Did you know that the United States military is now bombing 6 different countries? U.S. aircraft are conducting air strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen
and now Somalia. There is a U.S. military base in over half of the countries on the planet and U.S. military spending is over 7 times larger than the military spending of any other nation on earth. Yes, the United States will always need a strong military. But with our national debt exploding at an exponential rate, can the United States really afford to continue to be the police of the world?
#1 Prior to the beginning of the "War on Terror" our national debt
was under 6 trillion dollars. Today, it has more than doubled and currently sits at a whopping 14.3 trillion dollars.
#2 Today, the U.S. military is in nearly
130 different nations and it has a total of about
700 military bases around the globe. It costs approximately 100 billion dollars each year to maintain these military bases.
#3 U.S. military spending
is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.
#4 The United States already accounts for
46.5% of all military spending on the planet. China is next with only 6.6%.
#5 If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit
for 15 days.
#6 When you throw in all "off budget" items and other categories of "defense spending" not covered in the Pentagon budget you get a grand total of
somewhere between $1.01 and $1.35 trillion spent on national defense in 2010.
#7 The U.S. government borrows an average of about 168 million more dollars
every single hour.
#8 The Pentagon currently gobbles up
56 percent of all discretionary spending by the federal government.
#9 Between 2007 and 2010, U.S. GDP grew by only 4.26%, but the U.S. national debt soared
by 61% during that same time period.
#10 The cost for the first week of airstrikes on Libya
was 600 million dollars. Keep in mind that the leader of the opposition in Libya
has admitted that his forces contain large numbers of the same "al-Qaeda fighters" that were shooting at American troops in Iraq. So we are going broke and we are helping al-Qaeda take power in Libya at the same time.
#11 The total price tag for each F-22 fighter jet
is approximately $350 million.
#12 Over the past decade, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost U.S. taxpayers
well over a trillion dollars.
#13 If you went out today and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you
over 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
#14 Since 2001, the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan breaks down
to well over $3,600 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
#15 Just one day of the war in Afghanistan
costs more money than it took to build the entire Pentagon.
#16 The United States government is now responsible
for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.
The U.S. national debt is escalating out of control and all of these wars are not helping one bit.
Occupying and bombing all of these nations is not even making us safer. In fact, it is creating more enemies than it is destroying.
In addition, our military is now spread so incredibly thin that there are real questions about our ability to respond if a major threat did actually arise.
If you support our troops, then you should want the U.S. government to stop trying to police the world. We are getting a lot of young men and women hurt and killed and we are accomplishing
a whole lot of nothing.
See complete article from THE AMERICAN DREAM at:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/16-reasons-why-the-united-states-can-no-longer-afford-to-be-the-police-of-the-world
Another Obama Record Breaking First: (The Washington Times) — U.S. debt shot up $239 billion on Tuesday — the largest one-day bump in history —the debt subject to the statutory limit shot way past the old cap of $14.294 trillion to hit $14.532 trillion on Tuesday, according to the latest Treasury Department figures, which are released on the next business day.
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