Consider economics of guns vs. butter
A long time ago we used Samuelson's textbook in college economics class. I still remember the guns (military spending) or butter (other spending like roads, dams, health care etc.), and that each nation must decide which to put more or less into from the budget.
I also recall President Eisenhower's warning about the military/industrial complex and its growing power. Perhaps a better name for what it has become now would be the military/industrial/corporate/Congressional complex. No event in recent history has made it so clear how completely Congress has been bought out by corporations than the recent health care bills coupled with the corporate financial companies nearly bankrupting the U.S.
In just the past 11 months the U.S. medical industries have spent over $200 million to lobby Congress against a public option while discarding most of our sickest citizens off their insurance and on to the roles of the federal government.
Our military has bases in 120 countries. Our military consumes 43 cents of every government dollar spent. Japan spends $350 for every man, woman and child in their country on their military; Germany $540; and the U.S. $2,700 for each per year.
Our government creates new boogeymen to keep the money flowing to the military manufacturers and multinational corporations that ship jobs overseas by the millions as Congress signs one "free trade" agreement after another allowing us to be further disadvantaged.
Vietnam, Bin Laden, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and lately Iran are all boogeymen set up to divert American's attention from the real, internal threats that Eisenhower so accurately warned us about over 50 years ago. No foreign entity could have possibly done us more harm than we have allowed our own Congress, presidents, and home grown multinational corporations to do to us.
Jim Peterson
Hoffman Estates