Cut Military Spending, not Social Security

Military spending - when including past, present and preparations for future wars - constitutes the largest portion, by far, of the federal budget excluding Social Security (which is really a trust fund and has no business being part of the official federal budget). For fiscal 2018, the official US military budget is over $824 billion, a sum larger than the next 9 countries combined. While a bonanza for the military-industrial complex, this enormous expenditures of our hard-earned tax dollars constitutes the biggest reason for our unsustainable $20 trillion debt. It also has a devastating effect on our economy and quality of life. The vastly bloated military budget must be radically reduced; US military aid to repressive regimes like Zionist Israel (and woefully anti-democratic Saudi Arabia) needs to be eliminated until military occupation of Palestine ends; the endless war in Afghanistan must end; and unneeded and unwanted US military bases abroad, particularly in Europe, need to close. For as President Eisenhower, a five-star general, warned us in his farewell address to the nation about the enormous dangers of the rising "military-industrial complex," he also pointed out that "every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children." Amen. Dona Nobis Pacem.