Is what are we spending on defense making us weaker?

Virtually all Americans want a strong and secure America both because it feels good (rather like backing a winning a winning football team) and because it is distressing to be attacked and to be unable to fight back. Then there is the possibility that the bad guys could kill you.

Frankly either the freeways or cancer induced pollution will probably get you first – terrorism is a minute threat in the scheme of things , but the argument can indeed be made that one needs a big stick.

Nonetheless, the measure of a strong America does not lie in its defense budget alone; and the size of the spend does not necessarily equate to effectiveness. In fact, there are strong grounds for arguing that our current extraordinarily high levels of defense expenditure are actually making us weaker both because we are spending money on the wrong things in many cases, and because we are putting the economy deeper and deeper into debt; and foreign nations are lending us most of the money.

Not only are we wasting much of our defense funds but we are increasingly putting ourselves in hock to people who do not necessarily have our good will at heart. They include various European nations, Saudi Arabia and China. That is a situation that is likely to have bad consequences for this nation sooner rather than later. Disastrous consequences are a likely option.

We are actually spending much more on defense than most people realize. The trick to understanding this is to add ALL the defense related totals even in where they are not formally labeled as defense headings by the government. It is in the nature of governments of every stripe to dissemble and deceive.

If you add the 2006 Defense Budget , the Veterans Budget, the Intelligence Budget, supplementary requests for the War on Terror, Homeland Security and various provisions of the Department of Energy’s budget to do with nuclear matters, you end with a figure that is substantially in excess of $600 billion, in fact heading towards $700 billion plus. Please note the 'plus.'

That is a higher spend on defense related matters than the rest of the World combined, and yet not only are the military still complaining they are under-resourced, but no less than three million immigrants a year still manage to infiltrate successfully and illegally. Despite such crippling expenditure, we are not even close to making America secure. Apparently the entire Chinese Army could sneak over the Rio Grande if it so desired. Then there is the matter of the effectiveness, or lack of it, of our myriad of intelligence agencies (some say fifteen, others go higher). As matters stand, two years into the insurgency in Iraq, we still don’t quite know who we are fighting.

Our intelligence budget alone is about $40 billion.

By the way, Israel’s defense budget, which results in one of the most formidable military forces in the world, complete with nuclear capability, is roughly $11 billion; and Israel is not only under constant terrorist attack but is still at war with Syria.