cutting back on the military budget

Cutting Back on the Bloated, Wasteful U.S. Military Budget… Who Says We Can’t?

 Our Nation spends $1 Billion Dollars of our hard earned tax dollars on the military budget each year.  We as Americans have been brain washed and lulled into believing that this money is spoken for, untouchable, off limits and not to be discussed.  Some reliable sources have suggested and even proven that one quarter of every dollar in military spending in the U.S. is unaccounted for, wasted or misspent.  And we are not supposed to question this—just accept it and go on to something else.  That is what CNN, MSNBC (which is supposed to be progressive), ABC, and even PBS & the BBC (for the most part) have proclaimed more than once right over the air ways on National TV & radio!!  Who Says we can’t cut the massive waste out of the military budget and bring the military spending into a more sustainable, realistic mode and make such spending work towards peace instead of the proliferation of war, armaments and destruction!!

The people who would question this position are NEVER asked to come on major TV or major radio programs or to be interviewed by the major publications with any kind of consistency. Many true progressives like me often question why we have to spend so much on the military in our quest to be the world’s policemen and policewomen; prop up White Supremacy; and dictate to foreign countries & foreign peoples how they should live…. {To me, this is really what the military intervention is all about.}  We have lost much of what the essence and temperament of what true democracy { within our own borders & around the world} is about.  We have a very violent, destructive and misguided culture and even celebrities like Danny Glover, Denzel Washington, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Will Smith & Jada Picket-Smith  and Cicely Tyson are beginning to speak up and speak out..  If we could cut the military budget by ten % a year for three years, we would have enough savings to get the homeless off the streets and provide health care for every American. We could stop the insane process of fining North Americans for not having health care!!

France and Germany don’t have the kind of exorbitant military budget that the United States has. Neither does England, Sweden, Portugal or Spain.  Why is it that the United States has to take up the mantel and provide military cover for the entire world in our endless quest to spread our version of so-call democracy around the planet? Why is it our mission as American tax payers to sustain and expand U.S. Empire? Our own democracy becomes weaker and weaker as our tax base is stretched to the brink of breaking while we spend more and more on military, national security (as we defend against the underhanded misdeed we carry out in foreign lands) and the so-called intelligence network. Do you feel any more secure with all that money going to defense and the intelligence network? Do you support the military exploits of our troops around the world? Do you even really know what they are doing? Do you REALLY feel we are getting our money’s worth? People are slowly seeing the light that this just isn’t working.

It has been proven by leading psychologist, sociologist & psychiatrists that raw & blatant shows of force and power, such as the U.S. military has exemplified in various parts of the world over the years find the response to that military force to be hostility, anti-social behavior such as looting, resentment, hatred, internal terrorism & retaliatory sacrifice bombings. Often such military occupation and Empire building & expansion also divides neighborhoods into supports of the occupation and those who oppose it—dividing families and creating deep-seated hatreds, resentments and animosities.  

In the U.S., our schools are falling apart. Our students are getting dumber. Our small businesses go without the needed Capital to expand, hire new people and grow. Our infrastructure (roads, bridges and city, state and federal buildings) is crumbling and weakening. Our job base is turning into a prison-industrial base. Millions have no health care. There is a growing homeless & Home-Challenged {People who are victimized by foreclosures,  not being able to afford homes & other such housing problems}  problem. Yet our military continues to fly the flag, suck up our money and no one who is extended much media clout or stature makes any consistent challenges to the basic status quo & Established Order rule that the military budget cannot be cut, tampered with or made more adherent to basic competent spending rules & budgets. Thank GOD this picture is changing. I strongly disagree with this hands-off contention as regards to the U.S. military budget. I suggest that the cuts I described above be made and I think it is high time we stopped our military expansion and occupation around the world (there are over 100 U.S. military basis around the globe). It is time we bring our troops home to be retrained as to how to rebuild OUR nation, not someone else’s.

Solution: Cut the military budget 10 percent for three years in a row and use the savings to help Americans in and on our land. Feed the homeless, create jobs, give desperately needed Capital to our small businesses, support small towns, cities and municipalities with needed money for infrastructure, better schools and qualified teachers and stop over taxing the middle class and the poor to pay for the foreign folly of a few crabby generals, international war criminals and Established Order henchmen who head up the Pentagon and who dominate the Republican Party