God help me, I'm about to jump to Maris' defense (kill me now). What would seem like a reasonable expenditure in peace time and are you seriously disputing the power that the MIC wields when it comes to setting foreign policy and its position of primacy in our economy and society for the past 65+ years?
The so-called "war" we're fighting doesn't seem to justify the kinds of budget busting high-tech weapons systems and spending that the DoD has favored for the past 65 years. It doesn't take an F-22 air superiority fighter to fight an asymmetrical enemy like a "terrorist" but we keep dumping hundreds of billions into these kinds of programs. I'm not against any and all military spending - every nation in history has supported some kind of war fighting ability and they should, otherwise they would be helpless against their enemies - but I worry about the bang for the buck we've gotten over the years and the bankrupting of our country as we continue an arms race with only one real participant. Are we spending all of these exorbitant sums just to defend ourselves, or are we propping up a corporate welfare scheme?
Oh, you support some military spending? How kind of you. Seems folks tend to forget that the most important rationale for forming this country in the first place, was to "provide for a common defense". Until the Progressive revolution in the U.S. the majority of spending was for "the common defense". Actually, I support a much smaller military mission and corresponding much smaller budget. I just object to the Left-wing, factually challenged propaganda that the military-industrial complex utterly dominates Washington and thus controls most spending and gets everything that it wants. That is no longer true, and was especially the case prior to 9-11 and the launching of the War on Terror.
