Record Defense Budget of $448 Billion Passed

by paradox

The United States continued a long tradition of squandering an unbelievable fortune on its military-defense establishment today, passing a record $448 billion Pentagon budget with an extra $70 billion for the great successes of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Liberals are not automatically pacifists. Only the most naïve charlatan would put faith in the goodness of man, so defense and deterrence is of course necessary. Currently the Unites States is threatened by no one except for some piqsqueeks our war felon president thinks waging nation-state war will eliminate, so we are embroiled in that futile, bloody, vastly expensive hellhole of Iraq.

The United States could easily defend all of its strategic global interests with a third of the current budget. We have no territorial enemies whatsoever and our nuclear attack submarine force can shut down any major power’s trade in a day.

This society has gone hopelessly military, blinded to the incredible potential wasted every year on instruments of death. We proclaim a need for security yet lie to our allies, give the finger to anyone else and kill, torture and maim precisely as we please. We will never have security as long as we continue to do so. Human security isn’t bought or brutally coerced, it’s earned by respect and peace.

In the few times that won't work, $175 billion annually would be more than enough to cover it.

It’s as if we don’t have schools that desperately need funds, that 48 million Americans don’t have insurance, that our seniors live in fear every month because of drug costs, that millions are hungry, that veterans don’t need help, that everything is so peachy darn and dandy that we can spend half a trillion on death machines.

We have seriously lost our way. After spending half a trillion this year, will we be any more secure in 2007? We could have spent a quarter of that and become independent of middle east oil in 10 years. How long will we insist on continuing with this insanity?