"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
Eisenhower---Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

The United States has been in an official state of emergency ever since World War II.  Put another way, we have been permanently at war for over 60 years.

There was some justification for the permanent wartime footing of our economy when we had a major, identifiable enemy which was, of course, the Soviet Union.  That threat disappeared almost 20 years ago yet the permanent war economy continues to dominate our national priorities and our government outlays. 

There is no justification for the national state of emergency any longer and there hasn't been any justification for it, for a very long time.  Just in the past 40 years we have fought in Vietnam killing millions of Indochinese, We have gone to war against Iraq twice, we invaded and occupied Afghanistan, we have been involved in literally dozens of other military operations from the invastion of Santo Domingo, to the USS Pueblo to the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, and Somalia.  When we haven't been actively engaged in some sort of mlitary conflict our government nonetheless continues to fuel the war machine as though we were at war. 

All of the  funds it has taken since 1941 to keep our military the fatest on earth and bloated beyond all reason whether facing a real or mythical "threat" from abroad have been funds that could and should have been used for domestic needs which we have been neglecting here at home in order to remain "strong" in the face of whatever the threat of the moment might be.  We are neglecting and underfunding all our domestic needs such as housing, schools, hospitals, sewers just to name a few.  The list is genuinely endless. 

Anyone with a memory understands that throughout the past 40 years we have always been told that we never have enough money to address any of our most vital and pressing domestic needs as a people whether that is physical infrastructure, medical research, alleviating poverty, fulfilling our national promise of decent, affordable housing for all citizens and so on.  We have often seen how the investment we have made in military might has destroyed foreign citys and villages.  We have seen the devastation left in the wake or America's unmatched firepower and how it can reduce once thriving cities to ashes.  Seldom do we look at the devastation caused here at home by our ongoing and unnecessarily huge investiment in war and our far too frequent use of war as a tool of foreign policy since the end of World War II. 

The following pictures were taken this week in a major American city and represent only the tiniest sample of the sort of devastation wrought by the American military and the war conducted on on our cities through lack of investment and disinvestment over the decades because war spending was always given preference.  There are literally tens of thousands of these structures in my city alone.  There are thousands upon thousands of acres of bombed out shells, abandoned homes and businesses like these and it is like this in every city in America. 

President Obama's Defense Secretary said earlier this year that the President plans to continue to grow the military budget in the coming years by 3-4% in real terms after being adjusted for inflation.  Why?  In the face of the widespread decay and destruction our wars have caused here in our own nation, how can we continue on this course of literal self destruction?