I think I might piss people off with this one....or not....
So last night on the daily show the had the writer of the new movie "Why we fight" on. And they were discussing America's seeming propensity for war as of late and in general. The writer of the movie brought up one of the most interesting theories and possibly one of the most accurate ideas I've ever heard. His whole premise was essentially based off the concept of the fact that we live in a capitalistic economy, where the market rules. So business goes where the money is. His argument was that America has tended to always have a propensity for war, and placed so much of our national budget into defense spending and contrating that businesses see that there is money to be made there. Regardless of whether or not their is an actual need for the defense spending. I haven't seen the movie, and the interview was extremely short, but his logic goes to follow that if America were to adjust it's budget so that we spent more money on things besides defense, such as health care, improving schools, finding vacinnes for diseases etc. that business would follow the money trail. While I admit that I am a hippie at heart (the only difference is I shower), I've never been totally against war all together. I've always thought that there were circumstances that called for military action. I still believe this, however to a much lesser extent after thinking about this argument put forth in this movie. I agree as would I think anyone in their right mind that a situation like the Holocaust demanded military action. Millions of people died there. However, (here we go) I've began to question whether or not a "War on Terror" is necessary at all, or ever was necessary. I will agree that September 11th was horrifying. I do not want to take anything away from that. However, 3,000 people died that day. 500,000 people die every year in the U.S. from heart disease. To me it seems like heart disease is a greater tragedy. If our government were able to put more incentives out there for companies to find cures for heart disease, rather than to build bombs it seems like we would be much better off. I'm not calling for a total disarming of the American military. I'm simply suggesting that maybe we don't need the M.O.A.B. (Mother of all bombs). Maybe just a regular bomb would have worked fine, and we could have put some of the money that our country would have saved into more useful things besides retribution.