After the Election

In received the following e-mail from Max Angst on Thanksgiving.

Art: I’ve been thinking about the events of the last few weeks—especially the election—and I wonder where all this will take us. The thing that was different about our country in the last part of the twentieth century was its militarism. Americans were told that the USSR intended to conquer us and therefore we must build ever more intimidating munitions. Currently were being given the same sort warniings, but the threat is now terrorism. I have read that the USSR realized as early as the mid-fifties that our capabilities were beyond anything they could hope to achieve and they were no longer competing with us in an arms race. But, we Americans were fed the myth of the Soviet threat so that money could be taken out of our pockets and put into the pockets of the military industrial complex. This is still going on; a general on Lou Dobbs show recently complained we were not succeeding in Iraq because we weren’t spending enough on that project. We spent six hundred billion dollars so far on that war and four hundred and fifty billion dollars each year since the war has been spent on other military projects. This is obscene when we consider our enemy, Al Qaeda, doesn’t have a national economy behind it. If that is who we’re fighting.
I suspect the Democratic Party isn’t much better than the Republican Party. We can see if this is true by watching the military budget.. The Progressive community must call on the Democrats loudly and clearly to cut the Military budget at least in half. This will still leave us spending two or three time more on our military than any other country. If they do this, then we know they can be trusted and we should work with them. If they don’t do this we know the military industrial complex still rules our country and we should join the international movement to put them out of business.
Max Angst