Over
forty years ago, on April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered
an historic, antiwar address at New York City’s
Riverside Church. King declared that the social
programs of President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, widely termed
“The Great Society,” had been “shot down over the battlefields of Vietnam.”
King announced that “it would be very inconsistent for me to teach and
preach nonviolence in this situation and applaud violence when thousands
and thousands of people, both adults and children, are being maimed
and many killed in this war.” Eleven days later, in New
York City’s Central Park, King led a rally of 125,000 in protest against the Vietnam
War.
In
this presidential campaign year, the candidate speaking most decisively
within the tradition of Dr. King’s Riverside
Church peace address is Illinois Senator Barack
Obama. In a major address on March 20 at the University of Charleston, Obama urged the electorate
to consider the destructive impact Bush’s five-year-long war in Iraq
has had on the U.S.
economy. Obama observed: “The more than $10 billion we’re spending each
month in Iraq
is money we could be investing here at home. Just think about what battles
we could be fighting instead of fighting this misguided war.” Obama
showed the ability to break down the $10 billion Iraq War bill to illustrate
how every U.S. family was bearing
part of the financial burden. “When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month,
you’re paying a price for this war,” Obama declared. “No matter what
the costs, no matter what the consequences, John McCain seems determined
to carry out a third [Bush] term. That’s an outcome America can’t afford.”
Every
day, the nation is slipping further into a serious economic crisis,
while President Bush mindlessly tap dances outside the White House.
Between September, 2007 and January, 2008, the median price for a U.S. home fell 6 percent compared to one year
earlier. The private sector economy lost 26,000 jobs in January, 2008,
and another 101,000 jobs in February.
The
economic “Great Unknown,” of course, is the size of the bad debt generated
by mortgage refinancing, and the leveraged debt of investment banks
like Bear Stearns. Tens of millions of Americans heavily borrowed against
the rising value of their homes to pay for home remodeling, to cover
the costs of their children’s college education, and to pay medical
bills. The banks irresponsibly sold subprime mortgages that reaped super
profits, but saddled low income families with mortgage obligations they
could not afford. Today, about nine million American families are currently
behind in their mortgage payments. One to two million Americans will
declare bankruptcy during the next twelve months.
Obama’s
immediate task is to link the current economic and mortgage crisis being
experienced by millions of Americans, with the political economy of
the Iraq War. The place for Obama to start would be to remind voters
of the distance between Bush’s promises about the projected economic
costs of the conflict vs. the reality. The federal government is incapable
of addressing domestic economic problems, he might argue, because the
Iraq War cost is so expensive.
Five
years ago, the Bush administration promised Americans that the cost
for invading and occupying Iraq militarily would
be approximately $50 to $60 billion. By the fifth anniversary of the
Iraq
invasion, this March, the Pentagon admitted that military expenditures
now exceed $600 million. The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan
center, sets the real cost at somewhere between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.
Nobel
Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, my faculty colleague at Columbia
University, estimates that the long term cost
for Bush’s war in Iraq
will exceed $4 trillion. The best way to comprehend this enormous waste
of money and human lives that the United
States government has carried out is to measure
the unmet needs and obligations we are failing to address. Several days
ago, for example, Hillary Clinton estimated the cost of the Iraq War
at “well over $1 trillion. That is enough to provide health care to
all 47 million uninsured Americans and quality pre-kindergarten for
every American child, solve the housing crisis once and for all, make
college affordable for every American student and provide tax relief
to tens of millions of middle-class families.”
Even
some thoughtful Republicans who supported the Iraq War now recognize
how terribly wrong their estimates were for how much the conflict would
cost. Take the case of economist Lawrence B. Lindsey, Bush’s first chief
economic adviser. Lindsey was fired from his post years ago because
he estimated that the war could cost $100 billion to $200 billion. Lindsay’s
preliminary figures were right, but he underestimated how long U.S.
troops would be stationed and fighting in Iraq. Now, Republican Presidential candidate John
McCain promises us that American troops could be stationed and fighting
in Iraq
for one hundred years.
Obama’s
biggest challenge, however, is to explain to the American people that
both imperialist wars abroad and periodic economic crises at home represent
a structural failure within America’s economic and political system.
This was, of course, the realization of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just
before his assassination. “For years I labored with the idea of reforming
the existing institutions of society,” King declared in 1966, “a little
change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently.”
BlackCommentator.com
Editorial Board member, Manning Marable, PhD is one of America’s most influential and widely read scholars.
Since 1993, Dr. Marable has been Professor of Public Affairs, Political
Science, History and African-American Studies at Columbia University in New
York City. For ten years, Dr. Marable was founding director of the Institute
for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University,
from 1993 to 2003. Dr. Marable is an author or editor of over 20 books,
including Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past
Can Remake America's Racial Future
(2006); The Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero's Life And Legacy Revealed
Through His Writings, Letters, And Speeches
(2005); Freedom: A Photographic History of the African American Struggle
(2002); Black Leadership: Four Great American Leaders and the Struggle
for Civil Rights
(1998); Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American Politics
(1995); and How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race,
Political Economy, and Society (South End Press Classics Series)
(1983). His current project is a major biography of Malcolm X, entitled
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, to be published by Viking Press in
2009. Click
here to contact Dr. Marable or visit his Website manningmarable.net.