We are falling behind other developed nations, in terms of quality of life and services provided by the government, because of our nation's excessive military spending. At some stage there has to be a winding down of the military machinery. International citizens see now that buying American products and services is just supporting American military dominion. Our country seems to be turning into a well-primed fine-tuned killing machine, and it seems that Christians are loving it. This simply is not right. Who can sensibly claim that America is a Christian nation, when it so zealously pursues the path of killing and destruction? This is completely antithetical to the core tenets of Christianity.
And what good does this military supremacy really do the world? It proved useless in avoiding the atrocities of the Rwanda genocide. It proved useless in preventing the tragedy of September 11th. Can we attack global warming with Patriot Missiles? Can we fight global poverty with Abrams Tanks and Black Hawk helicotpers? Can we fight AIDS with tactical nuclear weapons? Can we combat cancer with Tomahawk missiles, or depleted uranium ordnance? When foreign citizens no longer wish to buy our goods and sponsor our hegemony, do we employ our military to force them at gunpoint and under threat of annihilation to buy American products?
One could argue that the Department of Defence should be renamed the Department of Offence. There certainly seem to be enough unthinking individuals out there who are so fond of parroting off that idiotic old adage "the best defence is a good offence", without giving it any serious thought. Perhaps, just perhaps, defence and offence are fundamentally different. Perhaps even, shall we say, opposite? It seems, though, that one benefit of declaring a policy of pre-emptive war is that you can't be held accountable in the event that the war is proven unnecessary, since pre-emptive action is regarded, by definition, as precautionary and "just in case", so people are likely to forgive when such a war turns out to not have been necessary after all.
When Social Security falters for baby boomers, they must blame their own idiotic support for our present culture of militarism and the misguided and wasteful campaigns that were born of this, since they have effectively blown the money that should have been there for their retirement.