We hear lots of talk about the “fiscal cliff” and
Republicans demanding budget cuts but no one ever seems to talk about the
elephant in the room called the Defense budget. The U.S. spent $680 billion on our
Army, Navy and Air Force in 2011 accounting for 45% of the worlds military
spending. In addition over $50 billion was spent on civilian intelligence
agencies.
The U.S.
has ten active aircraft carriers and three more under construction, no other
country, not even China
currently operates more than one and al-Qaeda has none.
According to the Arms Control Association the U.S. has over 5100 nuclear warheads, Russia
has about the same number but roughly half are awaiting dismantlement. China has 240, France
under 300 and the United Kingdom
about 225, India and Pakistan about 100 each, North Korea may
have ten if they’re able to build functioning warheads and al-Qaeda has none.
The U.S.
has over 800 military bases on foreign soil, that’s over four for every nation
on earth.
Surely we can retire four aircraft carriers, a few thousand
nuclear warheads and close several hundred overseas bases to help bring our
federal deficit under control. It’s time we faced the fact that this nation can
no longer afford to maintain the empire we established over the first half of
the last century. We won’t be the first super-power to recognize it but if we
do it now we’ll be the first to avoid waiting until we’ve wrecked our economy.
Posts
The days of empire should be long gone and we can't afford to be the world's police. If we'd cut defense spending and use just some of that savings for things like infrastructure and education, imagine how great our nation could become. We could cut our spending by half and we'd STILL spend more than any other nation!
ReplyDeleteI fear that we are becoming more like the old Soviet Union- spending and spending on military and ignoring the needs of our people. I wonder if we'll end up like the old Soviet Union- toppled from within when our people demand that we get something from our government other than military spending.
The defense industry is very smart and very powerful. They manufacture in just about every state so that if someone says "cut" they can say "oh, but look how many jobs you'll lose"- but what if we turned the defense manufacturing into solar power manufacturing? Why can't we turn "swords into plowshares"?
Published in the NB Herald-Zeitung 12/15-2012 http://herald-zeitung.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_219888ec-467e-11e2-ad29-001a4bcf887a.html
ReplyDeletePublished in Seguin Gazette 12/20/2012 http://seguingazette.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/article_984a4f94-4ae7-11e2-8ece-0019bb2963f4.html
ReplyDelete