Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
04.11.11 - 11:13 AM
Teachers Not Guns
A new report from SIPRI, a Swedish think tank, shows U.S. military spending has almost doubled since 2001, soaring 81% compared to 32.5% in the rest of the world. We spend a mind-boggling $698 billion, or almost six times that of China, the next largest spender. Do let's kill Medicare and health care and decent pay for teachers, though. Obscene.
Comments are closed
14 Comments so far
Show All$698 billion? Others have calculated we spend between $1.2 and $1.4 trillion.
http://www.warresisters.org/federalpiechart
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/01-7
It's not nice to call it military spending.
The approved term is defense spending.
In 2001 we had the most expensive defense system in the world.
Then it was defeated by 19 guys with box cutters.
So we had to spend more on defense.
The world is full of box cutters.
And the U.S. is full of B.S.
It's what's for dinner.
Every day.
or $1.63T per year globally in military spending.
and who is the major supplier to this market? Number 1 is the U.S.
The Republicans implicitly make the argument that military spending makes America secure and able to enforce its "interests" and thus, military spending is good for the economy. Why spend on teachers and sick people? And why is there no consequential counter political force in the U.S. to military spending?
Obama is committed to cutting Americans' Medicare and Social Security. Any defense cuts will be limited to chump change.
Various sources have added up the hidden costs to somewhere around $1-1.2 trillion but why quibble? Our defense contractors are getting rich; our politicians are getting generous campaign donations (both parties), and if you want to play the role of a global cop, you surely need the budget to go with that reputation... Cutting expenses from the weak and poor is easy since they have almost no voice in this so-called 'democracy'...
Christian nation MY ASS!!!! Our nation has become EVIL and they DID IT FOR THE MONEY. Pro Life means PRO DEATH!!!!! These psuedo-christians make all kinds of noise about their so-called morals, but it is ALL TOTAL BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Our weapons industry is the MOST EVIL FORCE IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY. I don't want to hear any christian bullshit. WE MAKE JESUS PUKE!
But those poor defense contractors!
Sure people also got killed and are still getting killed in lies that we need wars, but the rich CEO's think of it as profit and why should a little blood get in the way of profits? It never has before for them and profits are WAY WAY WAY up! Gotta keep their luxury yachts, private islands, and high spending life styles somehow!
$1,000,000,000,000 = $1 trillion, If you took 10% of that, it would be
$100,000,000,000 = $100 billion. What number of schools, roads, hospitals, food programs, medical care programs could be maintained with that?
If you took 30% of the "defense" budget, they would still have more war toys than anyone else in the world, but we would have $300 billion to heal our nation and perhaps even pay for some of the horror we have inflicted on small countries around the world.
The Pentagon would still have $700 billion to play with and would still be much bigger than anyone else.
Back when I was a kid, before and during WW-II, we had a War Department. It maintained a defense force in case we were attacked. It enlarged during the war, of course. Finally the world thought it had achieved victory over Fascism.
Then, some pundit decided we didn't need a "War Department." It sounded warlike and aggressive, so the name was changed to "Defense Department" and since then we have gone to wars around the world, usually starting them. The military octopus has ensnared and devoured most of our substance ever since, its growth becoming exponential as we invade or destroy ever more countries.
Read the link below. Click on their Statement of "Principles." Read it, then look at the names proudly appended below it. Any names look familiar?
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
Read their master plan for world domination, militarily and economically, by the United States, then see if you can figure out who is in charge of this insanity that used to be called "The United States of America."
In another post some months ago, I noted that there are claims out there that the "Defense" Department and its contractors have an employment presence of one kind or another in each and every congressional district in the country. Notwithstanding the political invulnerability that this has created for military spending, it also assures that our "weapons systems" will be wastefully and poorly manufactured. This goes back at least to the days of the original C-5A contract at Lockheed-Marietta in the 1960's.
It's about jobs and about very, very deeply entrenched interests.
We have all lived, since the adoption of Truman's containment policy for communism I think about 1948, in a permanent total war footing economy. The collapse of communism in 1989 has not really altered the amounts we are lavishing on the military budget, only the types of "weapons systems" we think we need.
As you noted, the more honestly named War Department was renamed, in an early instance of Orwellian euphemism, the Department of Defense in 1945. Many people also mark that as the year we lost the Republic.
After 65 years, and in spite of many warnings, including the famous one from no less than former General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower in 1961, I have finally reached the point of concluding that politics have failed. This will all end when we have spent ourselves into a bankruptcy so deep that we can no longer avoid or postpone facing it, although our world's policeman role may get an extension if we kill Medicare and Medicaid and gut Social Security. Silly socialist programs all. A little Social Darwinism and corporate fascism with a smile should toughen up a citizenry that has grown too soft and complacent and probably in need of a little trip to the woodshed anyway.
So not to worry, when the time does come, and maybe not too far in the future, when we can no longer pay for almost 50% of the world's military spending and the New American Century dreams of hubris finally and once and for all crash and burn, we can just redirect all those defense contractor's considerable creative energies toward surveillance of our domestic population, a population made up of civilians (or even subjects), not citizens. We can create lots of exciting new jobs spying on each other.
And the "defense" will be against whatever may remain of the imagination and courage of the American people. We're already seeing some of that now.
Talk about "low information voters". We've got plenty of them in our own circles. For years I've been shaking my head in bewilderment --each time I see news/sources like this about our sorry national priorities. Often such hand wringing cites a period spanning the last decade. If the alternative media community closed ranks around and focused upon the _obviousness_ --that the events of 9/11/2001 were a false flag operation, we'd not only change leadership and turn the culture of our nation around on a dime, the biggest problem would be in holding back the right wing crazies who are now our antagonists. (Can someone help? What is it that I'm not getting here?)
This article should be top news on Common Dreams based on it's relevance to the ongoing federal budget debates.
Instead today CD is headlining "Obama's law prof outraged" and "Japan MAY raise meltdown severity level to 7".
Come on guys!
"A new report from SIPRI"?
We had to hear this from Sweden? This information is hidden in plain sight, right here & you paid for it!
On their website, your Central Intelligence Agency maintains The World Fact Book, a very current and comprehensive breakdown of statistics for nations around the world:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
Here you can easily find and compare the GDP of each nation and how they distribute it. The data is revealing and, depending on your point of view, damning.
Of course, any public school teacher who discusses this website with their students will be summarily fired, if not prosecuted.
Next "Fourth of July", take a moment to try to figure out just what it is that we're celebrating.
Don't you wonder what Charlie Sheen and Paris Hilton are doing today?
teachers and guns.
both can be fired.