When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier
[Rudyard Kipling "The Young British Soldier"]
Thanks to Robert Higgs, an editor of The Independent Review and author of numerous articles on ideology, government, and warfare, for bringing back the memory of the poem I recited in my 8th grade class. At that point in time I wanted to be part of the "great game" when I grew up.
Of course it has a lot to do with sustainability and environmental change. Money, brainpower, and political concentration are requisites for the changes we're going to have to make in my opinion.
Have we turned into just another imperial power, now crumbling around the edges, yet oblivious to what we have become?
Do we now tolerate a supine U.S. Congress well on its way of becoming a mere debating society?
Do we only respond to symbols and repeated slogans, and are we both contemptuous of the world around us but terrified that our comfortable orthodoxy will be taken away?
The United States maintains some 800 military facilities in more than 140 countries. The Pentagon's appropriated budget is more than $500 billion. This however represents only part of military related expenditures.
There are nuclear-weapons programs that the Department of Energy is responsible for, some $70 billion goes to Veterans Affairs, millions to Homeland Security, the State Department, the intelligent agencies, growing expenditures for private contractors, and of course, the national debt.
An excellent article entitled "Dangers of the Best Military," written by William J. Astore, a retired Air Force officer who taught at the Air Force Academy, asks us to think carefully about what we may have become. What kind of military do we really need? Go to Warfighters.
Some Pentagon source material:
Base Structure Report 2007
CRS Report for Congress
