Just below you will find two pieces from Tom at MilitaryProject.org – GI Special in his recent Newsletter. This is the direct link, the links given above each are to my host site for downloading the .pdf files for the complete Newsletter, which can also be found at above link.
The rest of the posting consists of reports and links about Costs as to Personal, Labor, and Societal. And these are but a few that can be found as to the Destructive Follies of the few for their own enrichments of Wealth and Power!!
From: GI SPECIAL 4I2: ‘GI COMING HOME LABOR DAY BLUES’.pdf
GI COMING HOME LABOR DAY BLUES
[Then And Now]
1971:
SAM STONE
by John Prine, 1971
Sam Stone came home
To his wife and family
After serving in the conflict overseas
And the time that he served
Had shattered all his nerves
And left a little shrapnel in his knee
But the morphine eased the pain
And the grass grew round his brain
And gave him all the confidence he lacked
With a Purple Heart and a monkey on his back
[Chorus]
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm
Where all the money goes
And Jesus Christ died for nothing
I suppose
Little pitchers have big ears
Don’t stop to count the years
Sweet songs never last too long
On broken radios
Sweet songs never last too long
On broken radios
Sam Stone’s welcome home
Didn’t last too long
He went to work when he’d spent his last dime
And Sammy took to stealing
When he got that empty feeling
For a hundred dollar habit, without overtime
And the gold rolled thru his veins
Like a thousand railroad trains
And eased his mind in the hours that he chose
While the kids ran around wearing other people’s clothes
[Chorus]
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm
Where all the money goes
And Jesus Christ died for nothing
I suppose
Little pitchers have big ears
Don’t stop to count the years
Sweet songs never last too long
On broken radios
Sweet songs never last too long
On broken radios
Sam Stone was alone
When he popped his last balloon
Climbing walls while sitting in a chair
Well, he played his last request
While the room smelled just like death
With an overdose hanging in the air
But life had lost its fun
And there was nothing to be done
But trade his house that he bought on the GI Bill
For a flag draped casket on a local heroes’ hill
[Chorus]
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm
Where all the money goes
And Jesus Christ died for nothing
I suppose
Little pitchers have big ears
Don’t stop to count the years
Sweet songs never last too long
On broken radios
Sweet songs never last too long
On broken radios
2006:
GI COMING HOME LABOR DAY BLUES
From: Dennis Serdel
To: GI SPECIAL 4I2: ‘GI COMING HOME LABOR DAY BLUES’.pdf
Sent: September 01, 2006
By Dennis Serdel, Vietnam 1967-68 (one tour) Light Infantry, Americal Div. 11th Brigade, purple heart, Veterans For Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against The War, United Auto Workers GM Retiree, in Perry, Michigan
GI Coming Home Labor Day Blues
His brother at 30 is still living at home,
he works most nights making pizza.
His Dad just sighs because he knows
he might have to work until he dies.
Old glory is torn and faded
the stars shine for only a few
leaving closed factories and generations
living these Labor Day blues.
His Dad voted Democratic
like his Union said,
but it looks like both of the parties
are sleeping in the same bed.
The government is for the new gilded age
companies are leaving the country,
and his Dad with a good job realizes,
he may never get to retire.
Old glory is torn and faded
the stars shine for only a few
destroying the Union made middle class
causing these Labor Day blues.
His Mom works for a lawyer
who gives her woman’s pay.
But she knows the law of the jungle,
she could never raise a family this way.
His Dad’s car is getting beat
and he’ll have to buy another soon.
They now cost more than his house did
after Vietnam and his honeymoon.
Old glory is torn and faded
the stars shine for only a few
leaving closed factories and generations
living these Labor Day blues.
Workers Bear the Costs of War (September 1, 2006)
This Labor Day marks the third year that thousands of working Americans have left their families and their jobs to fight in a war that the Bush administration will not bring to a close.
As always, labor has borne the brunt of the war. The vast majority of the 2,600 dead and 20,000 wounded are young men and women pulled off the factory and shop floors and told that they should defend their country from a threat that proved to be nonexistent.
More than half of those killed were under the age of 24. Many enlisted because the policies of the Bush administration destroyed their chances for a college education or a viable economic future. The armed services seemed like a way out of a life where the minimum wage remains at $5.15 an hour and unemployment is rampant for young men without a college degree.
A new study from the nonpartisan National Priorities Project has calculated the cost of the Iraq war at $1,075 for every American or $2,844 for every household. The calculations are based on a Congressional Research Service June 2006 report, which put the total cost of the war at $318.5 billion.
The money for the war is being spent at a rate $10 million per hour and $244 million per day, according to NPP.
From a second study:
With these costs included, the Stiglitz Study puts the direct cash cost of the war at $750 billion to $1.2 trillion. This amount is based on the assumption that the Bush administration will begin to withdraw troops in 2006 and continue to decrease military operations over the next five years, an optimistic view.
The study notes that including these costs still do not provide a total picture of the real economic impact of the war.
It reports that official accounts of the cost disguise the real economic impact. For example, the military quantifies the value of each lost life as the amount it pays in death benefits and life insurance payments to survivors. To boost recruitment, the death benefit was recently increased from $12,240 to $100,000, and the life insurance benefit was increased from $250,00 to $500,000.
The military does not include loss of the income that each soldier would have earned or other contributions that the soldier would have made to the economy and society.
These studies only cover the effect on our Countries personal costs and economy, lets not forget the devestating costs to the Country of Iraq and it’s citizens!
This report closes with the following:
The Stiglitz Study reminds us that before the war began, Larry Lindsey, Bush’s economic advisor, estimated that the cost of the war might be as much as $200 billion, which the White House called a gross overestimation. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz claimed that Iraq could finance its own reconstruction, and the Bush administration announced that the war would be short, with few casualties.
Keep in mind who Actually Fights, Dies, and are Maimed in these Contrived Conflicts:
Wages
$2.10 for Minimum Wage Workers, Billions for the Ultra-Rich (August 2, 2006)
If anyone ever doubted that the Republican Party is the party of the rich, working tirelessly to make themselves richer off the labor of American workers, those doubts were erased as Republicans moved into action in the final days of the Congressional debate over the federal minimum wage.
A host of reports on Labors Costs of this War can be found online, below are but a few, keeping in mind the Costs in Lost Lives and the Physical, Mental losses for many who serve and fight these Conflicts Based On Lies of those who won’t!
US Labor Against the War : Iraq War Costs Now Exceed Vietnam’s
The U.S. Treasury is paying out more each month to sustain the war in Iraq than it did during the Vietnam War, according to a new report that calls the ongoing conflict “the most expensive military effort in the last 60 years”.
The invasion of Iraq by the US government and its corporate backers, otherwise known as US Imperialism, has being going on now for over three years. The real purpose of the war was and is for the US corporations to get a tighter grip on the Middle East, especially with the oil there, put down deeper roots through more US bases in the Middle East and Central Asia and in this way increase their efforts to encircle China. Every day the US corporation’s own propaganda media fill peoples head with lies as to the real reason for the invasion of Iraq. We must not be fooled.
Michael Roberts: War, Debts and Deficits
As soon as it became clear that the US-UK war against Iraq was on, stock markets around the world rocketed upwards by as much as 20% and the price for a barrel of crude oil fell back sharply. Capitalism was convinced that the overwhelming firepower of the US military backed up by the more puny forces of the British army would quickly overwhelm the Iraqi army, which would melt away or even hand over Saddam in a coup. The war would be over by Easter at the latest and maybe a lot earlier.
WHO DIES : US Civilians
Why Labor Should Oppose the War.
U.S. Labor Against The War has produced a useful one-page fact sheet that makes a sharp, compelling case against the war.
