CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

We Need a Guns and Butter Debate Over the Costs of the Iran War

Photograph Source: U.S. Air Force – Public Domain

Sixty years ago, opposition to America’s war in Vietnam, a major attack concerned the costs of diverting U.S. resources away from social spending to the military, what was called Guns and Butter.

I was the junior member of the Columbia University triumvirate headed by Seymour Melman and Terence McCarthy. We lectured widely, wrote in magazines such as Ramparts and newspapers. The New York Tribune still existed as an alternative to The New York Times, and regularly published our critiques in its interviews and on its editorial pages.

Those mid-1960s were the days! The antiwar movement had enough momentum to bring down Robert McNamara and Lyndon Johnson in 1968!

Alas, that epoch seems long gone. There seems to be little hope that changing the party in power will change much. Neither feels much pressure to end the long-term strategy of war with Russia, China and Iran.

I have not seen any media critique, for instance, of Treasury Secretary Bessent’s statement to Congress on Tuesday, April 28, that America’s war in Iran so far has cost $25........

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