Post by Aaron Graf on Oct 28, 2004 4:37:39 GMT -5
Military Budget is Too Wasteful
By Aaron Graf
Every year the rest of the world, not including the United States, spends 396 billion dollars a year on national defense. In the United States alone that amount in spending is around 400 billion dollars yearly that we waste on so many useless programs.
80 billion dollars of this budget is being used to defend already well developed countries that can already defend themselves. These countries such as Japan, Germany, and others do not need our military assistance. We could be using that 80 billion dollars to rebuild all of our schools, hire many new teachers, and increase the wages teachers receive alongside of paying for scholarships, student grants, housing for students, and several other things. Others things we could do would be to provide better job opportunities in our country, some being in the fact we could give out loans to small businesses who need that help to get started, or to start up job training programs. Or we could even use this 80 billion dollars a year "defending" countries that do not need our help to helping end world hunger, poverty, AIDs, and other great problems to our world.
Another wasteful part of the budget is the 70-ton Crusader artillery system, despite being designed to fight land battles against the Soviet Union, too would be fully funded at $475.2 million. I consider that a waste of our tax dollars, not national defense. These new systems of artillery are not being used for something that could defend our nation, they are being used for defense industry greed. These systems have no use for us, we have no major enemies to use them on, infact our older systems could work just as well as these. We already have enough weapons to blow up the world five hundred times and then sit back and get ready to see what happens when we use the nukes we possess as well. That's not what I call defense. That's not what I call security. That is defense industry greed which has been exploiting our fears, turning them into out right paranoia, and using it for a profit.
The US is the world's leading arms dealer. Our weapons were used due to our greedy defense industries in brutal civil wars in countries like Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Colombia and Turkey. In Mexico for instance, they used United States weapons to kill activists standing on behalf of a democracy. The same with Indonesia, and then we hear George W. Bush saying that he wants peace. One word can best describe that, lies! 78 percent of all arms sales that US weapons companies make are not to our military, they are according to our own state department, used for regimes that have atrocious human rights abuses, this is not only wasteful, but it is wrong.
This is not just with our weapons companies, but the Army has The School of the Americas, which has trained the most notorious human rights abusers in the world. Infact, the man who founded the El Salvadoran death squads, Roberto d'Aubisson, was actually trained at this school. Others include Manuel Noriega, former Dictator in Panama and Raul Cedras of Haiti. We all know how Haiti has been under Raul Cedras, it's not pretty. This must stop, and we have an obligation as citizens of the United States to tell our government that we will not only stand for this, but we do not want to pay for it.
We also have an overly bloated nuclear weapons budget which George W. Bush wants increased of $35 billion per year. We already have too many nukes, we should be using that money to disband our nuclear weapons, not create more. Since 1945 until now we have spent a whopping $5 trillion dollars on nuclear arms. There is no greater lacking of humanity than to own weapons that could have it erased, it is even worse when you think you're safer with more of them. Nuclear testing, uranium mining and nuclear waste disposal have produced the worst environmental problems and have cost indigenous communities around the world their land, health, dignity, and of course, lives. We must not allow this to continue.
So my stance of course is that we should cut the nuclear arms budget except in the needed funds to disband our own, and the nuclear weapons of the world. Otherwise we have no need for that, we also need any arms production for military use to be made strictly by the army. Weapons contracting companies should be disbanded. Also we must take down the School of the Americas, it is a waste of our money and an insult to a country that claims to love democracy while it trains death squads in South America the next minute. The budget for Russia is around 80 billion dollars a year, a nation far larger than the United States, we do not need more than 100 billion dollars for military spending. With this the nation can and will be able to get out of a deficit and fund many great programs to better the country. These namely being education, health care, programs to get us out of poverty, housing, and other necessities as well as job training programs. We could also use it to fund small farms, small businesses, and help to work for an ecologically safer society and clean the air, water, and soil, prevent global warming, and countless other things.
By Aaron Graf
Every year the rest of the world, not including the United States, spends 396 billion dollars a year on national defense. In the United States alone that amount in spending is around 400 billion dollars yearly that we waste on so many useless programs.
80 billion dollars of this budget is being used to defend already well developed countries that can already defend themselves. These countries such as Japan, Germany, and others do not need our military assistance. We could be using that 80 billion dollars to rebuild all of our schools, hire many new teachers, and increase the wages teachers receive alongside of paying for scholarships, student grants, housing for students, and several other things. Others things we could do would be to provide better job opportunities in our country, some being in the fact we could give out loans to small businesses who need that help to get started, or to start up job training programs. Or we could even use this 80 billion dollars a year "defending" countries that do not need our help to helping end world hunger, poverty, AIDs, and other great problems to our world.
Another wasteful part of the budget is the 70-ton Crusader artillery system, despite being designed to fight land battles against the Soviet Union, too would be fully funded at $475.2 million. I consider that a waste of our tax dollars, not national defense. These new systems of artillery are not being used for something that could defend our nation, they are being used for defense industry greed. These systems have no use for us, we have no major enemies to use them on, infact our older systems could work just as well as these. We already have enough weapons to blow up the world five hundred times and then sit back and get ready to see what happens when we use the nukes we possess as well. That's not what I call defense. That's not what I call security. That is defense industry greed which has been exploiting our fears, turning them into out right paranoia, and using it for a profit.
The US is the world's leading arms dealer. Our weapons were used due to our greedy defense industries in brutal civil wars in countries like Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Colombia and Turkey. In Mexico for instance, they used United States weapons to kill activists standing on behalf of a democracy. The same with Indonesia, and then we hear George W. Bush saying that he wants peace. One word can best describe that, lies! 78 percent of all arms sales that US weapons companies make are not to our military, they are according to our own state department, used for regimes that have atrocious human rights abuses, this is not only wasteful, but it is wrong.
This is not just with our weapons companies, but the Army has The School of the Americas, which has trained the most notorious human rights abusers in the world. Infact, the man who founded the El Salvadoran death squads, Roberto d'Aubisson, was actually trained at this school. Others include Manuel Noriega, former Dictator in Panama and Raul Cedras of Haiti. We all know how Haiti has been under Raul Cedras, it's not pretty. This must stop, and we have an obligation as citizens of the United States to tell our government that we will not only stand for this, but we do not want to pay for it.
We also have an overly bloated nuclear weapons budget which George W. Bush wants increased of $35 billion per year. We already have too many nukes, we should be using that money to disband our nuclear weapons, not create more. Since 1945 until now we have spent a whopping $5 trillion dollars on nuclear arms. There is no greater lacking of humanity than to own weapons that could have it erased, it is even worse when you think you're safer with more of them. Nuclear testing, uranium mining and nuclear waste disposal have produced the worst environmental problems and have cost indigenous communities around the world their land, health, dignity, and of course, lives. We must not allow this to continue.
So my stance of course is that we should cut the nuclear arms budget except in the needed funds to disband our own, and the nuclear weapons of the world. Otherwise we have no need for that, we also need any arms production for military use to be made strictly by the army. Weapons contracting companies should be disbanded. Also we must take down the School of the Americas, it is a waste of our money and an insult to a country that claims to love democracy while it trains death squads in South America the next minute. The budget for Russia is around 80 billion dollars a year, a nation far larger than the United States, we do not need more than 100 billion dollars for military spending. With this the nation can and will be able to get out of a deficit and fund many great programs to better the country. These namely being education, health care, programs to get us out of poverty, housing, and other necessities as well as job training programs. We could also use it to fund small farms, small businesses, and help to work for an ecologically safer society and clean the air, water, and soil, prevent global warming, and countless other things.