I maintain that it is short-sightedness when once having identified that evil exists and we need to fund arms manufacture to fight it, the needs of civil society and paying attention to how our governement functions seem to disappear from view.

Likewise, I hink a certain gullibility is at play, because some people fall into the trap of believing that if only we acquire enough armament and fight enough wars, all our problems will disappear.

It shouldn;t be either/or. We should be able to chew gum and think at the same time.

BTW, my comment was an observation about Congress and the American peoplein general, in the swnse that we tolerate how Congress functions. Since I don;t know you, I could hardly assess where you are in the short-sighted and gullibility range.

and domajot, do you always insult (shortsighted? gullible?) the people who disagree with you? we’re quite able to deal with the complexity of problems, we just have a different way of dealing with those problems (one that doesn’t involve sticking our head into the sand and pretending that evil in the world doesn’t exist, that all would be fine if we ‘planned for peace’.)

You don’t have to be paranoid or leftist to think the Military Industrial Complex has had a severe, direct, and negative impact on American domestic and international policy, and exerts truly scary power over lawmakers of all stripes.

again notwithstanding the views of a delusional minority that spending on social welfare programs would have just as much benefit

Steve,

It’s funny that you should bring up welfare programs considering that the military industrial complex is a welfare program–corporate welfare. The arms industry is subsidized by American taxpayers.

It’s a real shame, that Congress can’t seem to chew gum and think at the same time. It seems so elementay to me that to address the needs of armament should not abort planning for ‘peace’ projects, or to curtail the corruptive influence of all that armaments money floating around, or to do aggressive oversight of the industry.

Neither Congress nor the American public seems able to deal with the complexity of problems we should be addressing, however. We’re missing the boat on many issues, as a consequence, and it may be too late when we fianlly realize that a missed boat sometimes can never be cuaght.

Besides, armements are a good investment. Profit rules.

But go ahead and think that it’s all because of some clever marketing that your peace groups can’t get the time of day…. if Congress were truly that impressionable, why aren’t your peace groups putting their money into coming up with some good advertising of their own? Maybe a commercial where everybody stands around a hilltop, holding hands and singing…. oh, that’s been done… for Coke