[video=youtube;QnBsNK_gkRk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnBsNK_gkRk&feature=channel_video_title[/video] Some of the countries the defense/war money is being spent on: - Somalia - Yemen - Iraq - Afghanistan - Palestine - Libya Is waging war on these nations turning out to be a slow motion car crash?
Worthy of pointing out that Palestine is not a country. Other than that, I'd say it our foreign aid is more largely contributing to our debt problem and should be terminated until our debt issues are resolved and, in some cases, permanently. Here is the list: Afghanistan : 3 Billion Iraq : 2.25 Billion Pakistan : 1.35 Billion West Bank/Gaza : 1 Billion Sudan : 1.1 Billion Egypt : 483 million The following all receive between 250 and 950 million annually: Ethiopia Kenya Colombia Jordan Georgia South Africa Burkina Faso Nigeria Mexico Russia Uganda Namibia Tanzania Haiti Congo (Kinshasa) Mozambique Zambia Zimbabwe And there is also Israel, who gets 52 million annually source I'm with you Solar Products. Lets cut off every last one of those countries and territories except for Iraq, who I would say we need to see to completion. I mean seriously, a billion dollars a year to a bunch of terrorists in the west bank? Half a billion a year to keep Egypt's army afloat? There are those who say that without that aid, Islamist extremists will rise to power in those countries and kill off millions upon millions of people to consolidate their power, but I say F' em. Let em kill each other. Why is Syria's need to slaughter its people our problem? If they jack with Israel, Israel will simply bomb them [further back] into the stone age. Most of those countries are shitholes that haven't got the muscle to jerk themselves off. Let em do what they want to each other. If they produce a peace loving and free society they claim they would without the influence of evil western money, great! If they turn out to be closed off societies like North Korea that commit attrocities against their own people on a daily basis and threaten their neighbors, great! Of course, with such a policy, the west would also have to change the "war on terror". Perhaps we could borrow a page out of Sharia and cut off the hand of every nation we determine to be complicit in an act of terror. We get a bomber from Pakistan in New York, we carpet bomb the Islamabad, and then stop. Sounds dreamy, doesn't it? It would certainly be cheaper!
Who do you bomb when it's an American with a bomb in New York, which is more likely where your enemys will come from.
The defense budget could be ZERO and America would still go bankrupt. The defense budget is a minor part of the budget so eliminating it will NOT cure the problem, although it may help in the short term. Until and unless we attack the real budget busters, nothing will save America from bankruptcy. I do agree that we cannot afford to be fighting in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc when we NEED our soldiers on our southern border. Fighting far off wars while allowing potential enemies to cross our borders is a fools game. Bringing our soldiers home (not what the POTUS wants) would cut our defense budget at least in half and would be a great start. It is also naive to be funding our enemies through foreign aid. We send them the funds. They use them to attack us. That is ridiculous. Cutting foreign aid by at least 90% is needed, but, again, it is such a minor part of the budget that it would change nothing in the long run.
Home grown terrorism is a different issue I suppose we would have to handle on a case by case basis. If the terrorist had a state sponsor, you hold the state accountable. Lone gunmen like Tim McVeigh get dealt with how they get dealt with. Major Nadal Hassan consulted with Anwar Al'Alaki, though perhaps was not sponsored by him. What do you think, perhaps a partial bombing of Yemen? Regarding your second comment, about the where our enemies are more likely to come from, I can only assume you live in a vacuum without access to any news media, statistics, or facts. Not sure there is much I can do to help you there. I'm not sure naive is the word. Paying Jordan or Egypt to not make war on Israel is nothing short of extortion. If I ran a middle eastern nation, I would look at those examples and immediately start threatening to attack Israel so I too could get a check from Uncle Sam for being "good". Egypt's president Mubarak pocketed most of what he received. Screw it. Cut them all off, including Israel. If they attack our ally Israel, I have no doubt we have a carrier battle group in the area to cut down on some excess population in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iran, or any other nation that acts on it's extortion threat. I suspect there is very little that would be as effective in changing attitudes about peace in the middle east like the loss of a few million people.
There's absolutely no threat from all those nations that are victims at the moment. If you make it 0% now, then yes they will still go bankrupt. But what if you kept the budget to near 0% 10 years ago? -- @Obamanation You are only good at twisting things. You do agree to cut aid to the biggest recipient of foreign aid - Israel, currently $3 billion per year, and I totally agree with you.
I don't have the numbers, but I seriously don't think it would have made a difference if the defense budget had not existed for the last ten years. Every nation needs a DEFENSE budget. The key word here is DEFENSE. Our so-called DEFENSE budget is in reality an OFFENSE budget. NO NATION EVER NEEDS AN OFFENSE BUDGET!
Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Gaza, all of them. The numbers I put up have Israel at 52 million not 3 billion, but if you want to count military aid as well, which would put Israel at 2.4 billion, I'm still in. Of course counting military spending, puts afghanistan at 9 billion in total annual aid, which we should also cut to zero. Egypt at 1.7 billion, gone. How long would it take for their beloved army to turn into gangsters robbing their own poor people! Israel, with or without our aid, can still deal with any military threat in the region, especially once we cut off our aid to all her neighbors, not to mention we would immediately join the military defense of Israel if they were attacked. Its a much cheaper solution to the problems in the middle east in terms of dollars, though very costly in the lives of Islamists. On the bright sode, the middle east would probably end up looking like this in no time at all:
Agreed, cut foreign aid and the defence budget, bring all troops back to where they belong. The map is wishful thinking, we both know Israel is not looking good at the moment, the land has a very ugly shape, and the future is even worse for her.
The map is wishful thinking. However, Israel will expand her borders eventually, but not without SEVERE contractions first. Regardless, she will never expand to what the map suggests.
I'm curious as to why you think 20% of the federal spending is not significant? It's huge compared to every other country:
I did not say it was not significant. I said that it would not cure the problem (America's pending bankruptcy), just ameliorate it a bit. And our DEFENSE (really OFFENSE) spending is huge because we are subsidizing the defense of other countries. Because we "defend" Europe (via NATO for example), Europe can spend normal defense money elsewhere, like on massive social programs. Cut our defense spending in half, and you would see a rise in defense spending elsewhere in the world, and a corresponding drop in social programs. Social programs "work" in Europe because they don't need to spend money on defense. Force them to spend more on defense, and the social programs will collapse. Is that good? I doubt it, but we can't afford to keep subsidizing Europe.
We need to cut defense spending in half... would still have the strongest military by a long shot. Like we have more aircraft carriers than all other countries combined as it is (and our smallest one is twice the size of any other countries largest)... yet we are building 3 more still. lol WTF? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_service And we need to raise the minimum age for Medicare/Social Security to something like 72. Those two things would solve the US debt problems... unfortunately everyone will cry about it if someone tried to actually do it, so it won't happen sadly.
When it comes to War and paranoia, Us tops the list. US a trillion dollar military budget and all they have done is cowardly bombed third world countries like hell. As for bankruptcy,no. They won't be bankrupt by spending more on defense i guess.