Can you imagine living in an America freed from constant wars?

[Joanne98]

For OpEdNews: michael payne - Writer

I certainly can; it would be a new kind of America where war was no longer such a dominant part of our lives and our national discourse. A nation that could use its great wealth for positive developments such as better systems of education, universal health care, creation of alternates to fossil fuels, improving our infrastructure, and providing a safer environment for our society. That would be, in effect, "American the Beautiful" becoming a reality. But that's not the America in which we currently live.

No, unfortunately, we live in an entirely different kind of America. The America of today is certainly not using its great wealth (still the biggest economy in the world and the wealthiest nation) to build strength into our nation by all those meaningful initiatives I mentioned. Over the past several decades our government and our leaders have drastically shifted America's priorities into expanding our influence and military power all over the world. And our nation and this society have suffered mightily as a result.

What we need is a new formula for the way we conduct the affairs of this nation. This is a critical issue, something that needs immediate attention and must become an important part of our national agenda; we have to face the fact that this nation is going in the wrong direction; one that must be quickly reversed. But right now there is just too much apathy as we watch in silence and submissiveness while the wealth of our nation is stripped away and used to build an American Empire that neither we, nor the world, needs or wants.


Let's do some fairly radical, innovative and constructive thinking about the state of our nation. Let's do a kind of "what if" analysis that would involve taking one half of our current Pentagon budget of $1 trillion annually and transferring that $500 billion into our general treasury to be used for domestic purposes. What, some will say? That will seriously weaken America and make us less safe

Would the U.S. immediately be thrown into grave danger because there would only be $500 billion (that's $500,000,000,000) available each year to protect the American people on our soil and to protect our interests abroad? If we strategically reduced our approximately 750 military installations around the world would we leave ourselves open to attack by some major power that sees us as substantially weaker? Would we immediately be run over by attacks by Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups that see us as severely weakened and highly vulnerable? Absolutely not. We would still have, by far, the most powerful military forces in the world.

Continued>>>>
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Can-you-imagine-living-in-by-michael-payne-100209-51.html

[daninthemoon]

1. Military, industrial, oil and banking complex needs us scared.

Ever since WWII. Communists everywhere ready to take your washing machine. Now it's terrists everywhere. Like Communists, they are real and dangerous, but are they so dangerous to require all the wars, expense, and death?Does it really do anything to protect us? Iraq? Vietnam? Iran if the election had gone to mcplalin?
It doesn't have to be like this.

[winyanstaz]

2. K & R.....

I too am sick of wars....

[Macoy]

5. Wouldn't it be Nice......

In my fantasy world, the money for Iraq was used for health care, education and infrastructure…the Afghan money all goes to the space program.


Mac

[Moostache]

6. Mostly agreed.

Money wasted on Iraq --> should have been used on Health Care, Education (Pell Grants and other ways of making College an American expectation and not something reserved for the rich alone), and Infrastructure. No quibbles at all here!

Money wasted on Afghanistan --> I would have used this money to shore up Social Security and other social spending programs, NASA could certainly have gotten some of this as well, but I would have funded that mainly from...

Money wasted on Bush Tax Cuts!

The unholy trinity - unpaid for wars / unpaid for tax cuts / unpaid for prescription drugs - should have ALL been avoided. Yet here we are...on the brink of a still possible global economic meltdown and currency crises, with a crumbling national infrastructure, poor education, a grossly expensive (and ineffectual) health care system, and pending doom for budgets being blamed on social programs (instead of acknowledging that the military alone eats more in a year than almost everything else in the US budget).

My god, what would this country look like if Bush v. Gore was not legislated from the bench? The thoughts of all that has been lost to history makes me profoundly depressed and deeply saddened for the future generations that were doomed to hardships that COULD have been avoided under competent (or even simply not insane) leadership and policies.

To those future generations, I am sorry. I am sorry that we today did not do more to protect you when we still had a chance...

[maryf]

3. Yep! k&r nt

[cutlassmama]

4. It would be a beautiful thing n/t