August 21, 2009

Defense Is Offense

Doug Bandow: How Many Enemies, How Much Military Spending?
Defense spending dipped in the early 1990s, but real outlays merely dropped from the Reagan build-up back to the Cold War average. Since then military expenditures (the baseline budget excluding costs of Afghanistan and Iraq) have climbed to a peacetime record. America accounts for nearly half of the world's military outlays.

That is, Washington is spending more today on its military now than it did when the U.S. was confronting the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, Maoist China, and assorted Third World autocracies.

Whatever could justify such outlays?

It certainly isn't the power of America's enemies.


2 comments:

Bukko Boomeranger said...

Could it be the power of America's MIC? Naaaaah, that's just crazy conspiracy theorist talk.

My schaenfreudy side chortles at the thought of how the reich wing rabble will react when some of that power starts to be directed at them. Bring your 9 mm popgun to a public event to protest when nextPresident Petraeus cuts your Social Security in half, TeaBag Patriot wanker. You'll cop a spray from Blackwater mercenary security guards, whatever their corpo is called by then -- a spray of automatic gunfire.

"Sorry that we have to kill you, but we're just doing our jobs..."

Bukko Boomeranger said...

Speaking of defence (why aren't you spelling it the proper Britaussie way?) how's about this wild welter of military conspiracy theories? It's as tangled as anything WP could come up with. Who knows if any of it's true? I kinda hope that none is...

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