A Citizens' Campaign For A New National Security Policy

Winners and Losers in the US "War on Terror"

The starting point for a citizens' campaign for a new national security strategy should be to call attention to the reality that US wars - supposedly against terrorism - have produced clear winners and losers. The winners are the leaders of the military, the Pentagon, the CIA and their private sector and elected political allies.

Aggressive US wars are not merely the result of mistaken policies, but of the national security institutions pursuing their own interests at the expense of the interests of the American people.

The "war on terror" is a means for those institutions to maintain the present allocation of national resources and power to the national security sector for the indefinite future.

The losers are the rest of the American people. This "permanent war state" is now so politically powerful that it can keep the United States at war, even after the rationale for the war has been discredited or become irrelevant and the war has turned into a political and military disaster.

Over the past decade, the permanent war state has captured up to $1.3 trillion to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as an additional $2.3 trillion in defense and other national security spending (homeland security, international affairs etc.) over and above the level of the first post-cold war decade. That appropriation by the national security state of an additional $3.6 trillion in additional resources during a decade of economic decline, accounting for 40 percent of the additional national debt, represents a power grab of immense proportions.

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