Expensive War Machines
The United States Office of Management and Budget estimates total Pentagon spending, not including nuclear weapons or combat operations, for the period of fiscal 2008 through fiscal 2012 will exceed $2.3 trillion. These figures should help everyone understand that there is simply no business like war business as the permanent war economy has become a central pillar of the U.S. economy. While the U.S. now imports an enormous amount of goods, this nation continues to be the leading exporter of weapons around the world.
The cost and profit from manufacturing weapons is huge as the following examples reveal:
The F/A-18EF jet fighter: $95 million each The F-22 jet fighter: $338 million each
The F-35 Jet fighter: $112 million each
The B-2 bomber: $2.1 Billion each
The cost for one CVN-21 aircraft carrier is $11.9 Billion
The cost for each DDG-1000 (DDx) surface combat ship is $3.1 billion
The cost for each Trident II D-5 missile for the Trident submarine is $67 million.
The Trident submarine is the biggest killing machine ever built. This submarine carries twenty-four ballistic missiles, each missile capable of carrying eight nuclear warheads, each warhead over five times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. One Trident submarine has the destructive power of over one thousand Hiroshima bombs and can strike 192 separate targets. There are eighteen Trident submarines.
Some of the Top Military Spenders
The following figures are compiled for 2006 (or 2005 for some countries) by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI):U.S.: $419 billion
China: $62.5 billion
Russia: $61.9 billion
UK: $51.billion
Japan: $44.7 billion
France: $41.6 billion
Germany: $30.2 billion.
The United States accounts for nearly 50 percent of total world military expenditures and it is scheduled to increase over the coming years. The Center for Arms Control in Washington D.C. reports the Bush administration request on military spending for fiscal year 2008 is $481.4 billion, and, again, this does not include the cost of nuclear weapons or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
General Douglas MacArthur on the abolition of war
The abolition of war is no longer an ethical question to be pondered solely by learned philosophers and ecclesiastics, but a hard core one for the decision of the masses whose survival is the issue. Many will tell you with mockery and ridicule that the abolition of war can only be a dream-that it is the vague imagining of a visionary. But we must go on or we will go under. We must have new thoughts, new ideas, new concepts. We must break out of the straightjacket of the past. We must have sufficient imagination and courage to translate the universal wish for peace-which is rapidly becoming a necessity-into actuality. General Douglas MacArthur
Harry Truman on Conflict Resolution through Law
It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for you to get along in the republic of the United States. [If] Kansas and Colorado have a quarrel over the water in the Arkansas river they don’t call out the national guard in each state and go to war over it. They bring suit in the Supreme Court of the United States and abide by the decision. There isn’t a reason in the world why we can’t do that internationally. Harry S. Truman
Albert Einstein on being human…
Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race…. As a citizen of Germany [before WWII], I saw how excessive nationalism can spread like a disease, bringing tragedy to millions…. I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever…. Albert Einstein
