Not yet, certainly, but remember that the "war on terrorism" is an open-ended proposition. USA can take one, two, three Afghanistans in stride, but, according to your graph in the latest issue of the _Left business Observer_, an "expensive Iraq war" will bring the military expenditure (as percent of GDP) close to the peak of the "Carter-Reagan buildup," that is, slightly less than half the level of the Korean War splurge. Add a possible escalation in the Colombian campaign (or some other war that borrow-and-spend militarists can easily come up with) to an expensive Iraq war, and we'll be in for huge deficits. In Japan, it is said that the Doken Kokka (@ <http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR24701.shtml>) built "bridges to nowhere" in response to deflation; in America, the warfare state will wage an endless war. Just as the Doken Kokka has failed to lift economy out of deflation, while erecting a mountain of public debt, though, the warfare state may simply destroy its own fiscal health, with little economic stimulation. Given that unions are weaker, social programs stingier, kin-based support-networks more tenuous, and consumer debts more piled up here than in Japan, deflation in the USA will have a far more devastating impact on workers here than it has there. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>