. SouthAmerica: Long before 9/11 I have been advocating on my writings that the United States should spend less money in military spending and the money should go instead into building and up-dating the infrastructure of the American economy. You can read on the following website where, in my opinion, the US government should be investing its scarce resources: http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=145 Besides the above areas of investment the US government should invest on a new generation of Shuttles with state-of-art-technologies and know how, and should send to museums the current fleet of Shuttles, because these Shuttles represent technologies on an age long gone. The US government also should help cities around the country to wire itself with state-of-the-art high speed Broadband technology. PLEASE stop wasting money on wars that the US canât win, and instead invest the money wisely in a way that will help many American generations in the future. REMINDER: As Americans are wasting a ton of money to try to project the illusion of military power around the world â the other major economies around the world are not wasting time and money instead they are investing its resources more wisely to help develop and support their economies of the future. Note: Today the American infrastructure is decaying so fast that it is like a bad joke. Here we are in the year 2005, and a little rain in the area 3 days ago, and parts of Bergen County (we are located right outside New York City) and up-scale towns such as Ridgewood, NJ, stayed without electric power for almost 2 days â just like in a third world country. And power outages are becoming routine in our area. What is going on? If this is happening in California and in the New York Metropolitan area, then the infrastructure of the rest of the country must also be going to hell very fast. This is not an infrastructure of a superpower it is the infrastructure of a decaying Soviet Union!!!! .
It seems to me that the biggest fault of the US military right now is simply lack of manpower. It's got all the technology and bombs it needs. So if I were to choose one over the other, I'd say upgrade the infrastructure for an eventual (given the current government's belligerent attitude) with China, since upgrading military spending would just be like spending on consumption - no return for later on. Better to set up the infrastructure so we can keep fighting and producing later on, when we get into a long drawn out conflict. If anything, shift funds from technology upgrades and acquisitions to propaganda and recruiting drives - which I think the Pentagon has already been doing in the last two or three years. But I'm a complete civilian - I know nothing of the classified military workings or higher level politics. This is just my opinion.
Military spending is more important... we must remain capable at all times to destroy any evil doers who decide to defy us (China, Pakistan, Iran, Syria etc)...
. SouthAmerica: I had just checked the "ASCE" reportcard for 2005, but as soon as I posted this item on this website the "ASCE" reportcard disapeared from that website. What is going on here? Here is the address for main page for that organization. http://www.asce.org/asce.cfm But I have a copy of the report and I will provide some of the information on that ASCE reportcard directly to you on this website. .
. SouthAmerica: You can read the "ASCE" report for 2005, since the report is back online at: http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=145 .
The biggest fault of the military is being forced to play a game by the rules against an enemy who abides by no rules. The military has new weopons that would help them deal with these people, but won't use them because of politics. We need to do what it takes to win this war...and that means taking the gloves off! As for South America, nothing new in your post....looks to me like econ 101 stuff here....the old guns and butter argument.
"PLEASE stop wasting money on wars that the US canât win, and instead invest the money wisely in a way that will help many American generations in the future. REMINDER: As Americans are wasting a ton of money to try to project the illusion of military power around the world â the other major economies around the world are not wasting time and money instead they are investing its resources more wisely to help develop and support their economies of the future. Note: Today the American infrastructure is decaying so fast that it is like a bad joke. " SouthAmerica! You Commie!, May be US is losing out because it is allowing too many Mexicans to step in.
EWB firt foray into infrastructure for Iraq resulted in a temporary shut down until military support in the field could be put in place. The technical knowhow was definitelt on site and working administrations were very successful. Ultimately the local technical leadership and admin support working shoulder to shoulder with EWB was systeamtically killed when it was recognized that the coalition military was unwilling to protect the teams repairing and getting the infrastructure operational again. The tapes and reporting was incredible. Financial records and anaysis show that fielding a 50,000 Iraqy/EWB labor and tech team is equal to fielding 500 coalition troops in cost. A restart is planned; currently one of the hold ups is getting security people to step up. EWB can supply the technical bridges and Iraqies are there in multiples of 50k groups. Also it is noteworthy that NGO money was being used and was banked for next round. What is most astounding is how little capital is required to put the fix in. There is no substitute for providing technical support for boot strapping native local effort the redeem situations. The systematic killing of local Iraqy construction leadership was an unbearable consequence of no preventive maintenance protection on the work sites.
If may be possible to put 50,000 people to work for every 500 troops pulled. It could be like just enlarging the repaired perimeter site by site. Protecting workers inside the perimeter and enlarging it with the support of local people watching out for the construction teams just could begin to work. It's the opposite of bombing convoys on unprotected roads.