On Wed, 3 Feb 2016 17:24:59 -0800 (PST), boisenberry
wrote:

Do you support the right of all dictatorships to arm themselves with weapons made by our US military-industrial complex?

Rights are what people claim for themselves and defend. If they claim
that right, so be it. That doesn't mean that I support my government,
or corporations created by my government, selling or otherwise
providing arms as freely as they do.

How about unlimited arms for the US? We are the world's largest arms dealer. We promote militarism, not democracy. We spend obscene amounts on the military and allow basic needs of our people to go unmet. Eisenhower pointed this out quite clearly.

I largely agree.

We could easily cut our defense budget in half and still have the most powerful military in the world, bar none. That wasted half could be used for real progress in this country, fixing decaying infrastructure (Flint water system comes to mind), health care for all, advanced education for young people so we can compete with other industrialized nations, the list goes on and on.

I think it could be reduced by 90%. Because our economy and the
military are so intricately linked, such a shift would need to be
adopted over a long time- several decades at least. But it would be
wonderful to head in that direction. One reason so many other
developed nations are more successful than the U.S. is because they
don't have the enormous waste of bloated militaries.