Paramedics wearing personal protective equipment take a patient to the ambulance amid the coronavirus outbreak in Boston, Massachusetts, April 3, 2020. (Reuters photo)
A former American counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer at the CIA has said that Washingtons "war on the novel coronavirus might well wind up being the most expensive conflict in American history."
"The United States has been at war almost continuously since the founding of the nation in 1783," Philip Giraldi said in a recent article published by the Strategic Culture Foundation.
"Some of the wars were undeclared like the centuries-long eradication of the native Americans, while others - the Mexican and Spanish-American wars - were glorified by including the names of the countries defeated by Washingtons war machine. Americas bloodiest war actually has multiple names, including the Civil War, the War Between the States, The War of the Rebellion and the War of Northern Aggression, allowing one to pick and choose reflecting ones own political preferences," he wrote.
"More recently wars in Korea and Vietnam were named in straightforward fashion, though current conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan do not really have names. In fact, it has become somewhat politically incorrect to name a war after an ethnic group or a country in the old fashion way. But this shortage of wars has been somewhat made up for by an increase in the number of metaphorical wars to include a war on drugs, a war on poverty and a war on terror. Now Americans are confronting what might some day be called the War on Coronavirus," he added.
He noted that Trump has already declared himself to be a "wartime president" and he is preparing to help the economy with a $2.2 trillion injection.
The analyst pointed out that most this money "will go to the salivating profiteers that are already lining up as well as to the greedy corporate constituencies who will do their best to use the cash to increase their value for potential shareholders."
He observed that the $2.2 trillion amount is "considerably more than the Vietnam War cost in todays dollars ($1 trillion) though it does not yet come close to the $5-7 trillion in borrowed dollars that the going-on-twenty-years engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq has cost."
The United States recorded 1,321 deaths from the contagious coronavirus between Thursday and Friday, according to statistics site Worldometers, which is the highest single-day death toll recorded by any country in the world.
A total of 7,844 people have now died of COVID-19 in the United States and about 300,000 have been infected with the virus, Worldometers said.
New York was the worst-hit state in the US. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio pleaded with the US government for more help, as new statistics have confirmed that hundreds of thousands of people across the country have lost their jobs.
Meanwhile, public health specialists have warned that mass shutdowns of businesses and schools to enforce social distancing measures over the coronavirus outbreak will lead to thousands of deaths and suicides in the US that are unrelated to the disease itself.
SOURCE: PRESS TV
LINK: https://www.ansarpress.com/english/15431
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