CUT SPENDING FOR TANKS, WAR PLANES

Michael O'Hanlon writes today in The Washington Post that Obama is slashing defense spending and thus making a "significant mistake."

I say, this reduction in defense spending is a good thing, a very good thing. The more lethal weapons that the U.S. military has, the more the generals want to use them, resulting in more wars, more killings, more incinerations, more bloody conflicts.

O'Hanlon writes:

"After three months of very impressive decisions regarding national security, President Obama made perhaps his first significant mistake. It concerns the defense budget, where his plans are insufficient to support the national security establishment over the next five years. Thankfully, this mistake can be fixed before it causes big harm -- either by Congress this year or the administration itself next year."

People like O'Hanlon who support U.S. militarism say that defense budget cuts threaten "national security." How come countries like Sweden and Latvia exist without hardly any funding for armies or war planes, yet no one attacks them?

We don't need the latest in military killing machines. We don't need "smart" weapons. We don't need guns and bullets.

Consider the destruction to life and property in Afghanistan from all of those obscene bombing raids by the U.S. Air Force. All the children destroyed by laser guided bombs. All the families, all the poor villagers, all the ordinary Afghanis killed by American planes.

Get rid of all U.S. weapons. This will be the best guarantor of "national security."

So yes, let's slash defense spending and use the money for universal health care, for eliminating malaria and AIDS, for building schools throughout the world.