‘Defense’ does not defend
We have become used to hearing the sound of jet fighters overhead and the ubiquitous presence of men and women clad in military uniforms at athletic events and other non-military festivities. Taxpayers shell out hundreds of billions a year for this ambiguous word “defense,” and yet we are infinitely vulnerable.
Defense is defined as “resistance against attack.”
But we have no serious military enemies. And few in Washington question how hundreds of bases with troops around the world defend us. When North Korea threatened to use its lethal weapons, however, they had hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in range, in Okinawa and South Korea – for whose defense?
The U.S. nuclear arsenal, its navy, and its air force, far outstrip the power of those of Russia and China. Knowing these facts, why do leading members of Congress not question how multi-billion dollar expenditures aimed at non-existent enemies continue to pass every year? Potential enemies who do not exist, such as Russia or China, don’t represent serious military challenges. So why do we keep marching down the aggressive military road?
“The defense budget is more than a piggy bank for people who want to get busy beating swords into pork barrels,” said George H. W. Bush in 1992. Bush almost gets the point. The laborers are beating swords into nuclear missiles and aircraft carriers, under the aegis of defense. In fact, real defense remains an overlooked and neglected goal.
For example, the Fukushima reactor continues to pour tons of radioactive water into the Pacific, an ocean we share with Japan. U.S. scientists and government agencies have not allocated large sums to defend our water. Nor have they cared as much about our forests and wildlife as they have about weapons, a poor defense against Nature’s wiles and nuclear blowouts.
We have no defense against corporate influence (i.e., corruption). The Japanese nuclear-corporate gang covered up and lied about the Fukushima leak while tons of radioactive water became the atmosphere for all the creatures of the sea. Nuclear water washed up on the beaches and shores of the western United States. Where was our defense against this attack?
What good did our monster aircraft carriers and B-52s do when we faced real threat?
Similarly, Nature left us dry and ripe for burning, but our defense budget ignored that real threat and spent money on hi-tech weapons instead. The collapse of our infrastructure, healthcare, and educational system is a direct attack on ourselves. Why would we spend hundreds of millions of dollars to support U.S. bases in Germany, which is of no threat as our loyal ally, while a bridge falls apart in Minnesota with casualties of our own citizens? Similarly, we spend hundreds of millions for a base in Spain, where no imminent threat exists.
In Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other places, we have active enemies, who plot to do harm to U.S. targets. Yet we have not elaborated an adequate defense for these enemies. It’s time we begin to allocate the money we need to defend ourselves, especially in our infrastructure, from Nature’s ravages, and for the few real enemies that exist, rather than squandering hundreds of billions of dollars on foreign bases and monster-sized weapons that provide no defense at all against any real threats.
“We have met the enemy and he is us”
If, as John Quincy Adams once said, “She goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” why does she maintain aircraft carriers in foreign seas as if in search of said monsters? Has someone in the NSA or Defense Department detected an unknown threat that they have not yet reported, when they argued in the Defense Department budget proceeding for these humungous outlays for undetected foreign monsters? We do need money for defense, from the immediate threats posed by Nature and for the declining state of our infrastructure, physical and sociological.
Saul Landau’s “Fidel” and “Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up” are available on DVD through cinemalibreproductions.com.
