US Gov't: Insane Militaristic Cunts
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So yeah, we all know the US is a nation in love with weaponry. The NRA pretty well guarantees nobody's getting elected who threatens our legal ability to stockpile personal firearms. And believe me, were I live, if you don't own some kind of firearm (and at least one dog), you are a serious, serious weirdo. Really. (In fact, I'm a bit of a pansy by local standards, being that I only own one of each.) Bum-fuck Alaska is the most well-armed neighborhood I've ever seen. Even most of the hippies own guns.
And I'm fine with that. Really I am. People here do not run around shooting each other … we're all actually quite nice folks, regardless of whether or not the rest of the world thinks we're batshit loony. It's not the individual well-armed citizens that bother me, it's the fucking military junkie government. I'm not sure if most people realize exactly how much money the US government blows on our insanely overgrown Defense Department every year, but it absolutely boggles the fucking mind:
Top 15 nations' military spending, 2003 CIA World Factbook
That figure is from 1999 … it doesn't even touch the billions of dollars in special appropriations for various misbegotten military excursions like Afghanistan and Iraq. (And that is a conservative estimate, many sources put the US Defense budget at well more than $450 billion.)
Our government has gone absolutely barking mad.
And now, the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves has decided that with so many guardsmen being sent overseas to fight wars, we need to beef up the National Guard so we've got enough people left to stay at home and defend us from a domestic attack. (They've backed off on their old "shooting college students" mission, but apparently that doesn't free up enough additional manpower.)
First off, we're not going to fucking suffer a massive domestic military attack. None of our enemies are geographically close enough to invade us, without us seeing them coming from thousands of miles away. See, we've got these two big moat-like things called oceans immediately to the left and right of us. And we have missiles and planes here that can shoot at things crossing them. And we've got Canada and Mexico to to the North and South … which one of them do you think is going to attack? Of course, there are terrorist attacks to think of … but what in the fuck good did ANY of our massive military might do on 9/11? For some reason, NORAD couldn't even be bothered to scramble a few jets to figure out why there was a runaway passenger jet zeroing in on Washington D.C. I don't think the National Guard, even a new, steroid-enhanced Guard, would have done anything to help.
Second off, WHERE IN THE FUCK IS ALL THAT MONEY GOING?! We don't have enough enlisted soldiers to fight a war, without gutting our National Guard/Reserves … and yet we spend almost FIVE TIMES as much money on our military as the next nearest country?! Somebody in the Pentagon needs to go back to personal economics class from high school, and review the unit on budgeting. We're spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the military, and yet we're sitting around at home, supposedly as well-defended as the proverbial sitting duck, because our National Guard is off fighting a war the Army apparently can't handle on its own.
Of course, they'll have you believe that this new War On Terror-era world is so unbelievably treacherous that we must spare NO expense in bolstering our nation's defenses. But then you take a look at our military spending compared to a list of our supposed "enemies":
US military spending compared to potential "enemy" nations, CIA World Factbook, 2003
I am at a complete fucking loss as to how the sleazebags in Washington can actually take that much money, and yet still cry poor about the readiness of the US military. Remember the big brouhaha about our soldiers in Iraq driving around in unarmored vehicles? They actually suffered a shortage of sandbags in the middle of the fucking desert? And there was the priceless Rumsfeld quote, "you go to war with the Army you have … not the Army you might want or wish to have." Well fuck me. If I can't have the Army I want to have for a pricetag of $200-500 billion dollars, how the fuck much is the Army I want to have going to cost?!
And through all this, Social Security is supposedly going bankrupt. Federal financial aid for college students is getting cut. We "can't afford" a national health care system. The country's schools are chronically underfunded. And the ignorant masses call you a "communist" if you dare suggest that any of those sorts of programs ought to be expanded, and they don't want their taxes raised to pay for lazy-ass "welfare queens", having extra kids so they can get bigger checks, or god forbid, providing medical care to some damn Mexican who snuck across the border in the first place.
You know what, motherfucker? I don't want to pay for you fucking bloated, macho, bullshit military budget. I would MUCH rather my tax money went to help a poor kid get regular doctor visits. I would rather provide free education to an illegal immigrant's kid. I'd rather buy new textbooks for an inner city school. And you know what else, dipshit? We wouldn't have to raise taxes to do ANY of that! If we cut a measly 15% of the military budget, we could pay for all of that, AND MORE.
Yes indeed, we cut $60 billion dollars from the Pentagon's budget, still have the most grossly bloated military-industrial complex in the world, not raise taxes, and at the same time:
- Provide health insurance to 9 million American kids who lack it
- Rebuild or modernize our public schools over 12 years
- Retrain a quarter million workers
- Cut our reliance on foreign oil in half over 10 years
- Restore recent cuts in life-saving medical research
- Invest wisely in Homeland Security by inspecting cargo containers entering our ports
- Save 6 million children who die of hunger-related diseases in impoverished countries annually
- Begin to reduce the deficit
So what the fuck are we waiting for?!
But big ass bombs rock. DUH
31st January 2008 at 5:44 pm | permalink |@larry: Oh. Yeah. Shit. I completely forgot about that. Nevermind!
31st January 2008 at 6:23 pm | permalink |@alphabitch What is the % of spending vs. GDP for each of the nations? I am curious.
31st January 2008 at 7:24 pm | permalink |Or…
We could legalize, commercialize and tax most drugs. Then we can pay for all of the above, plus some great drug education classes, treatment programs, AND still let the Pentagon whackos spend $1000 on a widget.
Just think what we could do if we cut 15% AND legalized/taxed most drugs.
1st February 2008 at 1:34 pm | permalink |@larry: There's a nice color-coded map over here. We're not #1 in spending for % of GDP, but that's mostly because we're rich bastards. ;-)
@eric: Hell, the government could start giving everyone in the country an annual dividend check, like we get up here! :-D
1st February 2008 at 3:54 pm | permalink |Of course, if the US value wasn't that high, than 8 or 10 of the also-rans on that list would have much greater values, due to not having a powerful ally anymore.
It's not just that the U.S. is so much higher, but that the allies are so much lower on account of it.
21st February 2008 at 9:53 pm | permalink |@jerg: Very true. On the other hand, if our value wasn't so high, and nobody hiked there's in response, it might be a slightly more peaceful world. ;-)
I'm such a pollyanna sometimes.
22nd February 2008 at 5:19 pm | permalink |You know much of that money is not spent on anything, but lining the pockets of rich white guys. I mean we (the US.) spends $500 per laundry load in Iraq.
Come on .. the whole thing is a ponzi scheme.
25th February 2008 at 1:54 pm | permalink |@kmuzu: Well yes, that was kind of what I was getting at. ;-) They're lying thieving sons-of-bitches, basically.
25th February 2008 at 2:44 pm | permalink |