American War Machine Ignored

To be sure, World War II was indeed necessary and admirable and – YES - a remarkable and inspiring achievement for which all Americans should be proud.  

After World War II, and with the exception of Desert Storm (Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait), our wars have ALL been senseless slaughters and the waste of trillions of American dollars.

If we could determine the total price tag for all the armaments constructed after 1945 and those now in the planning stage it would hardly be an exaggeration to speculate it totals trillions upon trillions of dollars. 

Over the years we have been told time again that the Defense Department is impossible to audit. The stated reasons are; the building is too large and has too many systems that don’t link up, to give any kind of helpful result that would be worth the cost of an audit.  There has been some effort to get a handle on the money over the last couple of years.  In 2019, 1,400 auditors, visited 600 sites worldwide and requested more than 100,000 samples of equipment as they surveyed the department’s $2.9 trillion in total assets and $2.8 trillion in liabilities.  The last two findings have reported that the department “failed its audit.”

There  are two stark realities here.  One is that we will NEVER know how much we have spent and misused.   The second is that for a country that often cries “We don’t have the money” for a humane health care system, to end homelessness, poverty and hunger, for improvements to a pathetic educational system for our poor and underprivileged, to provide college tuition assistance, along with so many other compassionate and humanitarian needs is detestable.  It is mystifying how comfortable we have become in dismissing the loss and mismanagement for unaccounted trillions of dollars.  Considering this outrage in conjunction with the additional waste and fraud in government; “We don’t have the money” is pure hogwash and a grievous insult to our common sense and intelligence, compassion and human dignity. Obviously, the very last problem we have in this country is money.

 Now for the American lives Lost:

·         Korean War – 36,516

·         Vietnam War- 58,209

·         Iraq                  4,497

·         Afghanistan      2,356

These figures do not include the maimed, lifetime health afflictions (Agent Orange and Others), mental disorders, alcoholism and drug addictions, suicides and whatever else that may have been omitted here.  The costs in suffering and pain are enormous without demonstrating anything even remotely close to what was accomplished in the Second World War.

We are currently involved in seven war theaters worldwide.  They are never reported on and continue to flourish costing us even more trillions in taxpayer dollars.  No number of bullets or bombs are going to solve one problem in any of those war theaters.  MY GOD!!!!! Have we all forgotten that 9-11 was planned in Hamburg Germany????? 

Ike warned us this was coming (military–industrial–congressional complex (MICC)) and we were either to apathetic and callous or too busy chasing the almighty dollar to even notice or care.  This is ALL a clear-cut sign of moral decay.

Yes – World War II is worthy of devotion, but since then the scales are badly out-of-balance in almost exclusively favoring the disgraceful over the admirable.  The wanton destruction, waste of human lives and endless taxpayer dollars are part and parcel as to why a movement now exits to refuse to remove our caps or stand for the playing of the national anthem.

All Americans need to take this movement seriously and engage in this show of defiance until we return to compassionate and humanitarian endeavors in our public polices and behavior.