How Can We Best Support Our Troops?

by Tom Kando

The news (E.g. the Sacramento Bee and the Washington Post, May 31, 2011) told us again today what most moderately well-informed people already know: The country is going broke because of its insanely high military expenditures: The war in Afghanistan alone requires $113 billion per year, the one in Iraq another $85 billion, for a total of $200 billion on the two wars combined.

The base budget for federal military spending in 2012 is $708 billion. However, many parts of the Iraq and Afghan wars are funded through supplementary appropriations outside the Federal Budget, so they are not included in the military budget figures.

See: Military budget of the United States

Also, there are many additional defense-related expenditures, such as FBI-Counter terrorism, Veterans Affairs, Interest incurred on debt in past wars, etc. Estimates of total military and military-related spending range from $1.030 trillion to $1.415 trillion.

The total amount the federal government plans to spend in 2012 is $3.82 trillion. Thus, military spending makes up 37% of federal spending.

Of course, the feds spend much more than they collect, as the Republicans incessantly remind us: Uncle Sam will only collect $2.17 trillion in taxes, running a deficit of $1.65 trillion. (See: 2011 United States federal budget

If you compare the military budget with federal receipts, it makes up 65% of those! In other words, 2 out of every 3 tax dollars you hand over to Uncle Sam goes to defense. I hope this makes you feel safe.

Most reasonably informed people know that America’s military spending exceeds that of all other countries of the world combined. No need to rehash this.

A more interesting factoid is this: Instead of killing and dying in Afghanistan, we could hand over the $113 billion to the Afghans. Each of them would thus receive $4000 every year. This would raise their per capita income to that of countries such as Jordan, Samoa and Paraguay. We seem to be so keen on this damn “nation-building.” Why not give every Afghan man, woman and baby a $4000 check every Christmas (or every Eid ul Fitr). Maybe that’ll enable them to make a go of it. And if not, we’ll spend no more money than we do now, and at least there’ll be less bloodshed, no?

Memorial Day is a good opportunity to ask ourselves: How can we best support our troops? The answer: Bring them home. leave comment here