Turfing the RCMP? How does that make sense to fund the military - I'm sure most Canadians think we should end policing of rurual CANADIAN areas so we can send people off to Iraq and police (occupy??) people who don't really want us there. Not sensible in my mind, but hey.
As for the American love in wrt to all things military spending:
1. Military families left at home are dirt poor as the Americans refuse to pay their soldiers a living wage while private contractors paid by Haliburton are making 6 figures for doing security work. How's that for wasteful.
2. Soldiers being forced to purchase their own body armour b/c the military supplied them with outdated vests.
It seems to me the Americans spend vast amounts of money on high tech equipment that terrorism is rendering useless. No body is clamoring for Canada to build walls around cities anymore b/c it does nothing to protect citizens, unlike was the case in the 1800's. I would suggest that the usefullness of fighter jets, destroyers, tanks, etc. is being downgraded dramatically by the advance of technology that allows one guy with a shoulder mounted rocket to destroy millions, or even hundreds of millions, worth of equipment with a weapon that costs in the thousands.
Furthermore, if you can convince me that terrorists are shaking in their boots over American tanks and fighters, I'll be amazed. IMO, it's the Marine on the ground building schools taking on terrorists man to man that does the damage. Tanks and bombs create 10 terrorists for every one they kill cuz when you wipe out an innocent family with your MISTAKE from an airplane, they probably won't shrug and say oh well. As such, it seems to me we should concentrate our defense spending in areas that are useful for battling the main threats as they exist today, i.e. rapidly deployable, well-equipped individuals rather than ponderous tanks and pointless artillery. The question is how much should we spend in this area.
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