Our Preposterous Military Spending And Its Disasterous Consequences

Nicholas Kristoff in the New York Times has data that should put things in perspective.

• The United States spends nearly as much on military power as every other country in the world combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It says that we spend more than six times as much as the country with the next highest budget, China.

• The United States maintains troops at more than 560 bases and other sites abroad, many of them a legacy of a world war that ended 65 years ago. Do we fear that if we pull our bases from Germany, Russia might invade?

• The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined.

And how about this gem:

• The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service — and that’s preposterous.

Furthermore, states Kristoff, our display of military might around the world isn’t helpful; it’s provocative.

After the first gulf war, the United States retained bases in Saudi Arabia on the assumption that they would enhance American security. Instead, they appear to have provoked fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden into attacking the U.S. In other words, hugely expensive bases undermined American security (and we later closed them anyway). Wouldn’t our money have been better spent helping American kids get a college education?

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.