America is at a turning point. Through profligate spending, lack of financial accountability, procrastination, corruption, and political dysfunction, we are facing some hard choices.
The Republicans, now owned by the Tea Party, refuse to consider raising taxes regardless of the need. That leaves us with only one option, cutting programs. Fair enough; some need cutting.
The program, however, that is off the table to these ideologues is the Department of Defense—the more than $525 billion we spend each year to wage war, develop sophisticated weapon systems, and support veterans and the 700 bases we have worldwide. This amounts to $60 million every hour.
In this era of austerity, our budgetary choices become clearer. Do we continue to spend our tax dollars on more and better armaments or do we take these same limited dollars and spend them on school teachers, infrastructure, healthcare, environmental protection, disaster relief, poverty and scholarship programs, or economic incentives for research and development?
Which do we do? We can’t do both.
Do we continue our foreign policy based on military intimidation or do we decide to lead by example? Do we continue our military mindset of perpetual war, or do we invest our tax dollars in fostering peace and goodwill? Do we overemphasize “might” or do we replace it with “right”?
Since World War II, we’ve been in Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Grenada, Bosnia, Iraq twice, Afghanistan, Libya, and probably in others we don’t know about. How many wars and how many more trillions of dollars are we going to spend before we admit that war begets war? How long is it going to take for our leaders to realize that soldiers are not “expendable”? How long is it going to require for the Christians among us to understand that killing is an abomination?
No one who understands foreign policy would ever support getting rid of a capable military. Neither would anyone who understands our national financial situation disagree that the Department of Defense needs to be reorganized, reprioritized, re-moralized, and put on a diet. Our country, flirting with bankruptcy, can no longer afford the luxury of a runaway military. Those days are over.
Hard times are not all bad, however. They force individuals and countries to make the hard decisions that have been too long ignored. The fog lifts and the truth stares us down, forcing us to decide who we are and what we think most important.
Do we choose a future based on fear of the unknown, or do we decide to return to our core beliefs in the common good, common sense, mutual respect, and tolerance that made us great? Our decisions today will determine what kind of world our children will live in tomorrow.
I think you might find this website most interesting. It allows the user to plug in the geographic/county/city/state/political district and see how much Department of Defense funds are generated there.
Plug in your info and see what comes up. It’s an eye-opener and makes one ask if this money couldn’t be used for something more valuable.
