The current spending bill for the defense department next year, including these incredibly expensive wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the War on Terror (to use the forum title), is about $650 billion dollars. And it's probably closer to $900 billion in truth. Since we never, ever pay off our war debts, it's more likely $9 trillion. We still haven't paid off part of ww1, all of ww2, Korea, Vietnam, etc., etc.

The warhawks love spending everybody's money, and then paying interest on it forever. Are you a warhawk? Would 989 trillion be divinely righteous to spend? And your great grandchildren will have how many degrees from Ivy League schools, to pay it back?

http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/policy/securityspending/

Quote from that website:
"The resources the U.S. devotes to its military are significantly higher than those of any other country. In FY2008, the U.S. is slated to spend more on its military than the next 42 highest spending countries combined, accounting for 47% of the world's total military spending.

Proponents of higher defense budgets argue that U.S. defense spending relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) actually ranks as low as number 27 globally. While it seems intuitively true that the size of the defense budget should be proportional to the size of the economy, this argument hinges on the assumption that the military should be as large as possible at all times, bound only by the ever-increasing capacity of the national economy.

It seems reasonable to insist that defense dollars be allocated only to provide necessary responses to credible threats. Today's military budget is premised on the idea that military spending is worthwhile whether it is necessary or not."

How much of your federal tax dollars are you willing to have spent on the Pentagon? How many thousands of dollars per year or per month are you willing to pay, additionally, to pay for your grandfathers' wars and your father's wars? How much is too much?

This is beyond absurd.............

The defense spending of a nation is the #1 priority. If the government cannot or will not commit the funds necessary for its survival then the nation has no right to exist.

Nomad, thank you for responding. I suppose you are objecting to the entire sentence being 'beyond absurd,' not just the snippet that you quoted.

The sentence and the entire article did not say that defense spending was not the #1 priority. The question is, HOW MUCH IS NECESSARY for the nation's survival?

You are apparently a warhawk. Would 900 billion budgeted dollars not be half enough for an adequate defense? Do you want your taxes doubled, or do you prefer quintupled? How much is enough and how much is too much? Do you need 90,000 nuclear warheads instead of the estimated 25,000 we used to have? How about 99 aircraft carriers, 28,690 bombers, 98,000 fighter planes, 200 more military bases, ten million more active duty troops (with the draft reinstated), and all generals and admirals getting two million dollars annual salary? How much is enough?

Far from it Fit. But I am a realist and and such recognize the fact that there are times when one must kill or be killed to preserve ones way of life.

There can be no cost high enough to preserve our way of life. If a defense budget reaches astromomical proportions then the entire economy will benifit just as it did in WWII.

Enough is whatever it takes to totally destroy our enemies. Problem here is we have not done that since WWII. Ya just can't swat at a fly you have to kill it or it will just keep comming back.

Spoken like a warhawk, exactly like a warhawk, and not at all realistic.

Perhaps you should just send your entire take-home check to the Defense Department, Nomad, and enlist while you're at it. You have no limit to the amount of your tax dollars (and mine and theirs) you want to pour into the Pentagon. And that world war two debt - not one cent of the principal has ever been paid off! Tell that to your great grandchildren, "Well you see, no American politicians ever had the nerve, balls, or leadership to pay it off, and now with interest it's probably 989,867,234,455,666,777 trillion dollars, but there is no price too high to pay for the slight chance that the violent, Marxist, deranged, animist, Tasmanian aboriginals might swim all the way to Boston Harbor...."

But thanks for answering the question.

Sigh..........
You pacifists are really a pathetic lot...............................

IF IT WERE NOT FOR ALL THE WARS FAUGHT TO PRESERVE OUR FREEDOMS YOU, FIT, WOULD NOT BE IN A POSITION TO SPOUT YOUR EMOTIONAL RHETORIC.
But that is a concept you will never grasp..................

I answered your post in good faith and you come back with meaningless gibberish.
If you want want a discussion I'll hang, but lets keep one foot in reality shall we.................

My primary complaint with our national defense spending is the fact that .. at least since the mid-80s and the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative.. any crazy-##### idea that someone proposes can get budgeted for billions of taxpayer dollars.. even if the project has yet to demonstrate an iota of feasibility.. or (even more absurdly).. even if the project serves no practical purpose in modern warfare.

Our defense spending strategy is ..foolish. The phrase "spending like a drunken sailor" gets thrown around too much. The level of ridiculousness in the spending by our defense department (and defense appropriations) cannot even be adequately described by that overused phrase anymore.

I'm all for spending money to protect our nation. But the people deciding on the use of this money have clearly demonstrated that they're either too corrupt or too ignorant to spend it correctly.

First of all, the fact that we're still spending money to create a missile defense shield is insane. Bush's latest request is over 10 billion dollars for this system. Any nation that would want to launch missiles at us has enough that any missile defense shield would be horribly inadequate to protect us. Russia and China could both put far more missiles in the air than we could ever shoot down. North Korea (first of all, definately not an irreconcilable 'enemy') has already demonstrated that they have NO capacity to hit us with any kind of missile. Iran (also, nowhere near irreconcilable) isn't even close to North Korea's level of (in)competence on missile matters. Spending money on a missile shield is throwing money away. Pakistan's missiles, while better than Iran, couldn't even hit Russia.

Meanwhile, we're still spending billions of dollars on submarines and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.. which is completely insane to me. Since.. for one.. we have enough surface-launched ballistic missiles to cover the planet. Plus enough existing submarine-launched missiles to no-doubt do half the job. And who the hell are we sneaking up on with our submarines? Are we worried about the big-bad Soviet surface fleet stopping us from hitting a target? It's ridiculous. There isn't a single legitimate adversary to the United States (reconcilable or otherwise) that poses a meaningful naval threat. Or aerial threat for that matter.

This doesn't even touch on the actual war spending and the completely asinine spending for Iraq reconstruction. There's simply no good justification for the amount of waste. Billions of dollars in cash, bundled in packages of $50,000, disappearing to unaccountable subcontractors and corrupt Iraqi political concerns. Two friends and a cousin back from Iraq and all three tell the same story: Truck breaks down? That'll be $20,000 for KBR. Broken air conditioner? $1000 for KBR. Broken window on the barracks? $150.

Whatever happened to encouraging efficiency through free-market principles..? It's completely inconsistent with what we see in our defense spending and our war spending.

All right, I'll admit that my prior response to this post was a bit over the top. First, you think it is realistic to kill somebody - more than that, you MUST KILL - to preserve one's way of life. What does that mean? Kill everybody who won't let you earn enough to pay cash for a new Mercedes? Your way of life is what - a four bedroom house in a gated subdivision, while the poor starve? That's the highest good, our way of life? And then this self-declared realist declares there is no cost high enough to preserve that way of life. No number too high; no cost ever even high enough. Astronomical proportions, bring them on, because it benefits the entire economy to build guided missiles that never, never, never got launched and never will.

Whatever it takes to totally destroy our enemies- does your ethics consider that to be the highest good? I forget, are you one of those who profess to have a LORD who commands you to LOVE YOUR ENEMIES?

You answered my question basically as I said: as a total warhawk, who would think that an annual defense budget of 666,854,786,987,655,650 trillion dollars would not be high enough. And you consider that to be realistic? Go borrow to your credit limit and send it to the Defense Dept.; impoverish yourself and send the proceeds there, too. Must be realistic, you know. I'd hate to think what your unrealistic response would have been - 989 trillion dollars per nanosecond?

And this post is not over the top as well? You still will not accept reality here. Simply put you kill those that are trying to kill you. This has been the the way of the world as humanity has propogated this planet.

And again I say millions have fought and died so that you and I have the FREEDOM to express our opinions here and elsewhere. Yet you continue to ignore this undeniable fact. The fact that we can express our views is because we build weapons better than anyone else. And we can kill better than anyone else. Maybe if we killed off all our enemies we would be able to take care of the poor people you seem to fret so much about. The poor people that will not get off their @sses and work because there is always a government handout.. ......

Kill, kill, kill - hate and kill our enemies - is that all you understand? Here's another article http://peace.mennolink.org/cgi-bin/m.pl?a=404

I especially like this quote by J. Daryl Byer: "What is the problem with the dramatic increase in U.S. military spending? First, it is a form of idolatry, which places our ultimate trust in weapons rather than in God. Second, it limits our national imagination to find nonviolent ways to build security. Third, it robs resources from programs that would benefit the most vulnerable people. Finally, it increases the sense of threat and insecurity that other countries feel, leading them to increase their military spending as well."

Switzerland is not pacifist, but it spends very little for defense. Costa Rica is pacifist, and hasn't had an army for almost sixty years! Pennsylvania was founded by Christian pacifists, and run peacefully by them for about sixty years, until the God-damned heresy of militarism, by the non-pacifist "Christian settlers" took over, and the French and Indian wars began. All of which shows that you can live free without threatening to annihilate civilization by uncivilized means.

You are the one who continues to ignore undeniable facts.

Kill, kill, kill the enemies; that's your answer, in direct opposition to the command LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. Or do you know for a fact that Jesus never said that? What part of the Gospel of Peace do you reject?