According to this site, the United States spends more than the top 10 countries (excluding the US, of course) on its military. I'm not sure if this includes expenditures to private military organizations or not. Among those top 10 spenders, precisely zero are enemies of the United States (assuming that Saudi Arabia is an ally, which is debatable). Iran is #12, North Korea #21, and Iraq is #45. These numbers are based on expenditures from 1999-2001, so its a little bit out of date.
In fact, its even more lopsided now that the US defense budget has jumped from 276,000,000,000.00 dollars on that chart to the $400,000,000,000.00 that it is today. Using the numbers from that chart compared to the current US military spending, and the US spends as much as the next 40 nations combined on it military! The international average is $7,000,000,000; the U.S. spends nearly 6 times that.
Current and past military spending consumes roughly 47% of our national budget. We don't help citizens stay on their feet and build better lives, but we spend nearly half our income on guns. The need for defense is laughable, as we outspend the next 40 countries combined, most of which are not enemies to begin with.
Yet all of that money invested in arms and training still couldn't save us from hubris. Our leaders made the mistake of thinking that because we are so powerful we can do no wrong and that we are so powerful we can do anything at will. They were proven wrong, but they haven't reevaluated their premises and are likely to insist that their failures were due to a lack of military strength. It isn't the military that is weak, it is our national character. When we agree that it is better to build unnecessary weapons than to invest in the lives and futures of our citizenry, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Posted by Nutrimentia at October 15, 2003 02:09 AM | TrackBack