We're Spending Over $7 Trillion A Decade on Defense. So, What Nation Is Threatening Us?

[Yavin4]

Who or what is coming after us? Why are we spending so much on defense? Why?

[Lasher]

1. Because Ike was right.

The MIC is firmly in control.

[get the red out]

14. +1

Absolutely, lets have some more nice wars!

Honestly, if people stoped believing in the Muslim bogeyman, or the Russian bogeyman, or the Chinese Communist bogeyman; I guess the people from Andromeda would need to become a threat.

[Renew Deal]

2. None, because we spend $7 Trillion a decade on defense.

:hide:

[Jackpine Radical]

5. .

:nuke:
:hide:

[Bandit]

3. Didn't you get the message, goat herders that live in caves on the other side of the world

are coming to get you. Hide and duct tape all your doors and windows.....Be afraid, be very very afraid becouse America is no longer the "Home of the Brave" We are now the Tea Bagger Nation of Cowards.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Do you refuse to recognize the imminent danger

of invasion from Lichtenstein?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. The replaceable bogeymen stored in the Pentagons's closet.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken

[Old and In the Way]

7. The independent state of Milindcorp

Think of it as protection money.

Seriously, I'd say 30% of that budget goes to providing muscle (troops on the ground and naval protection in the Persian Gulf) for Big Oil's business plan for getting their product out of the wells to the refineries. If that was accounted for at the pump (USG bills Big Oil for their service and Big Oil passes it on to the consumer), we'd have our justification for a totally new energy economy.

[BarbaRosa]

8. The biggest threat to America I see

is from the teabag nation.

[katnapped]

26. But they're not terrorists

Or so everyone keeps saying. They're just "misunderstood"

Besides, terrorists are skeeeeeeeeeery looking brown people :sarcasm:

[Major Hogwash]

9. Whatever happened to Obama ending the embargo with Cuba? That seemed like a good idea

But, nooooooooooooo, we couldn't do that either!
Sorry, Bluto, but we don't want to get into any trouble!!

Well, that's just hogwash!!!!

[Demeter]

10. We have Met the Enemy

“In the time of Joseph McCarthyism, celebrated in the Pogo strip by a character named Simple J. Malarkey, I attempted to explain each individual is wholly involved in the democratic process, work at it or no. The results of the process fall on the head of the public and he who is recalcitrant or procrastinates in raising his voice can blame no one but himself. An introduction to Pogo Papers, published by Simon and Schuster in 1952-53, said in part:

‘...Specializations and markings of individuals everywhere abound in such profusion that major idiosyncrasies can be properly ascribed to the mass. Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of the cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle.’

‘There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts of tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.’

As years passed, the final paragraph was reduced to “We have met the enemy and he is us,” in a few strips having to do with pollution. The nine words form the title and theme of a Pogo motion picture currently in work, believing as I do that we are all of us responsible for our myriad pollutions, public, private and political.”

http://www.igopogo.com/final_authority.htm

Probably the most famous Pogo quotation is "We have met the enemy and he is us." Perhaps more than any other words written by Kelly, it perfectly sums up his attitude towards the foibles of mankind and the nature of the human condition.

The quote was a parody of a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie, stating, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_%28comic_strip%29

[hifiguy]

11. Who is nobody, Alex? nt

[LaPera]

12. EMPIRE! It's much more than 7 trillion, That's just the Pentagon budget - NOT including the wars!

Those corporate profitable wars the republicans created to drain and wreck our economy to destroy all social programs, unions, education, environmental regulations and our infrastructure....while deregulating all corporations so they can do as they please and continue to steal from all of us working people.

"Might makes right" in the slimy fucking republicans eyes...the mantra they live by - CIA has trillions in it's own budget and it's only function is to infiltrate nations for more corporate profits and overthrow democratic & socialist so corporations can move in and profit....

Social Security is paid for each and every paycheck for decades by each working person.

The pentagon just sucks our tax dollars up and offers nothing but death and destruction and huge profit for weapons making corporations who overcharge and get obsolete weapons built by paying off lying general & admirals as well as politicians.

Get ready we are going down, it's happening quickly and only a matter of time....they are plugging holes with their fingers in a huge dam to give the rich & their corporations more & more & more.

I will be in the streets fighting these republican corporate imperialist fascist!

[FarLeftFist]

13. We need lots of F-15s for all our dogfights against the Taliban.

[Yavin4]

17. The Taliban Has No Air Force

They don't even have an army.

[FarLeftFist]

25. It was sarcasm

[Faux pas]

15. Wall Street, Big Biz, the Tea Party and the Koch Bros are threatening us.

[treestar]

16. After WWII we were the most powerful nation

in the free world and after 1990 the only "superpower." As a nation, we've been in love with that notion that we run the world and that we are the most important country on the planet. We are Number One, rah, rah. We can make any other country do our bidding. We are very attached to that and seem unwilling to just be just another country. This is what leads to this.

Europe was grateful for our assistance in WWII and we loved keeping up the idea we were everybody's great savior.

It is a hard sell to get Americans to think otherwise and some fear of the vacuum there would be if we withdrew.

[HughBeaumont]

18. The Mighty, Mighty Thunder of the Al Qaeda 19th Century Air Force and Navy, THAT'S WHO!!

The Real Terrorists Wear 3-Piece Suits and Are In Corporate Boardrooms.

[dgibby]

19. It's working.

Ask yourself: have the Germans ever bombed Pearl Harbor again? No, I thought not!

[Yavin4]

23. The Germans Are Too Busy Counting Money from their Mercedes sales n/t

[Yavin4]

24. The Germans Are Too Busy Counting Money from their Mercedes sales n/t

[Marr]

20. The threat is to hegemony. We're paying to maintain empire.

[Gregorian]

21. America is threatening America

It's the means by which money is shifted robbed from the workers, and given to the corporate and wealthy who don't pay taxes.

And if a real reason for war comes along, we now use it to legitimize our military.

Disassemble the machine. That's our only hope.

[City Lights]

22. The evildoers!

They're everywhere!

[indepat]

27. We have met the enemy and it is we: that constitutional enemies abound in the three

main branches of government is a matter of record. :patriot:

[Enthusiast]

28. Terrists!

Don't you know nuthin?

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. Empire is expensive