The American future was sold by two consecutive administrations which decided to plow into debt on the Iraq and Afghan Wars and a Congress that joined them on the spending spree. None are innocent -- Democrats or Republicans -- or even the sole Socialist Bernie Sanders. None stood up and said, "I will filibuster this authorization." No one stood up.
And America's future was sunk overseas.
October 31st, John F. Burns blogged at The New York Times:
Polls have long shown that a majority of Americans considered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 to have been a major mistake, the costs in lost American and Iraqi lives too high, the burden of at least three-quarters of a trillion dollars in American military spending too heavy for American taxpayers to bear, the damage to America’s standing in the world likely to take long years to repair.
And, in 2006, he'd told The New York Observer (see "Media Mensches of the Year") , "We have to remember we’re writing for Americans. For Americans who send their sons to war, who pay their taxes."
Burns was always a sexist pig. Yeah, American women were sent to Iraq as well but he ignored them the same way he ignored Iraqi women (at least he ignored Iraqi women in print).
But there are those tax payers again.
You'd think having lost out on a future to go in debt for the Iraq War, the American people would at least be allowed to know the reality of what all that money bought. Currently, it's bought not only a political crisis but also the trampling on women's rights. Not that The New York Times would ever tell you about that. They spent the first years of the war ignoring Iraqi women -- a policy they returned to after Damien Cave and Alissa J. Rubin left Iraq.
If Burns is aware of all the money the US government sunk into an illegal war, shouldn't they be at least trying to show Americans what they paid for? Or is it just too difficult -- even for the paper that sold the war -- to pretty up the creation of The New Saddam?