Well...

..it seems taht you are advocating a position that is neither safe nor prudent. One that says, we, as the advanced leader of the "free world" should unilaterally disarm ourselves because it is the only humane thing to do.

Why spend on defense when there is nothing to defend against seems to be your question...even though were involved in one conflict I linked to and are likely to end up involved in the other.

But we don't need a well equipped, well-trained armed force because it may make war more palatable.

Not to the enemy facing those forces.

We are spending less. almost 50% less than the highest point (6.6 to 3.9) We've cut good programs to make these reductions. We face serious readiness problems because we are spending so much less. Yet because you see no "clear and present danger"...you still seem to advocate spending little or nothing.

Methinks we may not see an agreement reached between us on this finer political point.

(debated) much - or in a manner which (more than putatively) seeks the input of citizens re

Quo vadis? - since the dissolution of the USSR. The rhetoric remains cold-warish and even the cliches 'hawk / dove' appear to be just resting for a spell.

"More military spending" is deemed by one cliche-side as simply: the unarguably patriotic Thing to do. Undoubtedly the reverse is: let's disarm (I don't recall mentioning that straw dog?).

I submit that, before 'we' can assign some %-GNP or any other manifestly *arbitrary* indicator of OK-patriotic-spending - there needs first to be a public, massively debated and reviewed and then debated some more: "sense of purpose". An overt, explicit replacement for the vestiges of M.A.D.. I know of no such - even "mock-plebiscite".

There's a major qualitative change in our position vis-a-vis the entire world, and we are simply drifting with the hot air of a now deceased "permanent emergency state" -- which most of us alive today, took to be "the normal state for homo-saps".

It wasn't 'normal' however it was our average behavior, then. Now is different! (Unless we keep saying, it isn't.) I submit there is nothing like 'a national consensus' on:

WTF we *ought* to be doing - next, at home or in the world. Our One Party with Two Right Wings and a skeleton 'middle' is demonstrating neither 'direction' nor method. The ABM diversion, I submit - proves how 'tactical' is our group-think: how utterly devoid of anything like a long-term strategy for the US next, military or otherwise.

In this context - I think "%-GNP" is about as much Red-Herring as it is unimaginitive. It is cart-before-horse. You spend what you *must* after FIRST having plan, strategy and some sense of the citizenry - or it's just random waste pork. Again. IMO.

(And out there STILL: are all those thousands of nukes we all duped ourselves into overbuilding, knowing we *never could use a fraction of them!* except in a final M.A.D. unthinkable suicide.)

Want Ad? Terra looking for kindergarten teacher. Apply UN - Geneva or NY, Earth.

A.

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