Why the Deafening Silence on Cutting the Military Budget?

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/35364-focus-why-the-deafening-silence-on-cutting-the-military-budget

There are various plans afoot to “upgrade” the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, with price tags in the range of $1,000,000,000,000 and more. Why don’t we just get rid of all of them and use the money to pay for much of the above?

There is talk of a replacement fleet of a dozen “Ohio Class” nuclear submarines at a (currently estimated) cost of up to $8,000,000,000 each (which is bound to soar), with construction to begin in 2021. These are perfectly designed to protect us from the Soviet Union, which no longer exists, and will do nothing except bankrupt us, making us more vulnerable to the likes of ISIS, which was created by our intervention in Iraq.

The United States currently maintains at least 900 bases outside its borders, with troops stationed in 175 foreign nations and waging or threating war in some of the handful of nations that do not have U.S. troops (Syria, Iran). The financial cost is over $100 billion a year. The bases, in many cases, generate an enormous amount of popular resentment and hatred, serving as motivations for attacks on the bases themselves or elsewhere — famously including the attacks of September 11, 2001. Why continue to pay for this?

The military spends millions every year advertising itself as a career opportunity, with fly-overs at football games, saturation TV spots, marching bands (the military is the nation’s leading employer of musicians) and more. In fact, it has an entrenched interest in keeping college tuitions high, as a key incentive for young people to enlist is to be able to afford tuition. Yet while the armed forces are heavily over-staffed, and recruitment ads for the National Guard depict the bringing of aid to natural disasters, the reality is that a major effort to aid those at home and abroad impacted by climate change or disasters like the methane gas leak at Port Ranch, California, doesn’t exist and would be a prime step toward guaranteeing a true global peace.

If the military were scaled back even a little, in the direction of a purely defensive operation, we could create such a modern civilian conservation corps and, among other things, put solar panels on the rooftops of every building on earth.

[newfie11]

1. Does anyone have the fortitude to rein in the MIC

It's running wild and no one remembers IKEs words.
It's all about money and bloated egos!

[iandhr]

2. Because doing so is politically suicidal

[stellanoir]

3. 57% of tax revenue at last count.

Basic Law of Energetics : Any entity that spends more on defense than self sustenance is investing only in its own downfall.

Pretty much every Imperial Power throughout recorded history has been taken down by its own hubris.

The lack of accountability & transparency, coupled with the acute wastefulness of privatization shames us all.

America *can* do better than this BS.

We sorely need a recalibration.

May it be so.