Simply Unsustainable

Chalmers Johnson once again speaks Truth to Empire, calling the question on our bloated and provocative military budget, which actually makes us less safe. He is particularly hard on the F22 & the F35 fighter planes--and justifiably so--and on our extensive array of overseas bases (seen by the rest of the world as imperial outposts).
Johnson doesn't just critique the worst proposed weapons programs, however--he sets out the complicated strategies that the Department of Defense uses to make its spending politically untouchable, even when the programs are recognized as failures.
To quote a paragraph from him, near the beginning of his article: "Given our economic crisis, the estimated trillion dollars we spend each year on the military and its weaponry is simply unsustainable. Even if present fiscal constraints no longer existed, we would still have misspent too much of our tax revenues on too few, overly expensive, overly complex weapons systems that leave us ill-prepared to defend the country in a real military emergency. We face a double crisis at the Pentagon: we can no longer afford the pretense of being the Earth's sole superpower, and we cannot afford to perpetuate a system in which the military-industrial complex makes its fortune off inferior, poorly designed weapons."
Johnson has been one of the most perceptive critics of our military overreach for at least the last decade, going back to his brilliant book Blowback. His analyses are always worth reading--my thanks to Don Hazen & Alternet for posting it.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/124881/?page=1