Kevin Duffy on the world's military expenditures

Official statistics say the U.S. accounts for 42% of the world's military expenditures and these are surely understated. In addition, we are blessed with huge geographical advantages - being buffered by the world's two largest oceans, and a massive nuclear arsenal. We outspend our neighbors to the north on defense by 32 times and those to the south by 121 times.

So why the need to support an empire that bankrupts us financially and morally, requires surrendering our freedoms, and makes us less secure? Threats like Iraq whose military spending is less than Oman's? Or Iran whose military is half the size of Turkey's?

H.L. Mencken got it right, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and thus clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

~ Kevin Duffy, November 11, 2010 (Veteran's Day)