What do you think? http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/16-ways-to-cut-defense-spending-7/
The johnny-come-lately converts to the blight of American corporate imperialism, the central importance of cutting back on America's military/industrial complex and its political influence, owe royalties to a generation of liberals and lefties and other genuine intellectuals, is what I think for starters. This link, for example, was interesting http://original.antiwar.com/utley/2010/02/03/sun-tzu/ but latest in a long line of similar writings by people who are not American "conservatives", and therefore have had no voice: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a470026.pdf https://suntzusaid.com/book/2 https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/19185/Hwang_2005-02.pdf http://www.artofwarsuntzu.com/Project History.htm etc and so forth. Of course most of the military budget is waste, and most of the waste could be cut. But that can't be done with a Republican Congress or White House.
The amount that is spent on the military is way out of wack. We spend as much as the next 4 largest militarys combined (as I recall). It is almost like the military is a Republican entitlement program for defense contractors. If the defense department were to suddenly cut the contracts to my company, I bet our stock would drop by 1/2. My company is not primarily a defense contractor but there certainly are many areas that are solely defense. The number of companys that are involved in defense would probably surprise many people. The miltary-industrial complex going strong...Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
We have nukes ferchristsake, we don't even need a massive military for ourselves. Invade us and your country will be destroyed end of story! The massive military is basically for us to fuck up other countries and to stimulate the economy of our country with defense contracts. Blech...
The economy would be stimulated a lot more if the money wasn't going into defense. That's not a particularly effective way of stimulating the economy. It would stimulate the economy more if all that money was mailed directly to every citizen or every poor person or invested directly into small businesses or large business for that matter. If wasting money is the goal then funding the military is an excellent idea. If you, personally, were trying to stimulate your local economy you wouldn't take all of your saving, buy bullets and shoot them all at the local shooting range. It would be much more effective if you did almost anything else with that money. We don't need to be in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, South Korea, Germany, etc.
Exactly as Obama's Social Security tax holiday did, for example. And the response from the rightwing, let's say the civilized "intellectual" artillery? It (the tax holiday) was bad of course, but we can use it to help get rid of Social Security: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba780 Elections have consequences. The Presidential election of 1980 established our current US budget priorities, and began the rollback of the New Deal currently in progress. Until we get rid of the political faction that took power in 1980, we're stuck with their priorities and face further "reforms" according to their agenda.