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...actually defended us, in any true sense of the word. ????? Certainly not in my lifetime (60 years).
Was slaughtering a million Vietnamese and decimating their country "defense"? Was slaughtering over 100,000 Iraqis and decimating their country "defense" ? Was getting tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers killed far from home, in countries where they had no right to be "defense"?
We have to go back to WW II, 60 years ago, to find any justification for this bloated military budget and this extremely dangerous military capability, which has been sitting out there like a ripe plumb ever since, getting fatter and fatter by the decade--a mighty temptation to fascist-minded tyrants, who have now seized it outright, and are using it to massively loot the American people, and to completely disempower and DISENFRANCHISE us, and remove us from any even theoretical control over that which we pay for: this monstrous killing machine.
Now we have Diebold and ES&S (Bushite electronic voting companies who are using SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code to tabulate our votes), and we have the war profiteering corporate news monopolies (who falsified their exit polls on everybody's TV screens, on election night, 2004, CHANGING the exit poll data (Kerry won) to "fit" the "official returns" derived by Diebold's and ES&S's secret formulae (Bush won))--and we have the collusive War Democrats, all conspiring to DENY us the right to nominate and elect an antiwar president, which is what everybody wants (as opinion polls have overwhelmingly shown since BEFORE the invasion of Iraq!).
The loop of corruption is complete. With Diebold and ES&S controlling the vote count, we will forevermore be hogtied to the biggest military machine in the history of the world, despite there being little threat from the world today--so little that our "leaders" have constantly to invent threats, and create bogeymen, and exaggerate and lie through their teeth, so we will keep feeding this gigantic hog-pen, and not rebel against our slavery to it.
They did the same thing with "communism" that they are doing today with "terrorism." "Terrorism" is NOT a military problem! But they have made it into one, for the purposes of theft.
Nor was "communism" a military problem--despite Russia's and China's armies and nukes. It was primarily an ECONOMIC problem--reflecting the rebellion of peasants and workers against extreme oppression, and IF our "leaders" had not LIED about what it was, and if predatory capitalists had not been given free reign to dictate our foreign policy, JUSTICE and FAIRNESS might have triumphed in every country in the world--including our own!
Instead, we MILITARIZED the problem, made our hostile intentions clear, to Russia and China, and pushed them into a "balance of terror" that gripped the world for many decades, and the remnants of which remain a serious threat to all humanity and to all life on earth.
What madness! What utter madness!
So, as to arms dealings, we are the world's WORST offenders. And we haven't just fed this Big Pig at home. We've militarized conflicts all over the world, and we--or, rather, our militarist corporations--sell massive amounts of weapons to some of the worst governments on earth, in addition to all the side-trading and under the counter trading, and "illegal" trading, that goes on.
Arms manufacturers and war profiteers ARE the problem, yes. They are driving virtually every conflict in the world. If there were not a vast abundance of weapons, exacerbating every grievance, every bad ambition, every petty tribal conflict, and every dictator and potential dictator on earth, most conflicts would DRIBBLE AWAY, as humans were forced to use DIPLOMACY and INTELLIGENT BEHAVIOR and WISDOM to achieve their ends or solve their problems.
The Department of Defense? Defending our shores? Okay. There might be some who have thoughts of invading us, although none have that capability. Maybe there is some justification for DEFENSE against invasion. But when did the Department of DEFENSE ever DEFEND us--except when it fought off Japan and Germany, 60 years ago? (--putting aside, for a moment, the arguments about ours, or other western governments', provocations of those countries). When, since that time, was OUR Defense Department used to DEFEND us?
They can't even defend the Pentagon!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They let hijacked COMMERCIAL AIRLINES attack us full on, with NO DEFENSE, and, indeed, with all the defense we had paid for NOT WORKING THAT DAY!
So, to hell with it, I say! What are they good for, except looting us blind?
A world of justice and fairness would be the BEST DEFENSE against any and all threats, from countries, groups or individuals.
The world does not want to invade us, for godssakes! Even the Muslim jihadists have NO INTEREST in seizing our government or our land, or ruling over us. It would be endless trouble! And that's not what they want. They want to be LEFT ALONE, NOT oppressed, NOT exploited, NOT forced to live like westerners. And we are FOOLS to believe anything else. We are over in Iraq CREATING jihadists, whose life mission will be to PUNISH us for our crimes, and to GET US OFF THEIR BACKS.
Dennis Kucinich's idea of a DEPARTMENT OF PEACE was the right idea. Currently, our government has the MIND-SET that every conflict has to be militarized, and that guns and vast armaments can create peace or freedom or safety. They cannot do so, for the most part. It is JUSTICE and FAIRNESS that create peace and freedom and safety.
We've got to change that MIND-SET that accepts the ETERNAL ARMED CAMP that our world has become, and that perpetuates and exacerbates AND PROFITS FROM violent conflicts.
I'm not saying, be stupid or foolish. I'm not saying, don't address real threats. I'm not saying we can completely disarm the world--not yet anyway. That seems a remote dream, at this point--although the Bush Cartel couldn't be making a better case for WHY our bloated military is a threat to US, as well as to others, and no defense at all, to anyone. It is an aggressive and extremely dangerous machine, which currently has an aggressive and extremely dangerous commander in chief (Dick Cheney).
But we have to start SOMEWHERE, re-thinking this whole business of "defense." What really makes us safe? What promotes peace and diplomacy and wisdom? Where is justice and fairness? Why aren't all the resources in the world that are currently being sucked up by weapons expenditures being spent, instead, on unified world action to stop global warming--by far, the worst threat the human race has ever faced, aside from nuclear holocaust?
And why, for godssakes, are we permitting our "leaders" to THREATEN nuclear holocaust in the Middle East????!!!! --a holocaust that will NOT be limited to any countries we hit with nukes, but that will plunge the planet into darkness forevermore?????!!!! (Carl Sagan, "The Cold and the Dark"--about the impacts on the planet from even a limited nuclear exchange).
I'll tell you why we are "permitting" this: It's because we have no power to stop it. We no longer have the right to vote. The war profiteers now have their weapon of mass demagoguery--the real WMD: electronic voting with secret, proprietary source code.
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A provocative topic, OxQQme! Thanks for bringing this up--arms dealing, something we hardly see any more, it's so pervasive.
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