We have enough nuclear weapons to turn the Earth into a lifeless lump of rock several times over. Why? We only have one Earth.
We keep on investing in one hundred million dollar aircraft that have no where to go and no one to fight.
We stockpile our weapons or we sell them to police stations all over the country, why? Would we turn the tanks toward civilians? Would we torpedo a yacht?
We have so much, that we are forgetting the concepts behind the purchase of the weapons. We don’t need that much, we do not really need the majority of the weapons we are currently manufacturing.
Again, we have the technology. We can shoot and/or bomb any enemy in a small space with a drone. For larger threats such as Isis training camps, we have larger bombs and weapons. Weapons that cannot be seen by our enemies. We have weapons that bring no danger to those who steer them and shoot them.
“A simple child, That lightly draws its breath…What should it know of death?” William Wordsworth, We are Seven, as published by Time on 12/30/1991
The current world is not interested in waging war through military weaponry. The current world is using software to win wars. The stock market and its many versions and fluctuations give power to the countries that manage them. But, much more power is wielded by those with wealth. It is not the might of military weaponry that controls the world anymore (if it ever was).
And yet SIPRI* reports: “In late 2017 the US Senate approved a new military budget for 2018 of $700 billion, a substantial increase over the 2017 budget.” The second largest spender is China and with the majority of the world’s population living in China, their budget is less than half of America’s budget. SIPRI states: “China, the world’s second largest spender, allocated an estimated $228 billion to its military in 2017, an increase of 5.6 per cent compared with 2016.” Even with an increase China is not getting within a fifty percent range of the U.S.
Who wants a larger military budget? No one, except arms manufacturers. They are the ones who benefit from this continued madness. We know it, they know it and every single politician knows it. There is great profit in the military madness and we Americans allow it to continue. The arms manufacturers make billions in profits and have a lobbyist standing on every corner in Washington D.C. They are h.u.g.e. contributors to politicians and the attendant political parties.
No matter who you are, know this: there is no reason for a young person to die or to be maimed in battle any more. When it happens, know this: it is happening so that the military war machine can profit. Our freedom is not threatened and has not been threatened since World War II.
It’s clear to all that the new battlefields are money and information. Our software systems make everything in the world work. Cybersecurity should be the next international defense investment that America makes. Machine guns are archaic and outdated tools of a battle that we no longer need to fight. We need talented and smart people to work for the people of America giving peace it’s proper place in human history.
We need to start a new conversation about power. The latest dramatic scandal in Washington D.C. is a warning to everyone in America. We must have a new conversation about money, power and success in America. Not any of those things is worth one single human life.
*Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI): the independent resource on global security.