The New York Times has an interesting op-ed piece about America’s incessant war spending. As columnist Nicholas Kristof shows, most departments in the US are facing budget cuts while the behemoth war industry gets to enjoy an increase in spending.
This highlights the growing power of the Military Industrial Complex. Even though regular American’s are seeing tough times and the US economy is struggling to compete with the rest of the world, the collusion between media, government, and the war industry lets them allocate a bigger slice of a dwindling pie to squander on war.
It can be so frustrating to see this trend continue, knowing all of the positive and constructive uses that could have been done with these precious resources.
Had America been investing these trillions of dollars into their own country, the population would now be better education and more secure – both factors which would make the US less inclined to attack other nations.
And if American foreign policy didn’t involve a highly militarized approach, perhaps the US would have less reasons to go to war today.
Radical extremists are born and bred within the cesspool of poverty and chaos. Bombs, guns and occupying soldiers do little to drain this cesspool. Most often the conditions surrounding war-zones will just compound the problem, creating new generations of extremists.
A more productive approach would be to fund programs that are proving effective in the battle against extremism. Namely, those which improve socio-economic conditions and strengthen a country’s own communities from within.
Like Kristof writes in his piece, “American troops in Afghanistan are among the strongest advocates of investing more in schools there because they see firsthand that education fights extremism far more effectively than bombs.”
The War Machine has been running amok for too long. Without a counterbalancing force, the military industrial complex will only grow in might, using its ever expanding influence to manufacture and perpetuate more wars around the world.
It is time for the world’s people – especially those in the US – to pressure politicians, media, and the defense industry, letting these war-profiteers and warmongers hear a collective voice saying “Hey, enough with the wars, already!”
