USA is the largest manufacturer of arms and ammunition. It is also the biggest supplier of the same to countries all over the world either as outright donation or at heavily subsidized rates so as to help our 'friends' to defend themselves against their 'enemies'. Billions of dollars of tax payers' money is siphoned off and paid to manufacturers of arms and ammunition. On the other hand day in and day out we keep on praising the supreme sacrifices made by our armed forces creating an image of our defense budget as a sacred cow and questioning it as an unpatriotic act.
There is NO OTHER COUNTRY left in the world today which will even think of a war against the USA because no one, including Russia and China, would be willing to put at peril their nascent economies. Our allies praise us now and then as saviors and defenders of democracy and for these few worthless words our taxpayers pay out in billions. It is time we seriously reduced our defense budget and ploughed in the money saved in development of infrastructure. As an economic super power we will command more respect even from our 'enemies'. Nobody cares for the bully in the street, but everybody defers to the rich.
(As published in The New York Times, May 30, 2011)
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