IVUS Ch. 13: Militarism and Violence

The amount of money and focus that goes into the military is excessive. It is so excessive that is taking away from other issues that this country needs to improve on. America is considered to have one of the most powerful militaries and thus, I feel that this statement has kept the fighting off of American soil. Do not get me wrong, this is a good thing. But when this focus becomes so extreme that we abandon other major issues it takes away from the well-being of our country as a whole. It is a conspiracy as to how the big business corporations team up with the government to improve their personal profits and maintaining the status of having the newest weapons etc. So one big question that comes to my mind is "Where are our taxes going? Would the government really lie to millions of people in their country?". I think that this excessive spending and focus on the military and weapons creates more of a desire as well as a false set of arrogance in which the United States feels that they can interfere (with military actions) in other countries' issues. It also has created an economic downfall. As everyone knows today, the American economy is awful! This downfall started when we put our focus on Iraq and put an extreme amount of money into more weapons and soldiers. The government is not giving us straight facts but very vague ones. With this in mind it is difficult for an American citizen to say that the invasion of Iraq was justified. We do not know if there was a better solution in getting oil resources because the information was so vague. It is frustrating to think that such a powerful and influential group of people are basically taking advantage of their people by providing only the facts that justify/support their actions and thus making people do what THEY want.
This has contributed to an even greater gap between the wealthy and the poor. In the book State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy "the combined income of the 500 richest people's income is equal to the millions of poor people's income" (8). This goes to show how little the big corporate business as well as the military spending is helping the country. These greedy business men and powerful politicians' greediness give the world this bad perception of Americans as a country that can do whatever they feel like.