The War-Poverty-War Vicious Cycle Continues

It's not just the binary false choice of guns or butter - it's that choosing guns over butter makes both war and poverty more likely because they feed each other.

War takes money away from infrastructure and social services, thus creating poverty and expanding poverty, which creates both civilian unrest and increased military enlistment of the unemployed, which pushes governments to start wars that distract restless civilians and dispose of excess cannon fodder but cost more money that creates more poverty that ... ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

Digby:

It's interesting how they can always find the money for this stuff, isn't it?

A limited United States intervention in Syria would not require a supplemental appropriations bill from Congress, an Obama administration official told The Huffington Post on Wednesday.

The official's assessment that a narrowly tailored operation could be paid for with "existing Department of Defense resources" was seconded by two high-ranking aides on Capitol Hill.

However, another Hill staffer argued that without a greater understanding of the operation, it would be impossible to settle on an exact price tag or means of payment.

"Who the f--- knows what it will cost? It depends entirely on what happens," said the staffer.

Meanwhile:

Head Start programs cut staff members and students. Meals on Wheels, a federal program that delivers meals to the homebound elderly, scaled back in some communities. Federal public defenders, already strapped for funding, cut an additional 11 percent out of their budgets and are preparing for more cuts this fall.

It’s been six months since the federal government imposed $85 billion worth of mandatory budget cuts, and among those who have felt the impact most acutely have been the poorest Americans.

“Did the sequester disproportionately hurt the poor?” said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks. “You bet it did.”

SNIP

Shared sacrifice, dontcha know?