printSaid Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address to the nation: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. … we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.”
And that was then.
Nevertheless, Mitt Romney (“I will insist on a military so powerful no one would ever think of challenging it”), and Rick Santorum (“I will not cut one penny out of military spending”) both decry the “gutting” of the military by Obama. They are following a not-so proud tradition. A “former president George W. Bush told his Argentine counterpart Nestor Kirchner, ‘The best way to revitalize the economy is war, and the US has grown stronger with war.'”
“In 2009 alone,” reports RT, “the United States was responsible for almost half of the world’s total military spending – 46 per cent, or 712 billion US dollars. Since then, the figures have only grown, to the point that American military spending now exceeds that of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined. The US has more than 700 military bases in 130 countries around the world.”
Wikipedia confirms that assessment.
The looming dollar collapse will put a stake into the heart of our lumbering empire. It can’t come soon enough. Too bad it will wipe out the middle class in the process.
Many of us have read this story years ago when Ron Paul first put it out a couple of years ago. Thank you for publishing it in an easy to read format; that’s the only way anyone will read it. Almost everyone I know laughs at me when I tell them that we have a WW2 military when the rest of the world is prepared for WW3. (Big ships vs small and fast missile boats) or Generation four warfare, even though we’ve been fighting G-4 since 1950. Plus what you’ve written above. Our biggest fear should be that if we default and our money is no good, how will we be able to buy the fuel to bring them home? Makes you wonder how many Toyota’s can be made from an aircraft carrier.
Of the 5 major party candidates for Global Fuhrer, only one has actually served in the military (yes, it is the “America hating” Ron Paul).
Here is what America-hating Eisenhower said on April 1953 in his famous “Cross of Iron” speech:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech
Susan Eisenhower (granddaughter) on her grandfather’s legacy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/14/AR2011011404915.html
Interestingly enough, she not only talks about the waste of war but also about excessive consumption in the present as the expense of future generations – how else does one define the simultaneous cutting of Social Security Taxes and the expansion of Medicare/Unemployment “benefits”???
The Federal Government, limited as it is SUPPOSED to be by The Constitution, has few responsibilities, but must recognize virtually unlimited Individual Rights inherent to an Individual’s existence.
One of, I believe, the most important obligations of the Federal Government is to protect the Citizens from aggression / attack / war by other nations, tribal groups, anti-capitalist political forces / outside religious extremists / tyrants, dictators, etc.
It is in that context that I am not opposed to the Military. I am, like Ron Paul, opposed to unrestricted expansion, engagement, and spending.
We cannot be everything to everyone.
I do believe the “BULLETS vs BREAD” trade-offs can be workable if the FED GOV would remove itself from those un-Constitutional activities in which it has inserted itself.
Concerning G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 Warfare, please read:
http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/view_online.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil%2Fpdffiles%2FPUB632.pdf
It is up to us, U.S.Citizens / States’s Citizens, to make the Fed Gov prove its motives and justifications for warfare against other entities. Demand proof – you have the authority and power to do so.