Re: Military Spending
- From: "Jerry Okamura" <okamuraj005@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:31:16 -1000
"Robert of St Louis" <free.tuneup@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:c136bd8e-aed5-4c79-8416-4f7be4fdc6e5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Apr 17, 7:55 am, mg <mgkel...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
". . . The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, leaving the United States
as the only remaining superpower on earth. Since 1990, the United
States has depleted the U.S. Treasury of $7 trillion for spending on
Defense. With no military on earth capable of challenging us why would
there be a need to spend this much on the military? Over this same
time frame the U.S. spent $360 billion on science, space & technology
and $52 billion on energy, a mere 6 percent of the spending on killing
machines. . .
The National Debt in 1990 was $3.2 trillion. Today, it is $11
trillion. This is a 343 percent increase in nineteen years. What
benefit has $7 trillion of spending on Defense produced for the United
States or the world? In 2001, spending on Defense was 17 percent of
total governmental spending. In 2008, Defense, Homeland Security, and
war spending accounted for 26 percent of government spending. In the
meantime, major cities have had blackouts due to an overloaded
electrical grid, our 156,000 structurally deficient bridges crumble,
one hundred year old water pipes burst under our streets every day,
and we send $500 billion per year to foreign countries for oil. The 19
terrorist hijackers who implanted their plan with knives spent less
than $500,000 to pull off their 9/11 acts of terror. The United States
has spent over $1 trillion in response, without capturing the
mastermind of the attacks.
You would think we must be trying to keep up with our enemies by
spending $765 billion per year on the Military. But the United States
is spending as much as the rest of the world combined. The two
countries considered potential rivals, Russia and China, spent $192
billion combined in 2008. This is 27 percent of U.S. spending. From a
foreign perspective, one must wonder why the U.S. is spending such
vast quantities on our military. They can only conclude that it is for
offensive intentions rather than defensive. The soil of the United
States has not been attacked by a foreign power since December 7,
1941. Prior to that surprise attack, a foreign power hadn’t attacked
the U.S. since the War of 1812. With this level of spending, our
leaders feel compelled to interfere in the business of sovereign
nations.
Other countries, such as China and Russia, feel they have no choice
but to increase their expenditures on the military. On a percentage
basis, they have more than doubled their expenditures in the last ten
years, and still are a drop in the ocean compared to the American
Empire spending. The fact is that the U.S., China and Russia all have
enough nuclear weapons to obliterate the world—mutually assured
destruction. The United States could realistically protect itself with
the 18 ballistic missile nuclear submarines that we have in
commission.
The U.S. has borrowed $609 billion from China, Japan and oil exporting
countries to wage a war in Iraq that was based on false pretenses.
None of the terrorist hijackers on 9/11 were Iraqis, they had no links
to Al Qaeda, and they had no weapons of mass destruction. Historian
Barbara Tuchman described "war as the unfolding of miscalculations."
In 2002, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld estimated the costs of the war
in the range of $50 to $60 billion, a portion of which he believed
would be financed by other countries. The United States invaded Iraq
to secure the 115 billion barrels of oil reserves, pure and simple.
We’ve traded the blood of young Americans for oil because we chose to
not develop a cohesive logical energy policy in the last 30 years.
Americans, not in the military, have sacrificed nothing in the last 7
years of war. We bought SUVs, McMansions, flat screen HDTVs,
Blackberrys, iPods, and Rolexes while Americans died and the cost is
passed to future generations. . .
What kind of a civilized society allocates 44 per cent of the taxes
taken from its people to war? Only 2.5 per cent of your taxes go to
science, energy, and environment. Only 2.2 per cent of your taxes go
to education and jobs. With a population of 304 million, the U.S.
spends $59 billion ($194 per person) annually on education. Saudi
Arabia, with a population of 28 million, spends $33 billion ($1,179
per person) on education. You produce the results that you would
expect from your investments. A full 15 percent of our population
doesn’t have a high school diploma (20 per cent of African Americans &
43 per cent of Latinos) and only 27 percent have a college degree. How
do we expect to lead the world in technology and research with these
figures?
For all the glory and accolades of dying for their country, enlisted
soldiers make between $15,000 and $30,000 per year. The military
evidently does not prepare them well for the outside world; their
unemployment rate is 11.2 per cent versus the national rate of 8.1 per
cent. A country can be measured by how well it treats its veterans.
Our leaders talk a good game, but their actions prove they don’t care
about the human costs of war. They are busy planning their next move
in their game of Risk.
Omar Bradley, the last five star General in the U.S. military, was
known as the "soldier’s general" during World War II. He was portrayed
by Karl Malden in the movie Patton as a thoughtful man who cared about
his troops. He was one of the key architects of the Normandy invasion
and led the 12th Army Group consisting of 900,000 men until the end of
the war. After the war, Bradley headed the Veterans Administration for
two years. He is credited with doing much to improve its health care
system and with helping veterans receive their educational benefits
under the G.I. Bill of Rights. He ultimately rose to Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs. His words reverberate today. "The world has achieved
brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world
of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we
know about peace, more about killing than we know about living."
We need men like Omar Bradley and Dwight D. Eisenhower in control of
our country today. These men knew the horrors of war and didn’t act
like it was a game of chess. There are brilliant men in power today.
There are no wise men with a conscience in power today. Only those
without a conscience are able to gain power in today’s world. General
Bradley understood that morality was ultimately more important than
power and strength in the progress of a country. His words are those
of someone who knew we had failed in our moral duty:
The overwhelming cost of maintaining a global empire eventually
bankrupted Rome and Great Britain. Treasures were wasted, young men
were needlessly sacrificed in the name of the flag, and the morality
of leaders sank to unprecedented levels. The U.S. has advanced
financially and technologically, but continues to decline morally. How
far will we decline before the American people revolt?
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=11244&pageid=44&p...
I really really trust Sec of Defense, Gates', realistic approach, that
the kind of wars we are having now...require entirely different mind
sets...there is a ton of military hardware that is absolutely useless
in urban street fighting. We no longer have the Red Baron Pizza man
flying around having dog fights. Our drones seem to serve a real
practical purpose without risking alot of lives. Our military are
going to have to go back to plain ole Basic Training 101...and
fighting face to face with the enemy.
If you "assume" you can read the tea leaves and know what the future has in store for you, everything will work out just fine if you read the tea leaves correctly. But if you are dead wrong about what is in the future, you just might find out that because you assumed one thing to happen, that in the end it was the absolutely wrong thing to do. That in a nutshell is what is wrong with trying to predict what will happen in the futre. It is better to think of the worse case scenario, and plan for that to happen, rather than to think you know what iwll happen in the future. Then, you can handle both situations.
.
- References:
- Military Spending
- From: mg
- Re: Military Spending
- From: Robert of St Louis
- Military Spending
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