I know I'm a broken record on this, but it is amazing, fantastic, criminal how much money we waste on so-called "national defense." The intelligence operation alone costs us up to $66 billion every year. Nobody can really be sure. Just let that figure roll around in your head for a minute. You think the CIA is this expensive? Oh, no. The CIA accounts for only about $10 billion. The rest goes to the Pentagon. And like almost everything Pentagon, there's no way in hell they can tell you what they actually spent all this money on. These are the guys who lose, that is, misplace, can't find, billions of dollars remember.
The only politician I've found with the guts to speak out against the annual Pentagon rape is Barney Franks, and what he proposes--a 25 percent cut--is an excellent start. But that ain't gonna happen, despite the fact that almost half of the American people think the Pentagon gets too much money. All our Republican friends (and the miserable blue dog Democrats) who are rending their garments and beating their breasts about the awful government spending . . . well, you don't hear one peep out them about the horrendous waste the military visits upon we paying sheep every year, year after year.
Does anyone else savor the irony of the Obama administration's boast that they only increased the Pentagon budget by 4 percent this year?
2 comments:
We cannot defend against any possible violence, even though the military-industrial complex says we can.
We think in terms of wars, we dream of wars and Manhattan projects, we idolize World War II which is long over.
Our idolatry of the Good War without a counter-balancing critique of the downsides of war has left us with bright minds who can imagine nothing but war.
You're absolutely correct, of course. With you I deplore how militarism has become the only way of life and thinking in this country. Love of war has seeped through our pores; it's part of our DNA. The people who speak out for peace and against the Pentagon and its nefarious works are regarded as kooks at best and traitors deserving death at worst.
It is such a waste to see all the talent and brain power in abject servitude to Mars, a god of insatiable appetites.
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