THE Single Most Important Issue Facing This Country- And None Of Them Will Touch It

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Hyper-Militarism

World Wide Military Expenditures:

World- $1100 billion

Rest-of-World (all but USA)- $500 billion

United States- $623 billion

The Bipartisan Consensus on U.S. Military Spending
by Glenn Greenwald


Global Security has taken the Fiscal Year 2008 U.S. budget and prepared a new chart illustrating the most significant and under-discussed political fact in the United States, one that substantially affects every other issue:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm



Our military spending exceeds the rest of the world's spending combined, and we spend almost 10 times what the second-place country, China, spends. "Only" about $150 billion of the total U.S. amount is attributable to the two active wars we're fighting, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, even if one wants to excludes those amounts, the basic picture remains the same. Nor do these amounts include the billions of dollars in military aid we give to fund the armies of other countries, such as Israel and Egypt, which alone comprise substantial portions of those countries' defense budgets.

And this gap between us and the rest of the world has widened considerably over the last 10 years. That's true because our own military spending, in absolute terms, has increased wildly during that time:





And it's also true because, even though we were already spending many times more than everyone else in the world during the mid-1990s, the explosion in our military spending over the last 10 years has far outpaced the rest of the world, resulting in a larger gap than ever before:





http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/02/military_spending/index.html

Hillary Clinton:

"To help our forces recover from Iraq and prepare them to confront the full range of twenty-first-century threats, I will work to expand and modernize the military so that fighting wars no longer comes at the expense of deployments for long-term deterrence, military readiness, or responses to urgent needs at home."

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20071101faessay86601-p20/hillary-rodham-clinton/security-and-opportunity-for-the-twenty-first-century.html

John Edwards:

I will double the budget for recruitment and raise the standards for the recruitment pool so that we can reduce our reliance on felony waivers and other exceptions. In addition, I will increase our investment in the maintenance of our equipment for the safety of our troops.

Barack Obama:

To renew American leadership in the world, we must immediately begin working to revitalize our military. A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace. . . .

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86401/barack-obama/renewing-american-leadership.html

[Mythsaje]

1. Ironic, really, since you can't fight criminals with military might.

Oh, you can try, but it doesn't work the way some think it should.

Of course, I know Edwards wants to increase the number of elite forces available, and possibly curtail the size of the regularly military. I happen to agree with this plan, since a leaner, more highly-trained force can be used in situations where traditional forces are of little or no use.

Our military IS damaged, and as much as we don't need it to be as large as it has become, to say so openly at this point would be tantamount to political suicide. Millions of Americans STILL think we can win the "war on terror" by shooting or bombing all the terrorists.

The fact is, this is sheer stupidity--or ignorance. Traditional military operations cannot work against an enemy that is nearly impossible to identify until they act. For that you need intelligence on the ground, reliable informants, and a swift response team capable of precision hits that can either capture the target, or eliminate it if capture isn't possible.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

5. A classic essay on that point

http://www.quaker.org/chestnuthill/eahmed.htm

From 1998.

[Mr Rabble]

6. Wow, you've bought into it hook, line, and sinker.

Ive got an even better idea:

How about we simply stop killing people and stealing their resources.

No excuses, just stop.

I will wager every last penny I have; every asset I own, I will give you if that simple act does not stop 75% percent of world violence.

We don't need a stronger military. We don't need better forces, or better weapons, or better planning, or intelligence.

We need to stop killing people and backing governments who kill people.

[Mythsaje]

8. Well, of course.

No one EVER did any of those things before the United States appeared on the scene.

:eyes:

We will DAMN well need the ability to protect ourselves. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fucking moron.

[Truth2Tell]

13. Nice straw man

I suspect there are very few people on DU who believe that we don't "need the ability to protect ourselves," and I haven't seen anyone suggesting that on this thread. Believe it or not it may be possible to defend ourselves on less than 700 billion dollars per year, especially if we stop using so much of that to breed new enemies.

And this post doesn't even cover the damage we do with our "off the books" intelligence budget.

We are bankrupting ourselves morally and financially. This idiocy is literally killing America.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

16. Let's just say

the military budget is cut in half. That would still leave spending at 5 times the next highest (China) military budget.

Most of what passes for Defense has little to do with protection but more to do with imperialism. Well and to keep bloated budgets for the contractors and their benefactors flowing.

[rhett o rick]

22. But we can't protect ourselves if we go bankrupt. nm

[Mr Rabble]

29. You do seem to be missing the point.

Just think it through.

What conflict or violence have we not started ourselves since the end of WW2?

What violence is not a direct response to our own violence?

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. I think the list would include

Chinese civil war, post WW2 (though you can argue it's a continuation from before the war)
China Tibet war
Korean War
Rwandan genocide
France Vietnam war
Nigerian Biafran war
Pakistan Bangladesh war
Congo war

The list will go on. There are more where the American involvement, at first, is tangential.

[Mr Rabble]

32. Rwanda? Korean war?

Are you suggesting that our involvement in Korea was justified somehow?

And to clarify, I was asking about violence that we were involved in that we didnt perpetuate. Of course there is violence outside of the American system.

[muriel_volestrangler]

36. North Korea invaded South Korea; the UN authorised the support of the south

so yes, I'd say the involvement was justified.

What was your question about Rwanda?

I did think you were still talking about all violence in the world - as in "if that simple act does not stop 75% percent of world violence". I would say that figure is too high.

[JackRiddler]

46. Rwanda?

Don't you think it's a bit strange how the U.S. hidden policy apparatus armed, funded and trained the Rwandan Patriotic Front in the territory of its Ugandan client, before the RPF proceeded to start the rebellion in Rwanda? Or did you miss that?

Meanwhile, the French had been doing the same for the Habiriyama regime, and later also sent special forces in a direct military intervention to secure the retreat to the Congo of the Hutu Power forces who carried out the genocide.

Sounds like the old imperial powers backing sides in some 19th century proxy war. But nah.

Tell me, are you here to sell the usual mythology about how "the West stood by" while those Africans spontaneously started killing each other in that way they are wont by their underdeveloped nature to do (and will always do, until the white man's burden is once again shouldered by a responsible, liberal imperialism)?

[muriel_volestrangler]

47. Bill Clinton was fighting a proxy war with François Mitterrand?

That's a new one on me. So I think I'll go with 'nah' for your hypothesis.

No, I'm not saying anything about "underdeveloped nature". It's one of many civil wars around the world, involving appalling brutality. But I'm not blaming Bill Clinton or the USA for it.

[JackRiddler]

48. Ha ha ha. That strawman is worthy of the 9/11 "debunker" crying out:

"Are you saying Bush FLEW those planes into the towers?!"

No, "Clinton" did not have a proxy war with "Mitterand."

Portions of the U.S. imperial apparatus had a war by proxy in the 1990s against France and French interests, all over Africa, continuing to this day in the Congo. That is not a hypothesis, it is the history known to anyone who bothers to inform themselves.

I'm sure in 1994 Mitterand knew all about what French imperialism was up to - small-time powers like France need to keep a tighter and more centralized control over their operations. And it's not like "Socialists" had not already been part of coalitions that supported genocide as a response to the aspirations for independence of the Vietnamese and Algerian peoples. So the decades of merely propping up the old regime in Rwanda may have seemed minor by comparison.

Of course, Mitterand as the C-in-C would have had to give direct approval on the order to INTERVENE with actual French troops on BEHALF of the Hutu Power forces that COMMITTED the genocide. (Sorry, this stuff requires caps, because although it was all over the European press at the time, for some reason a different history has been written about "how the West stood by." No, I'm not going to look it up for you, because if you weren't aware of it at the time, or if you haven't actually studied the history to know something this basic and undisputed, you probably shouldn't be expressing an opinion.)

As for Clinton, who says he needed to know anything about one out of probably more than 100 covert operations being run out of the mixed state/corporate U.S. "intelligence" complex at any given time?

Kagame's official site reads:
"He served as a senior officer in the Ugandan army between 1986 and 1990 during which time he attended a staff and command course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, USA. In October 1990, Paul Kagame returned to Rwanda after thirty years in exile to lead the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) in the struggle for the liberation of Rwanda."
http://www.gov.rw/government/president/personal.html

His opposition agrees:

http://paulkagame.blogspot.com/2006/11/who-is-paul-kagame.html
"In October 1990, while Kagame was participating in a military training program at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the RPF invaded Rwanda. Only two days into the invasion, Rwigema was killed, making Kagame the military commander of the RPF. Despite initial successes, a force of French, Belgian, Rwandan, and Zairan soldiers forced the RPF to retreat. A renewed invasion was attempted in late 1991, but also had limited success."

Um, hm, Kansas... does this sound like the U.S. was supporting the RPF? Of course.

In 1990 and until 1994, is the RPF fighting the French-backed Rwandan government? Why, yes.

So what do you call that? A proxy war.

Is the incoming Clinton aware of this small portion of U.S. worldwide operations? Dunno. It's not like presidents have actually been responsible for most of foreign "policy" (operations of war and plunder) since, oh, I'll be charitable and say Nixon. Clinton's a smart guy and I'm sure he figured out at some point what a few of the heads on the far-reaching U.S. octopus were doing in Africa at the time.

[JackRiddler]

50. Here's an expose on the French role from an implicitly pro-US position

(I've decided to look up a couple of links for third parties who may be reading this.)

This link leads to an excellent and yet totally one-sided history of how France intervened in Rwanda to assist the genocide:

"1990-1994: The genocide and war in Rwanda"
http://libcom.org/history/1990-1994-the-genocide-and-war-in-rwanda

It's one-sided because the RPF is presented as the good guys who happened to wander in from Uganda. The U.S. role in creating the RPF in the first place is cut out altogether.

For a one-sided version of the U.S. role, deemphasizing the French, see here:

"The US was behind the Rwandan Genocide:
Rwanda: Installing a US Protectorate in Central Africa"
by Michel Chossudovsky
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO305A.html

The truth is, the two powers are both responsible for aspects of what happened in Rwanda -- both intervened, both exacerbated and neither cared for stopping the genocide, both acted only on behalf of imperial interests. This is as one might expect, given the prior history of the Great Powers.

I shall quote only from the first account, because it already suffices to demolish the myth of "Western indifference" at what happened in Rwanda.

France intervened in 1994 to help the Interhamwe militias, after already doing much to prop up the Habyarimana government in its former colony:

France arms and trains the killers
Habyarimana would soon have fallen to the the well armed and trained RPF but for French military intervention. In October 1990 French forces seized Rwanda's international airport and turned the tide against the rebels. The battle with the RPF was used as a pretext to arrest up to 8,000 people in the capital Kigali, mostly Tutsis, and to launch pogroms in the countryside.

“There were beatings, rapes and murders. Rwandan intelligence distributed Kalashnikovs to municipal authorities in selected villages. They gathered with ruling party militants, most of whom carried staves, clubs and machetes... they went from field to field in search of Tutsis, killing thousands... "Civilians were killed, as in any war" said Colonel Bernard Cussac, France's ranking military commander in Kigali.” (Frank Smyth, The Australian 10.6.94)

French arms and military advisors poured into the country. In the following two years the Rwandan army grew from 5,000 to 30,000. The BBC's Panorama program said that the Rwandan Government 'thanked France for help which was "invaluable in combat situations" and recommended 15 French soldiers for medals after one engagement in 1991.' (Reuters World Service 21.8.95)

Then, in 1994:

In 1994 the Rwandan regime was rapidly crumbling before a rebel army – the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) - which, as it advanced, was putting a stop to the genocide in one region of the country after another. The speed of the rebels' advance meant life or death for tens of thousands of Tutsis. France intervened to create 'safe havens', supposedly to protect the lives of civilians from the majority Hutu group from Tutsi revenge. In reality they were attempting to slow the rebels' advance and protecting the remains of the Rwandan regime from them.

As it turned out the French could not save the regime but did save the organisers of the genocide from capture. The 'safe havens' became a base from which these people engineered the flight of almost two million Hutus into neighbouring countries, where they have since languished in disease-ridden squalor under the control of the soldiers and militias of the fallen Government.

In Germany at the time, I remember it was specifically the German uproar within the EU at what France was doing to extend the genocide in Rwanda that led to the withdrawal of the French force, albeit too late to prevent the next chapter of the tragedy in Congo.

[mike_c]

41. I suspect you know little about the damage the MIC has done to America...

...and the rest of the world. By not standing down the war time economy after WWII the U.S. became one of the top violence brokers on the planet. This is NOT about "protecting ourselves." It is about imperialism, economic control, and greed. THAT is the primary purpose our massive military and its support industries are used for. Not for defending our constitution. Not for defending Americans. They are used as the sharp end of an evil foreign policy, and they are used for that end in our names.

[creeksneakers2]

54. Protect ourselves from what?

Nobody wants to militarily attack us. Nobody has anything like the capability to do it, even if we only had a tenth the size of military.

We protect the rest of the world but need no protection ourselves.

[MADem]

28. The Chinese and Russians will pick up where we left off. You DO realize that, yes? nt

[Mythsaje]

45. I sure do...n/t

[Mr Rabble]

53. How on earth does tha metter here?

What you are saying is that "if there is death and destruction it should be our death and destruction"?

I must not be understanding your response.

[JackRiddler]

52. Oh really?

Are they going to have quite the same combination of power and stupidity, to do things like invading countries on the other side of the planet? Please.

China, Russia, and many other powers have gradually learned at least one historical lesson: No one gets to play superpower and impose their will. Foreign wars and other imperial adventures have costs. They can be lost.

The US, UK, and to a lesser degree France still need to learn that. They think they have a moral right and permanent ability to dispatch troops anywhere. Which is why the US is regarded as by far the greater threat to world peace by those countries who are not to be directly threatened by Russia or China.

Anyway, if all humanity doesn't get its shit together finally and put an end to the millennia of armed conflict among nations, there will one day be a new world war that makes a joke of the entire human venture.

[lostnfound]

30. I strongly suspect the majority of the expense is driven by profit

The empire has eaten our democracy, and it isn't out of a concern to protect its citizens, but it is driven by lust for total control over the planet (we need military bases in nearly every country in the world?) and by the machine that turns certain well-connected people into billionaires.

I agree that it would be political suicide to say so, more because of corporate media reaction to such a comment, than because of the public. Yes, the public might fall under the spell of Rudy's "9-11, 9-11" chant, but you could conceivably awaken them from the nightmare with the right message; but not when they would be exposed to constant hyping of the pro-empire forces in the media.

I don't disagree with Edwards comment necessarily, but in my opinion the comment is focusing on a few trees at the edges while ignoring the forest.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

[Mr Rabble]

3. Here is the money quote-

A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace. .


Yeah, that seems to be working really well for us.

All of these people. All of them. They are totally insane.

[wundermaus]

4. Outstanding post!

You Hit the Bull's Eye!

[Generator]

7. If they do, they die

Why rooting for Edwards is not really in his best interests.

[Truth2Tell]

9. Strongly Recommended

When will we wake the fuck up? This is suicidal.

[GreenArrow]

10. Kucinich touches it.

As does Gravel. None of the rest of them, will get near it.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

11. Yes

Other than Kucinich I've yet to hear a single candidate breath a whisper about cutting the Military Budget and putting that money towards badly needed social welfare programs starting with Universal Health Care.

[creeksneakers2]

55. Hillary and Dodd

both promised to take on "the out of control defense industry." That's a start.

[MADem]

12. This isn't news. Go back to Eisenhower's little speech about the

Military - Industrial - Congressional - Complex.

He shoulda left that third word in, really...it mighta shamed the baaastids a bit.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

15. It's old news

and kept off the radar.

You won't hear this on the nightly news or in many stump speeches:

...

The worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires. Its overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leased. The size of these holdings was recorded in the inventory as covering 687,347 acres overseas and 29,819,492 acres worldwide, making the Pentagon easily one of the world's largest landlords.

These numbers, although staggeringly big, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2005 Base Structure Report fails, for instance, to mention any garrisons in Kosovo (or Serbia, of which Kosovo is still officially a province) -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel built in 1999 and maintained ever since by the KBR corporation (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root), a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston.

The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq (106 garrisons as of May 2005), Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, even though the U.S. military has established colossal base structures in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian areas since 9/11. By way of excuse, a note in the preface says that "facilities provided by other nations at foreign locations" are not included, although this is not strictly true. The report does include twenty sites in Turkey, all owned by the Turkish government and used jointly with the Americans. The Pentagon continues to omit from its accounts most of the $5 billion worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases overseas, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure.

...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17123.htm

[MADem]

18. Oh, I have a sense of the scope. Make no mistake.

A few years back, DoD did an audit of what they couldn't find. It was the first time I saw the word TRILLIONS used with quite such a massive degree of frequency.

[Octafish]

21. Here's the Congressional part...

[MADem]

27. Bingo--Well played, that! Picture worth thousand words! nt

[IndyOp]

14. I think you are right and I think it is still useful to distinguish among the Top 3

as best we can. Edwards is acknowledging that the military has, for years, been used too often for situations for which they are not suited. He wants to create a "Marshall Corps" -- similar to Peace Corps -- but used to stabilize nations and provide humanitarian assistance. As long as the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If we created a new corps -- one without guns -- it would attract many people who currently join the military because they honestly want to do good and are lied to by our society until they believe that "soldier" = "hero" when, too often, it just doesn't.

John Edwards - Reengaging with the world

The tsunami that hit Southeast Asia in 2004, the troubled status of the government in Afghanistan, and the need for a functioning infrastructure in Iraq all have something in common: they present a new set of challenges for which the United States will need to prepare. In the coming years, we will most likely see an increasing need to stabilize weak and failing states and provide humanitarian assistance to the victims of disasters across the world.

These missions are demanding, dangerous, and expensive. They require a wide range of resources and sources of knowledge, from experts in water purification to medical technicians, judges to corrections officers, bankers to stock-market analysts. In most cases, the help of thousands of such specialists is required. Yet for years, the U.S. government has not been properly prepared for these kinds of missions. As a result, when these situations arise, the government turns repeatedly to the only existing institution with the required logistical capabilities and a sufficiently broad range of skills: the military. But the military lacks many of the resources that are required to conduct these missions successfully. To resolve these problems, Edwards will establish a Marshall Corps during his first year in office, named for our greatest secretary of state, General George Marshall. The Marshall Corps, patterned after the military reserves, will consist of at least 10,000 civilian experts who could be deployed abroad to serve in reconstruction, stabilization, and humanitarian missions. They will be on the frontline in the United States' reengagement with the world.

[slipslidingaway]

17. Only two candidates will touch this issue, I'll vote for the Democrat

another snip>>

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/02/military_spending/index.html

"...Nonetheless, it's still worth noting (as Matt Stoller recently documented) that despite all the incessant chatter about "change" and the intensity of election conflicts, our most significant, dubious policies -- the ones that actually shape what kind of country we are and how we are perceived around the world -- don't really get debated at all. Those who try to are quickly and widely dismissed as fringe, insane, angry, deranged "crazies."

It's a genuinely good thing that we continue to elect our leaders by voting, but one is remiss if one fails to take note of just how profoundly limited and lacking is the discourse that surrounds that process. There really is an almost complete, inverse relationship between a policy's significance and the level of debate to which it's subjected: that is, the more significant the policy is, the less political debate and media attention it receives. So not only do our most destructive policies continue regardless of the outcome of our elections, they continue without any real democratic deliberation at all."

[USA_1]

19. Excellent Post

But the Democrats have a history of refusing to utilize the best issues available to them in order to defeat Bush and the Republicans.

[stillcool]

20. this stuff is way over my head...

The DOD is an entity I can not begin to fathom...

II. More than 1000 US Bases and/or Military Installations
The main sources of information on these military installations (e.g. C. Johnson, the NATO Watch Committee, the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases) reveal that the US operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases Worldwide. In this regard, Hugh d’Andrade and Bob Wing's 2002 Map 1 entitled "U.S. Military Troops and Bases around the World, The Cost of 'Permanent War'", confirms the presence of US military personnel in 156 countries. The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries. In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide.

These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres. According to Gelman, who examined 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the Pentagon one of the largest landowners worldwide (Gelman, J., 2007).
http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/intervention/2007/0701worldwide.htm

US Department of Defense: Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap 2005-2030 (August 2005)
http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/intervention/2005/uavroadmap2005.pdf

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
BASE STRUCTURE REPORT
(A Summary of DoD's Real Property Inventory)
http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/intervention/2005/basestructurereport.pdf

[RedCappedBandit]

23. Wow. Those graphics are stunning.

K + R and bookmarked..

Edit: Ironic, really, that dipshit rethugs are so adamantly against taxes, and yet their pointless, tragic war is what costs us vastly more money than those things that we *should* be investing money in.

[autorank]

24. K*R Great post, great narrative with graphics.

Nobody will touch it now but soon... or we're doomed.

Thanks for the sig line idea (see below)

[dysfunctional press]

25. why do we still have troops in germany and japan?

we should close up the vast majority of our overseas bases, and bring the troops and equipment home, as part of a general downsizing and modernization of our armed forces.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

26. It is the siphoning of democracy from the people...

thank you for the OP K & R

[PA Democrat]

33. Does that $623 billion include all of the supplemental spending requests that Bush will demand for

Iraq? He has not included the true cost of funding his Iraq hellhole in the budget AFAIK since day one.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

34. The Trillion-Dollar Defense Budget Is Already Here

....

To estimate the size of the entire de facto defense budget, I gathered data for fiscal 2006, the most recently completed fiscal year, for which data on actual outlays are now available. In that year, the Department of Defense itself spent $499.4 billion. Defense-related parts of the Department of Energy budget added $16.6 billion. The Department of Homeland Security spent $69.1 billion. The Department of State and international assistance programs laid out $25.3 billion for activities arguably related to defense purposes either directly or indirectly. The Department of Veterans Affairs had outlays of $69.8 billion. The Department of the Treasury, which funds the lion’s share of military retirement costs through its support of the little-known Military Retirement Fund, added $38.5 billion. A large part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s outlays ought to be regarded as defense-related, if only indirectly so. When all of these other parts of the budget are added to the budget for the Pentagon itself, they increase the fiscal 2006 total by nearly half again, to $728.2 billion.

To find out how much of the government’s net interest payments on publicly held national debt ought to be attributed to past debt-funded defense spending requires a considerable amount of calculation. I added up all past deficits (minus surpluses) since 1916 (when the debt was nearly zero), prorated according to each year’s ratio of narrowly defined national security spending—military, veterans, and international affairs—to total federal spending, expressing everything in dollars of constant purchasing power. This sum is equal to 91.2 percent of the value of the national debt held by the public at the end of 2006. Therefore, I attribute that same percentage of the government’s net interest outlays in that year to past debt-financed defense spending. The total amount so attributed comes to $206.7 billion.

Adding this interest component to the previous all-agency total, the grand total comes to $934.9 billion, which is more than 87 percent greater than the Pentagon’s outlays alone.

If the additional elements of defense spending continue to maintain the same ratio to the Pentagon’s amount—and we have every reason to suppose they will—then in fiscal year 2007, through which we are now passing, the grand total spent for defense will be $1.028 trillion. I confirmed the rough accuracy of this forecast by adding up the government’s own estimates of fiscal 2007 outlays for the various additional defense-related items, obtaining a total of $987 billion—an amount only 4 percent less than my ratio-based estimate. Future defense-related supplemental appropriations for fiscal 2007, which would hardly be surprising, might easily bring the lower estimate up the higher one.

....

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1941

[OneBlueSky]

35. which, in turn, is a subset of THE most important issue facing this country . . .

influence and control of our government by corporations . . . also one that no one will touch -- except John Edwards . . .

[EFerrari]

37. I wonder if those numbers include the contractors' blood money. n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

38. It's expensive to "defend" an empire. Which is what usually ends them.

And, they usually become dependent on their client states.

The good news is that they all end.

[seemslikeadream]

39. Dr. Michael Parenti

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11635.htm

OCTOBER 9, 2002, VANCOUVER: Dr. Michael Parenti, one of North America's leading radical writers on U.S. imperialism and interventionism, fascism, democracy and the media, spoke to several hundred people at St. Andrews Wesley Church in Vancouver

[The2ndWheel]

40. The problem is that we live in an increasingly globalized world

but there is no globalized military force. The US Government plays the role of globe cop, but it just isn't enough obviously.

We have increasing economic integration around the world, but there isn't the same kind of integration politically, or militarily. The EU is forming through that type of integration though. The united states of America are already integrated economically, politically, and militarily.

Just like everything else, once everyone is paying their fair share, the cost will go down for everyone. The more people paying into it, the less burden on everyone. We basically need a single payer healthcare system for the globe, where people from every country are part of the same military. It's that, the US alone keeps paying for the global police, or we go to a multi-polar world again.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

42. The Globalization of Power

...

The Globalization of Power

The United States, as we have seen, has built a chain of military bases and staging areas around the globe, as a means of deploying air and naval forces to be used on a moment’s notice—all in the interest of maintaining its political and economic hegemony. These bases are not, as was the case for Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, simply integral parts of a colonial empire, but rather take on even greater importance, “in the absence of colonialism.”* The United States, which has sought to maintain an imperial economic system without formal political controls over the territorial sovereignty of other nations, has employed these bases to exert force against those nations that have sought to break out of the imperial system altogether, or that have attempted to chart an independent course that is perceived as threatening U.S. interests. Without the worldwide dispersion of U.S. military forces in these bases, and without the U.S. predisposition to employ them in its military interventions, it would be impossible to keep many of the more dependent economic territories of the periphery from breaking away.

U.S. global political, economic, and financial power thus require the periodic exercise of military power. The other advanced capitalist countries tied into this system have also become reliant on the United States as the main enforcer of the rules of the game. The positioning of U.S. military bases should therefore be judged not as a purely military phenomenon, but as a mapping out of the U.S.-dominated imperial sphere and of its spearheads within the periphery. What is clear at present and bears repeating is that such bases are now being acquired in areas where the United States had previously lost much of its “forward presence,” such as in South Asia, the Middle East/Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean, or in regions where U.S. bases have not existed previously, such as the Balkans and Central Asia. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the last remaining superpower is presently on a course of imperial expansion, as a means of promoting its political and economic interests, and that the present war on terrorism, which is in many ways an indirect product of the projection of U.S. power, is now being used to justify the further projection of that power.

For those who choose to oppose these developments there should be no illusion. The global expansion of military power on the part of the hegemonic state of world capitalism is an integral part of economic globalization. To say no to this form of military expansionism is to say no at the same time to capitalist globalization and imperialism and hence to capitalism itself.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/0302editr.htm

[TransitJohn]

43. Thanks for this post.

It's so very, very true.

[burythehatchet]

44. Let's frame the issue in another way

Let's imagine that a elite group of investors decided that war was a profitable business. So they started building the means of production for missles, tanks, airplanes, etc.

But then they realized that is we can't use the stuff we build it won't be very profitable. So the group snatches the political levers of power, purchases policitians and encourages the environment that will allow the weaponry to be used. The alternative is peace. If there was peace then their investments would be worthless. Just like if oil companies allowed alternative fuels to be developed we woul dbe free from their oligopolistic market fixing.

[jgraz]

49. The real motivation is, as always, money

For the past 50-odd years, the military has been the best way to funnel money from the poor and middle-class to the ultra-wealthy. All you need to do is blind the rubes with patriotic fervor and call anyone who opposes you a traitor and a coward. Add in the ability to classify the really obvious thefts and you're all set.

[Disturbed]

51. The main reason for the Soviet Union dowfall?

Military Over Spending.

[Prophet 451]

56. Main reason for US downfall is going to be the same

No nation in the world needs to expend more on it's military than the rest of teh world combined. Especially when at least $30 billion of that is assigned to weapons systems that don't even work, you could probably knock a third off the bill just by eliminating the pork and pointless projects.

[JackRiddler]

58. Ostpolitik, actually. n/t

[creeksneakers2]

57. Most important issue because it will consume all the others

There is no way the US can afford to retire the baby boom population, pay off the national debt, keep the Bush tax cuts and continue plans to build global military supremacy on land,air,water and space. The DLC exists to make sure that the military isn't what gets cut.

The left needs to make cutting military spending a top priority. Change America's role from superpower to that of a leader of a global defense coalition. Then build only the military absolutely needed.

With the right framing, this would be immensely popular.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

59. Kicking

Still noone will talk about this.