Question: The US military budget is larger than how many of the countries of the rest of the world combined?
We live in a world in which over a billion people rely on wood and dung for heating and have no access to electricity. We live in a world in which more people die in one day from starvation than in an entire year from terrorism.
A: The US military budget of $623 billion is larger than the budgets of all the countries in the rest of the world put together. The total global military budget of the rest of the world is $500 billion. Russia's military budget is $50 billion, South Koreas is $21 billion, and Irons is $4.3 billion. (Source: GlobalSecurity.org) These are 2007 figures.
Next highest on the list is China, which spends 1/10th of what the US spends on their military.
Who would Jesus bomb? That's the bumper-sticker question I have to ask myself.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
August 6, 1945
Sixty five years ago today, the Enola Gay flew over the city of Hiroshima and dropped a bomb. A second bomb a few days later flattened Nagasaki, Japan.
That horror is still with us. In a single destructive act, so many people died, were maimed, poisoned. All life in a certain radius was turned to a shadow.
The horror of nuclear war is no more than the horror of war itself. The fire bombing of Dresden Germany was just as miserable an act of war. It just took more bombs, took longer to execute. In the end, people were dead.
The argument for using the bomb -- that it saved American lives, and perhaps saved Japanese lives too -- is pretty weak. The Japanese could have continued fighting, even after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Maybe an American landing expidition would never have been needed. I wonder what might have happened if a policy of isolation had been adopted late in the war.
I just know it's really stupid how many nuclear weapons we have now. Several thousand. Each one powerful enough to decimate a city.
That horror is still with us. In a single destructive act, so many people died, were maimed, poisoned. All life in a certain radius was turned to a shadow.
The horror of nuclear war is no more than the horror of war itself. The fire bombing of Dresden Germany was just as miserable an act of war. It just took more bombs, took longer to execute. In the end, people were dead.
The argument for using the bomb -- that it saved American lives, and perhaps saved Japanese lives too -- is pretty weak. The Japanese could have continued fighting, even after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Maybe an American landing expidition would never have been needed. I wonder what might have happened if a policy of isolation had been adopted late in the war.
I just know it's really stupid how many nuclear weapons we have now. Several thousand. Each one powerful enough to decimate a city.
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