EDITORIAL: Arrogance and greed create failed policies

Our defense budget (more than $550 billion per annum) is greater than the budgets of the next 50 countries put together.

Our national debt, already at $10 trillion, will increase by another $2 trillion over the next five years, almost half of this debt is owned to foreign creditors, some of whom do not like us very much.

Our ruling elites are too arrogant to admit the failure of their policies; at the same them they are too greedy to care much about the suffering they cause to us while lining their own pockets.

Two factors have combined to make the U.S.'s collapse possible: imperial overstretch and financial meltdown, much like the erst-while Soviet Union before its collapse.

With the roaring failure of our domestic and foreign policies, our country is in desperate need of an enlightened agenda. The agenda must offer humanity a way out of endless wars, indiscriminate killings and the resultant suffering of millions in our country, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We must return to the pristine teachings of the Bible/Koran to find guidance and wisdom to apply to the myriad problems facing us. We need to build a civil society founded on divine principles and a parallel economic and political culture based on peace, justice and equality.

It is mighty wrong to spend $550 billion per annum on defense and squander $10 billion a month in Iraq when we know that there 47 million Americans without health insurance and another 36 million living in poverty. We need to bring America back into the land of righteousness.

Mohammed H. Siddiq

Lincoln