[T]oday, with the Soviet Union gone, we account for most of the world's defense spending -- 54 percent in 2009, according to a recent report. That's right: There are 195 countries on planet Earth, and if you added up the military spending of the 194 of them that aren't the United States, you'd still have less than what we are spending.- Paul Wildeman at the American Prospect on "Our "Hollowed Out" Military"
As is usual, the typical ass-clowns of the military-industrial complex, in this case neo-conservatives and perennial war-mongers Bill Kristol and company are defending the bloated, corrupt, and unsustainable Pentagon and surveillance state budgets. None of these so-called "conservatives" care anything about fiscal soundness or the long term viability of the nation.
Republicans continuously bloviate that about the necessity of spending cuts, including medicare and social security, but never discuss how to trim the real beast: war making. This issue more than any other underlies the hollowness of the entire American conservative movement. All their major gripes: big-government, intrusive state powers, accountability, preventing government waste and corruption, and the distorting force of foreign interventions and wars, that would be anathema to the explicitly stated wishes of the constitutional framers; are all thrown out the window. America can be a declining military superpower or it can be a vibrant democracy, but it cannot be both.
(h/t Andrew Sulivan's Daily Dish, "More than half the world's defense spending")
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