I agree with these sentiments but who, looking at Washington, thinks that those in power would ever go along with such policy. We believe in military might as a sign of our superiority. It is the way of empire. We still embrace it and of course the government is captured by the profit making interests that benefit from it. Still those interested in non violent overthrow of dictatorships should look at the Albert Einstein Institute's web site and the writing of Gene Sharp: http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html and we could start putting this into practice by overthrowing the virtual dictatorship of moneyed interests which control the USA by the outright purchase of our government.

The American political culture and mass media culture is on the wrong side of history!

The US Congress and the White House have been on the wrong side of morality and human decency for a long time now. That applies to both their foreign and domestic policies.

Democracy in America has always been defined differently from true democracy. When they said that America is bringing democracy to Iraq, it was an oxymoron all along. You can't bring what you don't have. All that the neocons did was try to cover up their own history of using Saddam Hussein to their advantages and then disposing him when he was too much for them. That's their definition of democracy. Now in the case of Egypt, the people made the puppet answer and the puppet couldn't hold the US-backed "fort" so now what? The US is working on establishing some form of military presence to offset the loss of its favorite puppet. I don't expect Mr. "change you can believe in" Obama to get it right. All he'll do is use that Nobel Peace Prize to justify his next actions.

Forget 5% higher than last year. The DOD baseline budget - that is without the war spending - has gone from $297 billion in 2001 to $534 billion last year. An astounding 81% increase in less than 10 years - and this does NOT include the cost of the two wars.

The Congressional Budget Office says defense spending grew 9% annually on average from fiscal year 2000-2009.

We could slash the DOD budget by half tomorrow - a cool 250 billion easy - and we would just be right back where we were when G.W. Bush took office.

BTW, does anybody else have to log in to see the comments? Since they did this software upgrade I can't see any comments until I log in and its driving me nuts.

I have an uncle who was in the US House back during the Reagan era, and in 1982 I wrote him a letter asking him what the sanity was in spending at that time an unprecedented amount on the military. I got back a letter essentially telling me to sit down and shut up, they knew more than I did. That was the last time I tried to talk sense to him.

This is a travesty of monumental proportions, IMHO. We have more than enough money to take care of our people, to provide health care for everyone, to educate our people to the benefit of everyone, but we don't. We waste all that money on "defense", which has NOTHING to do with defending anyone. It has to do with stealing as much as the M/I can, all for the love of profit. And for the most immoral and disgusting purpose on the planet, the killing of people that we don't even know.

This is proof that the right, who, let's be real here, have been running everything in this country for the last 30 years, are the most immoral, twisted, disgusting people on the planet. When they run things, people mean NOTHING, money means everything.

Conservatism itself is a sickness. It leads to nothing but disaster, it provides nothing, it helps no one but the already too rich, it innovates nothing, it creates nothing. It isn't a smart way to live at all. It keeps you from dealing with issues, it keeps you from even maintaining what you already have, as is evidenced by our crumbling infrastructure. It will NEVER lead to a society moving forward, it is a sad, sorry way to live. And it ALWAYS leads to where we are now. It can't help but do so. It's a race to the bottom for the vast majority, and great times for a very small few.

This crap needs to stop and stop immediately. Too bad it won't.

As already noted above, we are in the USA a nation on the wrong side of history; utterly out of touch with egalitarian and democratic ideals we parrot while (as a people) we remain unwilling to rationally face what we really are. Obama and the Congress well represent a nation that is simply not in touch with reality, and falling further behind in perceiving events and their implications as they accelerate.

I believe that we have inherited a political system that can be turned in the direction of meaningful and effective reform- that citizens of the USA could effectively take up our Constitutional power to turn our nation intelligently and resolutely toward the "right" side of history- toward reason, transparency, accountability, empathy, dignity, coexistence, focused effort, sustainable prosperity, and fulfillment.

However, we are much handicapped by a long-cultivated memes of exceptionalism, superiority, national entitlement, domestic apathy, and authoritarianism. We are conditioned to bow to a myth of Manifest Destiny in financial success. We have been taught to give scant regard to people and lands exploited for profit and consumer comforts and conveniences. And so true to form, our leadership well reflects the short-sighted politically childish collective view of the world past, present and future.

To ever get on the right side of history, USis need first to get on the right side of reason; we must achieve realistic collective situational awareness, before we will become proficient with informed participation in self-government. There is an abundance of fallibility, unaccountability, and corruption on display across the US political class. There is a deep decline (if not precipice) increasingly visible to all looking ahead, if we do not change course in the USA. If ever we have witnessed a teachable moment or era in this country, it's here before us right now.

The most basic understanding of history clearly teaches where accelerating militarisation of a declining imperialist society leads. Either we will face and reverse our enormous and mistaken foreign military adventures and rampages, become a more informed and enlightened society -resistant to deception in crisis- or, we will experience predictable, profound and irreversible verdicts of history, both moral and existential.

We still have a choice- but it's not a time-unlimited opportunity for learning and adaptation. If we direct our attention to present leadership and institutions for our salvation, we are going to be greatly disappointed. If we neglect to participate in informed and informative politics at every possible point and level of interface, and if we cannot summon the courage to resist authoritarianism and exploitation at personal risk, then we have no hope in the USA of getting right with reality; on the "right side" of history.

For anyone inclined to join the Quakers in voicing the need to reduce Pentagon spending to your representatives:

http://www.fcnl.org/index.htm

Tsunami message time...

I agree Lingum. I keep having a vision of Obummer suddenly realizing that those people who are in the streets are his base, was his base--sorry--, and that if he is going to restore sanity as WJM suggested, he will have to, right this minute, change CHANGE his own course and risk death at the hands of whoever has been chosen to take him out if he goes against the grain of the Whorpocracy.

Apparently think tanking, tanks your thinking, when a sentence like this one pops out.

"Getting on the right side of history requires disinvesting in wars as the tools for democracy and investing in tools for peaceful democratic change instead."

Wars as tools for democracy?

Talk about regurgitating the quintessential neocon frame!

This author, really needs to do some scrambling, to get on the right side of truth.

Government spending on stuff like healthcare, education or a free press would be way more efficient and productive than spending on military stuff, but a lot of the spending would need to be distributed to lots of individual people and not concentrated in the hands of a few; and the effects of the spending would also be distributed, helping many instead of increasing power for a few. Military might is about concentration of physical power, through technology that increases the power effect itself, and organisation of people that multiplies this power. Education, healthcare, being informed and so on, all of these are the opposite of concentration of power. People and organisations who want to concentrate power in their hands don't like things that distribute it. Even this simple pressure is often enough to create kingdoms and empires; but if you add to this the worship of individual power and religious belief in individuals responsibility, you'll get something more dangerous.

During dinner last night, I made the observation that my 28-year-old daughter sharing our table had only known a nation whose most visible foreign ploicy was its killing of and waging wars on others--She's NEVER known the USA at peace. Ask yourself, When was the last time the USA wasn't engaged in some form of warfare since WW2? If Economic War is included, then the conclusion is that the USA has NEVER been at peace since its involvement in WW2. And now, the USA is escalating the Class War on its own polity. Qaddafi's violence waged against his countryfolk is more direct, but differs only in substancee to how commonfolk here are assaulted.

The USA's been wrong for decades--lifetimes--indeed, for most of its history.

During WW2 we called ourselves as "the arsenal of democracy" today we are better described as the "arsenal of Corpocracy / Plutocracy." Trillions wasted on neo-Imperial wars of diversion and war profiteering to benefit whom? The Fortune 500.

This article is so right and accordingly so passe as to hurt.
It is like saying sweep the floor when the house is long burnt down.
The military budget of the USA does not need to be pared, it must be eradicated. It is for an entirely discredited institution as is the country that has made it. Nobody in his right mind will assert he can distinguish between the USArmy and the USAmerica.
Strange how language enables the meaning of such as: It is the USA that is on the wrong side of history. Various cultures take heed of these features of language, regarding them as more than accident. All poets do. There is something in it just as it should now serve as a goad to US citizens.
A new beginning is required. It is not so much a revolution that is required. Changing the leader or people in authority is just so much more of the same under a new name. It is a re-volition that is required; a new hope; a new inspiration. As always, square one is here and easily recognised. It does not include the USA per se. Take it or leave it. Take it and be great and so grasp what you can control. Leave it and be a great failure, as to be controlled is to be a fool. The former means radically increasing the independence of the States and the latter means the United States/White House/ Pentagon/ Wall Street/Dollar and all the rest of the corrupt pile. Perforce and sadly, my money is on the latter. As indicated by this article it is already ahead by a lap and street mile. My hope is that this will suddenly change. After all it has happened and hope springs eternal!
The cliché captures it, for the world needs it to happen and will make it happen. It is happening now. The imposition if self destructive stupidity that is the USA is an intolerable unnatural imposition on our planet that goes against the grain of Creation.
If I may borrow from the US culture in order to emphasise my words may I just say for Christ's sake grow up. Change the foundations of your identity. You will then know what it is to be heroic.

The 0bama administration is scrambling to cover its indecency.

Mubarak was a major ally and a recipient of arms, and all the administrations were pro-Mubarak until they could see that he would fall, and way after it should have been obvious. Hillary Clinton mouthed platonicisms about free speech while protester Ray McGovern

The myth of "moderate Arab states" of the west has been intrinsic to apologias for killings and oppression throughout the region.

It's hard to believe that Presidents Bush I and Clinton both lowered military spending significantly. That was the "peace dividend," now forgotten.