We, the United States, spend 700 billion dollars a year to fight the Soviet Union. This is a very curious statistic, since the Soviet Union has been gone for almost twenty years now, and we and the Soviets haven’t overtly threatened each other with mutually assured destruction for even longer. But the Soviets are gone, now replaced with the haphazardly capitalist Russians and their shirtless, horseback-riding poster boy.
That 700 billion funds a Cold War-era American war machine that isn’t as good at killing terrorists as it would be at killing Chinese soldiers (who are the spiritual successors to the super scary Russians). Except that we’re not at war with China and probably won’t be, because despite all the fearful rabble rousing about the Red Menace, China’s capitalist as hell these days. If history has taught us one thing about capitalism, it’s that powerful nations with free markets don’t kill each other…they kill less powerful nations with no free markets. And those less powerful nations are the ones with all the nutjob terrorist assholes.
America needs to reorganize its defense budget. Big fucking tanks and ICBMs are certainly impressive weapons, but we have a bunch of those already. And let’s not forget that the so-called War on Terror, also known as the War on Dudes Riding Camels, largely takes place in urban environments among people whose house we’re totally trying not to crush into rubble, which is practically all tanks and ICBMs are good at.
Winning hearts and minds...by blowing them to bits.
Terrorist organizations are basically organized crime gangs in that they’re loosely affiliated group of criminals. Hell, major terrorist groups are usually funded by traditional mob-like ventures anyway, like gun-running. So America is basically fighting a war against John Gotti in a turban. We have to ask: Did the FBI catch Gotti by using ICBMs and tanks? True, Gotti didn’t send suicide bombers onto planes with dick-exploding underpants bombs. Then again, Osama bin Laden never took charge of a criminal organization that controlled the bulk of crime in a large New York City borough, now did he?
If America was a person, it would be an overweight, sweaty, paranoid survivalist living in a backwoods bomb shelter in Montana counting his ammo while waiting for Red Dawn to happen. Well Red Dawn isn’t happening. As mentioned earlier, you don’t need a high-ranking position in the CIA to understand that powerful nations with free markets don’t fight each other too often these days. And please, let’s forget the socialist fear frenzy of the Tea Baggers; the weak tea socialism of first world nations is more likely to raise the standard of living for the rank-and-file (the working class and poor) who, with decent standards, are less likely to get all pissed off at the capitalist machine destroying Mother Russia (or Mother China, or Mother Venezuela). Simply, it’s difficult to rally a population into a wild frenzy of murderous Maoism when the factory workers have health benefits and poor people get to use the internet once in a while. But even the peace between world powers won’t placate the paranoia of fat, Montana Militia-loving America, who’s still dry humping a Minuteman III missile and expecting a Red Menace to crash over our borders at any minute.
Red China's frozen death nipples.
Then again, even if America dropped its paranoia and figured “Hey, maybe we can combat terror groups more effectively with good intelligence and law enforcement efforts than we can with hydrogen bombs”, the arms industry would get a severe case of dick limpness. People make a lot of fuckin’ money off of stealth bombers, tanks, and other goods that employ varying degrees of explodiness. Sure, reorganizing our efforts in fighting the War on Dudes Riding Camels might make sense, but unfortunately it adversely effects the bottom lines of a handful of super rich douchebags.
We can only hope that the American people realize that our defense budget, among other facets of our government and society, is archaic, overpriced, and ineffective. Americans are, after all, a citizenry known for their common sense, right?
Ugh. Never mind.
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