Like many others who call themselves 'progressives,' I worked hard to suspend my natural political skepticism during the 2008 presidential campaign. I did that in the interest of the 'greater good' and because, of course, the alternative was no alternative.
    I would do the same thing again - and for all the same reasons, but now that he's in office, it's looking like President Obama is going to need a lot
of guidance from
those of us who
want to see truly
systemic change
in a top-heavy,
militaristic culture
such as ours.
    During the '08
campaign, Obama
said that this
country would be
judged “on what
we build, not what
we destroy.”
    Yet, as reported
in the New York Times, “In imposing conditions on the Afghans and Pakistanis, Mr. Obama is replicating a strategy used in Iraq two years ago ...”
    This, despite the fact that the war in Iraq has, by any reasonable standard, been an utter fiasco, and has already cost an estimated $860 billion - not to mention countless lives and livelihoods.
    And then there's the future.
    “The [projected] cost of overseas conflicts, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan,” writes James Glanz in another New York Times piece, “follows a fairly simple progression in [President Obama's] budget plan: “$144 billion in fiscal year 2009, $130 billion in 2010, and ... $50 billion for 2011 and beyond.”

    According to the National Priorities Project (NPP), taxpayers in the state of California alone have already paid $83.1 billion for Iraq war spending. For the same amount of money, NPP calculates that 148,087,070 homes could be outfitted with renewable electricity for a full year.
    Of course, the cost of bombing Afghanistan is yet to be determined, but as Congress considers additional war funding, NPP estimates that of President Obama's $178 billion war spending request, $135.4 billion is dedicated to the Iraq War, with close to $83.7 billion allocated for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2008 and $51.7 billion allocated for the first three months of Fiscal Year 2009.
    The remainder of the $178 billion in war funding is for Afghanistan and other 'Global War on Terror' activities.
    And how, you may ask, does this relate to energy?     “Replacing oil consumption with widespread adoption of plug-in electric hybrids in 2020 after world oil production is already in permanent decline - provided this goal is actually possible - is like closing the barn door after the horse has left. What we do now has stronger, longer-lasting effects than anything we do in 2015, 2020 or beyond. There is not a moment to lose.”