Military Might=Taxpayer Fright

I often hear politicians on both sides of the American eagle argue about the best way to reduce our nation’s deficit.  This in itself appears to be a good thing for citizens to hear, since we all want a hopeful future for our posterity.  However when our leaders start talking about how they will cut the deficit, the shivers go up my spine.  “Cut or eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid...”  The list of social programs that politicians are willing to cut goes on and on.  Yet, we are ignoring America’s rapacious military spending.  The $1 trillion in defense spending is hardly even acknowledged, let alone questioned by our mainstream media.  Moreover, those, like politicians Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader, Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson, Jill Stein and Jan Schakowsky, journalists Chris Hedges, Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Klein and intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, who question this, are often shunned and despised by mainstream media.  While it might be profitable for our rulers to play politics, labeling each other with verbal assaults, it is completely useless for solving our problems, especially militarization.  Our military has been built up to the point where we are causing other nations to view the U.S. as a threat to peace.  On Justice Party candidate, Rocky Anderson’s website he writes:

“We cannot hope to lead the world when much of it sees us as a threat. A 2006 Pew Research poll showed that among European and Middle Eastern countries, we are viewed as the biggest threat to world peace.[1] That, of course, is a major obstacle to persuading countries to support us in our foreign policy efforts, building international coalitions, and persuading other countries to respect international law when we don’t do it ourselves.  The economic costs of our self-defeating empire-building are staggering. Even in 2008, the costs of the Iraq conflict were estimated at $3 trillion – that is 20% of the national debt![2] As of mid 2011, our air conditioning budget in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeded the entire budget of NASA.[3] We have some 1,000 overseas military bases throughout the globe,[4] at a value of close to $150 Billion.[5] These costs cannot be justified, particularly at a time when we are failing to feed our poor and provide basic health care for millions of our citizens.[6]”

Rocky Anderson is one of the few politicians on the fringe that eschews the ideologies of both the republicans and Democrats.  He is a former Constitutional lawyer and the former Mayor of Salt Lake City.  Unfortunately, since Anderson’s views don’t mix with our corporate-controlled media, he is virtually unknown.  Rocky proposes the following plan for our military spending crises on his website www.voterocky.org:

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“Eliminate militarism and empire-building: The US will never again engage in an illegal war of aggression. (The U.S. and its allies prosecuted defendants at the Nuremberg Tribunal for aggressive war, an international crime.[8]) The Anderson Administration will respect the UN Charter and international law, and cease aid and assistance to countries that do not.

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.      Moral leadership: We will no longer support regimes that abuse human rights and suppress democracy.

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   Economic rationality: We will close down all overseas military bases that are not demonstrably critical to our security, along with at least a 50% reduction in the Pentagon budget. (The U.S. military budget is now larger than the military budgets in all other nations combined.) This money will be allocated to domestic priorities, including reducing the accumulated debt and interest burden. As Martin Luther King said, every dollar spent on a missile is a dollar taken from a child’s education, or the food budget of a poor family.”

Green Party candidate, Jill Stein is also very critical of America’s enormous military and defense spending.  On her website www.jillstein.org she puts forth her plan for this issue:

“The Green New Deal includes a 50% reduction in military spending and the withdrawal of U.S. military bases from the over 140 countries in which our military is now located. It calls for restoration of the National Guard as the centerpiece of our system of national defense. It creates a new round of nuclear disarmament initiatives. Overall, it requires shifting from an economy in which the majority – the majority – of our discretionary budget is spent on war and the occupation of other countries, to an economy that provides the secure, just, peaceful future we all deserve.”

           

At this critical juncture, regarding our soaring deficit, it is crucial that we at least consider some of these alternative points of view.  America’s rampant militarization is a growing problem to both foreign nations and to ourselves.  Nevertheless, there are real solutions available to solve this step by step, all that is left to do is to begin the journey down the “road less traveled”.