once said, "The Instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace." In the year 2012, the U.S. Defense Department spent $530 billion --that's $1,095,403 per minute and $18,256 per second.
Former President Jimmy Carter said we spend about as much as the whole world put together on defense.
When we consider military spending, we also must figure in the interest on the debt caused by such high military expenses. When this is included, the United States spends 55 cents of every dollar on the military, according to Charles Hauss in his book "Comparative Politics: Domestic Responses to Global Challenges -- third edition."
It is very expensive to maintain a permanent war economy.
President Dwight D.
Eisenhower once said, "The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labors, the genius of its scientists and the hope of its children." Consider what was wasted in Iraq. The total budgetary and economic cost of the Iraq War was around $3 trillion when everything is figured in, including future retirement compensation, disability payments, replacing worn out equipment etc, according to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize- winning economist at Columbia University, who was chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, senior-vice president and chief economist at the World Bank, and Linda J. Bilmes, an economist at Harvard University, who is an expert in government finance. She is a former assistant secretary and chief financial officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
If our brightest and best prepared minds ran our political parties -- our college professors -- rather than vested interests -- we probably would have spent that money -- more than 3 trillion -- ending the causes of war.
Surely the need for oil and for vast quantities of many different kinds of metals to build the automobile is a real driving force behind why the USA has fought so many wars.
Perhaps even the vast hatred for socialism that has so often led the elites running the USA to plunge us into war, is, at least in part, the need for oil and the vast quantities of the many different kinds of metals it takes to build the automobile.
I say this because in 1973, Leonid Breznev, the ruler of the Soviet Union, said, "Our aim is to win control of the two great treasure houses on which the West depends, the energy treasure house of the Persian Gulf and the mineral treasure house of central and southern Africa."
Some ores only exist in Africa and the Soviet Union. Over the years, Marxist activities in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zaire, Zambia and South Africa have at times resulted in supply disruptions of some ores.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that if our need for oil and resources to build the automobile is a threat to national security, instead of attacking Iraq, we should have spent $3 trillion breaking automobile dependency, building passenger rail, light rail, subways, trolley cars and buses.
How many subways could be built with the $1 trillion dollars requested in the 1997 U.S. military budget for the development of a new Joint Strike Fighter and $400 billion for six lesser-known air craft?
The USA should also be spending money restructuring our stupidly designed cities so that they are walkable. Out of our 39,000 local communities, every one of them -- with just a few exceptions -- is carefully designed to be auto dependent.
Housing is a long way off from grocery stores. Why?
In England, where I am staying at the moment, there are nine grocery stores in walking distance. The doctors office is across the street. The hair dressers is in walking distance. There are computer repair shops, used furniture shops and all kinds of shops enabling me to take care of all my daily needs by foot. I don't need a car at all. (And all that walking helps me stay thin.)
The walkability of English cities is also enhanced by tight compact development brought about by planning. (This is how they make space for the countryside.)
It's one reason why the average Brit uses five times less gasoline per person than the average American and why the average French person uses seven times less gasoline per person than the average American.
How else might we invest in peace?
Daniel Ortega, former president of Nicaragua, said in 1983, $800 billion was wasted on the military across the globe "though children are dying each day of hunger, malnutrition and lack of medical attention."
One B1 strategic bomber in the USA costs 62 times more than the annual budget of Nicaragua, said Tomas Borg, the former Minister of Interior of Nicaragua.
So what if instead of sending the B1 to their sons we had spent the money on technicians, engineers and professors for developing countries?
This is how ordinary, decent Americans think, which stands in sharp contrast to many of our rich, behind the scenes, who want to use the government to protect their interests.
Another
way we could invest in the instruments of peace rather than war would be to collaborate with other nations, perhaps through UNICEF, UNESCO, public broadcasting stations and universities, in creating and lending high quality videos and other materials: peace education materials; character education materials promoting the social, mental, moral and spiritual well-being of children and youth; high quality music appreciation materials and videos to promote care for the earth. We violate international law -- human rights -- when we neglect this, for Article 17 of a human rights treaty for the protection and care of children, called The Convention on the Rights of the Child, calls for an international sharing of materials for children, which some Asian Pacific nations have been doing for years.
Article 17
States Parties recognize
(a) Encourage the mass media to disseminate information and material of social and cultural benefit to the child and in accordance with the spirit of article 29;
(b) Encourage international co-operation in the production, exchange and dissemination of such information and material from a diversity of cultural, national and international sources.
We could have an international lending library with materials in a number of languages. Materials could be downloaded online or ordered through interlibrary loans of public libraries for use by broadcasting companies, organizations, schools and parent-education programs.
A lending library of inspirational films could help nations break their dependence on cheap commercial imports that glorify violence, promiscuity and greed.
If the blood-soaked history of the United States has taught us anything its that rampant greed in a large country can shake world peace.
Instead of greed, we should be promoting a simple sustainable lifestyle where our treasures are the gifts of the earth, not resource intensive goods: a yard or community garden plot overflowing with a scented profusion of blooms, clematis vines, plum trees, pecan trees, cherry trees and fig trees.
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