Mr Obama aka Bush 2.0 are you ever gonna cut the defense budget?

witch-king

witchking, brace yourself for the reckoning of the proletariat

If this is a revolution, let's get on with it. Where are the bloody barricades?

armchair_warrior

this thread needs some vid

armchair_warrior

guy warns the american people about the military industrial complex and nobody listen. and interesting discovery about this in the news.

The papers show that Eisenhower and his staff spent two years preparing for his goodbye to the nation. One document features a typewritten note from Eisenhower lamenting that when he joined the military in 1911, there were 84,000 Army soldiers — a number that ballooned roughly tenfold by 1960.

"The direct result of this continued high level of defense expenditures has been to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions, where none had existed before," he wrote in the passage, a variation of which reached the delivered speech on Jan. 17, 1961.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-12-10-eisenhower-address_N.htm

whynot_31

outstanding video

booklaw

There's a great 2005 documentary film about this... "Why We Fight", written and directed by Eugene Jarecki.

boygabriel

I second booklaw's recommendation. Saw that doc and it really crystallized a lot of points for me about the military industrial complex...

...and how Rumsfeld & Cheney had been agitating for an invasion of Iraq for 20+ years.

Highly recommended to anyone who's interested in these topics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Fight_(2005_film)

armchair_warrior

too bad there isn't a legal tax revolt for citizens not politicians as Rangel demonstrates you can dodge taxes if you are a politician and not get a day in jail.

prodigalson

The questions are:

1. Do we want to have the world's most powerful military?

2. Do we want to be able to send that military into action in various places around the world, simultaneously, and to keep them their for many years?

If we want any or all of those things, who should pay for it, and should they all pay the same amount, or should they pay on a graduated scale according to income?

I guarantee: impose a 100% excess profits tax on all war revenues and we will NEVER have a foreign war ever again.

As someone who adheres to the principles taught by our Founding Fathers I always say: no foreign interventionism and no war. Our economy will be FAR better for it.