Defence , Waste of public Money

every country spend billions or may be trillions of dollars of Defence . its just they spend cause they fear some other country may attack them however there are not much wars in this world may be 1 or 2 in decade but whole world spend huge money on defence ....
so how about if world leaders bring defence budget zero with promise to each other that they will not attack each other ...

dont you think that trillions of dollars can save millions of lifes by providing best healthcare ....
are not we loosing millions of lifes just to overcome our fear of war .

 

Good healthcare won't bring back the victims of terrorist attacks.

 

I'd say the evil aren't that naivee. Always keep a moderately big military to defend oneself. I don't think that fantasy world exists.

 

Or people can spend their own money to do this.

Defense is one of the very few government expenditures actually in the constitution.

 

I'd rather die from bad medical care than get my ass blown up by some fanatics.

 

No, but it could save enormously more lives than were lost in them. Or how about spending it on disaster preparedness. We lost more in Katrina than 9/11. Yet we're in no way prepared should it happen again. What about the 100,000+ deaths from the tsunami... again, enormously more than 9/11, but let's not worry about global warming or trying to understand the phenomenon more so we can better predict them to save lives, right?

I don't think defense spending should be brought to zero... but it doesnt' deserve the priority treatment it receives, especially in the US. Better intelligence can prevent attacks better than all the guns in the world will do at preventing more.

Jenn

 

The tsunami in asia? Are we thinking about the same thing?

Global warming didn't cause that, an earthquake caused that.

 

When people stop chopping off heads, I guess we can then dedicate more money to other areas.

 

Or *if* a democrat is ever elected. Then we can go back to worrying about terrorist plots again.

 

When someone finds a way to stop a tsunami or earthquake, please let me know. I'll fund it. I have this super huge milk bottle full of spare change that I've been spending on missiles and stuff; but I'll gladly divert if the need arises. Thanks!

 

I apologize for being vague. I was trying to focus on our lack of attention to understanding natural disasters in general and didn't word it well. On a side note however, a number of scientists in the field do make a connection between global warming and certain types of earthquakes. It's been years since I've researched anything along those lines, so I'm not going to try to do the theories justice now... and it's possible they've changed in the meantime (I used to do research as a job during college for the professor running my school's Earth/Space science program). But it's a pretty interesting subject really, so I thought I'd throw that in there.

Back to my original point... I simply feel that more money, time, and other resources should be put into better understanding natural phenomena, from tsunamis to earthquakes to hurricanes, etc. so we can learn to better predict them and prepare for them, saving an even greater number of lives than we'd save by thinking force is the only way to defend ourselves.

Jenn

 

I think your confusion comes from not understanding that more than one thing can be worked on at the same time.

 

I thought the tsunami was Bush's fault? I gotta stop reading these liberal blogs

Oh, I can't resist! Thanks GWB, for the low gas prices! I paid $2.52 at the pump tonight. Just a few weeks ago, I was paying $2.96. I mean, afterall, if moonbats are going to blame him when prices go up, surely he gets credit when they come down? Food for thought

 

I don't recall ever saying it had to be one or the other, so please don't put words in my mouth. I just see no reason for the budgets spent on defense to be justifiable compared to other things that cause much more destruction and cost many more lives. If the money were set aside simply for protecting American lives, and were distributed proportionately based on the number of deaths and risks, then I would have no issue with it. But that simply doesn't appear to be the case.

Jenn

 

eh? I'm not sure I understand.

You are opposed to the military budget being spent on things like ships, planes, missiles, guns, etc.

And would want it spent on people who died because we didn't have those things? (more if you live in a high risk city such as new york?)

 

Again, you're putting words in my mouth. That's quite a nasty habit you have.

I never said anything about spending money on people who died... but on preventing even larger numbers of people from dying in the future. The fact is quite simply that dear old mother nature wipes out more human life than terrorists do, yet trying to understand those phenomena enough to predict them more accurately so we can better protect people in the future isn't given a proportionate budget to the number of lives affected. A few thousand people died from the terrorist attacks on 9/11. That's awful and tragic. NYC is my hometown. I'll always regard it as such even though I no longer live there. My family was affected that day. Most of my family still lives in that "high risk city". But yes... I'd rather see more funding spend on "intelligence" improvements to stop attacks from happening in the first place and less on the "ships, planes, missiles, guns, etc." to serve as a backup when the intelligence is screwed up. And yes, I also think far more of that money for "protecting" our citizens should be allocated to things like preventing natural disasters and providing faster emergency support and crisis management efforts to preserve as many lives as possible, rather than such an overemphasis on defense efforts that didn't protect us in the first place. More people died in one freaking hurricane than 9/11. It has a better chance of happening again tomorrow or just about any day. So yeah, I believe our focus is entirely in the wrong place. Does that clear my feeling on the issue up for you?

 

Just 2 weeks ago I was paying $3.33, as of last night it is around $2.84. Do keep in mind that we have a Liberal Governor in WI and the highest gas tax in the nation.

Oh yeah, he will get credit as the price goes down. The liberal pundants will claim he did it to change voter opinion at he polls.

 

Its down to $2.70 in Tampa. Across the bridge in St Pete I saw $2.55

Which befuddles me. The port is on the tampa side, not the st pete side, so ours should be lower.

 

Damage from Earthquake and Tsunami can be minimized at large extent if we build houses with technology which gets less damage by earthquake . giving Free houses to peoples living near costal area's may prevent damage from TSunami . Also if We fund reserch properly we can save millions of lives from Aids/Cancer/Earthquake/Tsunami/Accidents or almost anything .We need great leadership with Great management skills .