There is an economic crisis continuing in the United States as America comes closer and closer to crashing into its debt ceiling limit in a matter of days.
As lawmakers look for ways to save spending, however, they seem to be ignoring one big item on the ledger that is costing quite a pretty penny: the military operation in Libya.The confrontation in Libya remains largely undebated by the public, at least in the mainstream media, all the while Congress scrambles for ways to pay its bills. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, citizens of Spain are responding to their own economic crisis a little more vocally. A lot more, actually.Spaniards are outraged and many of them blame pressure from the States as the reasoning behind their own war. Why is Spain resorting to violence and Americans remain mostly silent, though?“The short answer is US corporate media is lousy,” says David Swanson, campaigner for Roots Action. According to him, there isn’t a single entity in corporate media that isn’t making money off of the war machine.“Twenty-five percent of Americans think the US should spend three times the next competing nation,” remarks Swanson on the US military budget. In reality, though, America spends seven times that of China.“Nobody wants it!” says Swanson.Americans remain largely ignorant of the connection between the economy and the cost of war, and Swanson says that is because you never hear about it on the radio or on the TV,“You don’t have any professional institution, you don’t have any communications system to talk against the war machine,” says Swanson. “You just have the peace movement.”So why aren’t people buying what the pacifists have to say?“Nobody funds it.”Swanson says that while the media’s coverage is lousy, Congress is finally beginning to feel some pressure against the funding of the war in Libya. “If we can work together with the people of Spain,” says Swanson, then both our countries can push for the government to do what they should be doing.