is really the focus of Valentine's opinion piece.

The left loves to berate Bush and those evil "Neo Cons" for "wasting" money fighting "useless wars". If they are so concerned about how we spend taxpayer dollars, why do they show zero concern for how we are wasting taxpayer dollars on the "useless war" against poverty and ignorance.

From the article:

"President Barack Obama will spend more on welfare in the next year than Bush spent during his entire time as president on the Iraq war. That bears repeating. Obama will spend more in one, single year on welfare than we've spent on the entire Iraq war. According to the Congressional Research Service, the war in Iraq cost us $622 billion. Obama's welfare spending will reach $888 billion for the next fiscal year. He also spent $787 billion on a stimulus package that seems to be going swimmingly well, don't cha think?

.....The total cost of every American war starting with the American Revolution is $6.4 trillion in today's dollars. Since we began the war on poverty we have spent $15.9 trillion on welfare. Yes, we've spent two-and-a-half times as much on welfare in just 40 years as on all the wars combined.

And where has that war on poverty gotten us? Although LBJ proposed it in 1964, the programs were not fully implemented until 1968. The percentage of people living below the poverty level was 12.8 percent. The latest statistics put that number at 12.3 percent.

Nearly $16 trillion down the drain and nothing to show for it. Wait a minute, I take that back. We do have something to show for it. We have millions trapped in cyclical dependency on the government and the illegitimacy rate in the black community is now 70 percent; 25 percent in the white community."

Valentine, like many conservative talk-radio hosts, can be a bit of a blowhard, but that fact doesn't take away from the veracity of his opinion piece.

There is also one other thing that has really bugged me since Obama took office. Where are the war protesters now? Where are the posters depicting Obama as Hitler? Where is the talk about prosecuting the President of the United States for war crimes? Because the last time I looked, President Obama wasn't pulling troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. The last time I looked, President Obama hasn't stopped spending money fighting terrorism at home or abroad. In fact, the last time I looked President Obama was increasing troop levels in Afghanistan and continuing White House support of programs like the Patriot Act.

The real "useless war" is not being fought in Iraq or Afghanistan. The real useless war is being fought right here in the United States by a bloated, inefficient, and bureaucratic federal government.

If we want to actually decrease poverty in this country, we need to all get up off our fat butts and do something about it as INDIVIDUALS. I am so sick of looking to the government and politicians for answers.