Should we cut military spending?

The loudest voices against the impending debt ceiling compromise in Washington come from conservatives like Joe Lieberman.   They worry that if future deficit goals are not met, military spending will be cut “disproportionately.” They scream about the fact that any funding might be taken from the military, something everyone pretends receives almost no funding. This is the Great Elephant In The Room.  No Republicans and precious few Democrats dare confront the Military-Industrial Complex President Eisenhower warned would distort our budget priorities and ultimately sink the economy.

America spends as much on the military as the rest of the world combined.  Yet somehow this is never enough. We cut welfare, education, health care proposals,  but continue to spend more and more on the military. Are we really still “the land of the free and the home of the brave?”  Or are we instead a bloated, paranoid giant huddling behind our overwhelming firepower, forever afraid we won’t be able to bomb enough people in enough places to protect our unprecedented standard of living, which after all, is proof of God’s favor upon us?  Or maybe it’s more pragmatic: maybe we’re afraid that cutting the military budget will decimate what has become America’s largest jobs program.

Either way, it’s pathetic.