NY Times-OP-ED

Probably my favorite part of the NY Times is the Opinion section. Sometimes I find that the authors are guilty of beating a dead horse in terms of making the same point week after week (Krugman comes to mind here...though I do whole heartedly agree with him almost every time), but generally they are insightful and say all the things you wish people would hear. 


Aside from Krugman, another favorite of mine is Kristof. His columns often highlight human rights issues ('here' and 'here'), social programs ('here') and injustices around the world that people are ignoring-- or that are not "glamorous" enough to be publicize.  


This week he writes about the military complex in the States, read his piece 'here'. I like how he strikes a moderate tone-- it's not about abolishing military spending, its just about finding a balance: 
"Let me be clear: I’m a believer in a robust military, which is essential for backing up diplomacy. But the implication is that we need a balanced tool chest of diplomatic and military tools alike. Instead, we have a billionaire military and a pauper diplomacy. The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service — and that’s preposterous."


In case you do not read the piece-- here are a few of the facts he throws out there:

• The United States spends nearly as much on military power as every other country in the world combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It says that we spend more than six times as much as the country with the next highest budget, China.

• The United States maintains troops at more than 560 bases and other sites abroad, many of them a legacy of a world war that ended 65 years ago. Do we fear that if we pull our bases from Germany, Russia might invade?

• The intelligence community is so vast that more people have “top secret” clearance than live in Washington, D.C.

• The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined.

It makes you wonder if there is just a whole ton of stuff going on out there, that we are not privy to, that justifies all this spending etc, or if the whole operation is just poorly managed. Like every complex issue, its probably a combination of the two...