There is a lot of talk of late, and understandably so, about the world economic crisis, political instability in the Arab world, and of course the ongoing threat of terrorism. The economic situation in the United States has not been so serious since the days of the “Great Depression”, and sad to say, instead of getting better it seems to be growing worse. First started with the blame game, the “who dunnit”, we found out where it originated, slapped a few hands of the greedy guys on Wall street, and handed the helm back into their hands to carry on as they had been doing! But hey, they own the White House so there is not much you can say!..Or is there?
But one of the culprits that has not been touched on all that much as being an economical drain, is the military budget, which has grown in disproportional levels thanks to our “war on terrorism” and military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and the many other serious situations that have developed in a number of Arab nations. This money drain is a significant sum of money that the American tax payers are paying to foot the bill for playing “policeman” to the world! Here is the estimate of total spending requested for 2012 taken from Wikipedia: 1030-1415 trillion dollars! Wow, if we could cut back on even half of that, we may even be able to balance the budget!
The United States and allies after WWII did a great favor for both Japan and Germany. General McArthur helped draw up a new constitution for Japan which did not allow them to create an army of aggression but rather one limited to self-defense. Germany was split into two different nations, one occupied by the communists and the other by NATO, thus Germany was not so militarily active besides protecting themselves from the threat they posed each other. Since that time, both nations began to prosper and had become financial powers in their own right.
Granted defense is necessary, and in the case of counter-terrorism, America needs to be prepared, but to go beyond borders and to police the world, continually pouring trillions of dollar into wars, money that we do not have, is totally superfluous in my opinion and a great waste. So in the end, who wins a war? I believe that in a war, everyone loses. Lives are lost, money is wasted, and not all that much is changed, in fact more people are getting stressed and the hate and anger level is on the rise, not decline which only heightens security concerns!
Now lets take a look around you, China who has a rather large military budget, has not used their military to invade or participate in the international policing, has been prospering! Not only, did you know that they are slowly buying the United States and that without firing a shot are economically taking over? If things continue as they are now going, China is set to become the worlds greatest super power!
Oh my! Rusty just got a bit political this time around, but I just had to say it. You may not agree, or maybe you do, let me know down below.
