Robert Scheer in a recent L.A. Times article writes, “Why is U.S. military spending at the highest point, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than at any time since the end of WWII? Why, without sophisticated military opponent in sight, is the U.S. spending trillions of dollars on the development of high-tech weapons systems that lost their purpose with the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago?”…Several years ago I asked a similar question after discovering the U.S. spends more money on it’s military than the next ten countries combined!...and…the U.S. has spent more money on “one” nuclear sub than all government spending on PBS programs in all the years… Speaking of nuclear subs…Why are we continuing to shell out 2.5 billion dollars for a sub? Terrorists don’t have nuclear subs do they?...The last time I checked, the 9/11 hijackers used box cutters which could have been purchased for a couple of bucks at a local Wal-mart to do their dastardly deeds. If the terrorists don’t require nuclear subs than we must be building them to protect ourselves from the Chinese, right?...According to the 2007 Pentagon report to congress, “the intelligence community estimates China will take until the end of this decade or later to produce a modern force capable of defeating a moderate size adversary”…If the threat from abroad is not “real” than why do we continue to spend so much of our national treasury at such historical levels?...Have we become so paranoid?...or…is it a case of big business?...or both…and…is it any coincidence that Joe Lieberman who is one of the most vocal proponents for the building of nuclear subs representative of the same state, Connecticut, where the company that builds nuclear subs is based?...It does make one wonder and be suspicious…

The current Pentagon budget for this year is 625 billion, plus another 100 billion for other federal budget expenses for homeland security, nuclear weapons, and covert operations. The current amount is 35% higher than when George Bush came into office and is “larger than all other nations combined”…The next president of the U.S. is going to have a hell of time financing any of the domestic reforms without slashing and burning the current military budget…and…I wonder if they are going to have the political will to do so…but...if the next president and congress don’t do something to curtail and put the breaks on our runaway military spending than we may be joining the Soviet Union in running our economy into the ground… and… we won’t have anyone to blame except for ourselves for accepting hook, line, and sinker, the “myth of violence”….I’ll end with this excerpt from the Babylonian Creation myth and the haunting words of Walter Wink.



He sliced her in half like a fish for drying:
Half of her he put up to roof the sky
Drew a bolt across and made a guard to hold it.
Her waters he arranged so they could not escape

Blood I will mass and cause bones to be.
I will establish a savage, ‘Man’ shall be his name.
Verily, savage-man I will create.
He shall be charged with the service of the gods
That they [the gods] might be at ease!

"Violence is so successful as a myth precisely because it does not seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It is what works. It is inevitable, the last, and often, the first resort in conflicts…The myth of redemptive violence undergirds American pop culture, civil religion, nationalism, and foreign policy, and that it lies coiled like an ancient serpent at the root of the system of domination that has characterized human existence since well before Babylon ruled supreme…and…in the Babylonian myth, creation is an act of violence: Tiamat, “mother of them all”, is murdered and dismembered; from her cadaver the world is formed. Order is established by means of disorder. Creation is a violent victory over an enemy older than creation…This myth is the original religion of the status quo, the first articulation of “might makes right”. It is the basic ideology of the Domination System. The gods favor those who conquer. Conversely, whoever conquers must have the favor of the gods…and..Any form of order is preferable to chaos, according to this myth."....Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers