A New Way of Looking at Defense Spending

From the Examiner.com
by Pam Brammann

Americans Are Questioning Defense Spending
http://www.examiner.com/article/americans-questioning-us-defense-spending

  One might feel sorry for Chuck Hagel. As Secretary of Defense, he has to go to Congress, the representatives of the citizenry (well, ideally), and convince them to give him more money for a military that is already bloated and so far ahead of the whole world that it's not even funny anymore. He has to tell them why they need to grant contracts to defense suppliers, contractors, and manufacturers that fund their political campaigns. All while most Americans are either out of work, or underemployed. All while the country's structures and institutions are crumbling. All while the Constitution is being taken apart, piece by piece to bolster our feeling of safety, for the DoD.
 
   Hagel is doing what he or anyone else that has sat in the Secretary's chair has to do. It's their job. They couldn't get nominated unless they promise to grow the DoD.
 
  I'm not even sure what we're trying to defend anymore.

http://www.pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison




  What if we used the Defense Department funds to start an infrastructure jobs program? Think of it. We need to make the country stronger. We need to have better water systems, transportation, communications, electric grid, the "whole shebang" (looking at that, could the term "shebang" be considered sexist?...sounds erotic. I'm a sick man...).

  How about military dollars spent on R&D for green energy and renewables so we don't have to fund the guys that hate us and go to war on our freedoms? You know, the guys that "hate us for our freedoms"? You might think I mean the Arab states, and I do. But I include the entire fossil fuel industry, here and abroad.

    Rather than a military "jobs program" built on bases maintained in voting districts as pork spending, or the hundreds of bases overseas, we could make the argument that we are safer and better defended when our people are working, when our services and our infrastructure works, and when our cities are not imploding from neglect.

   Right now, if I were looking to attack the United States from outside, I would be able to rally my troops by telling them, "What do we have to fear? Look at them. They are a decaying and dying culture." Our own people are getting restless and angry.

  If we could take half of the Defense budget and put it toward bringing our country into the 21st century, along with other stimulus money targeted at work that needs to be done instead of lining the pockets of donors, we could turn the economy around, make the nation more efficient, put people to work, and have the side effect of making our country not look weak and ineffective to the rest of the world. We could be an example instead of a bully. And we'd still be outspending anyone else on the globe with the remainder of the budget. By a long shot.
                                                 

But I'm just dreaming. Ain't gonna happen.