Defense: The Double Edged Sword

While reading an Associated Press article on Yahoo titled, "Doomsday defense cuts loom large for select 12" , a few things come to mind, hardly any of them good.

Is it a coincidence that the six Republicans and six Democrats represent states that have the most to lose by the automatic cuts that would hit defense spending in their states? I guess that's pretty good incentive for them to come to some kind of agreement before the dead line. Myself, I think it's pretty sad that such a large percentage of our population is in the business of making things to kill other people. Yes, this would put a lot of people out of work if we didn't have these businesses, but we should be employing these people in different job fields.

Should it really be our responsibility to police the world? Should we spend more than most the other countries combined for defense? The really sad part is we are not only making these weapons for our wars, but we are making them for all the wars around the world, sometimes supplying arms to both sides of the conflict by one means or the other, so is it for jobs we allow people to be killed? It also goes to figure that it is more profitable for us to have wars around the world than to have peace, is this really right? How can you really be committed to peace when you need wars to keep your people employed?

If we were to put all that talent on solving our country's and the world's problems how much further along could we be as a species? Imagine putting them think tanks and talented people to work on coming up with alternative energy solutions and standards and infrastructure to make it all work? If we weren't policing the world we would use a lot less oil as fuel for all the toys of war, the ships, tanks, planes, hummers, what have you. How would that affect how long the oil we have lasts and the price at the pump? While we plan for war our infrastructure crumbles, our education fails us, we will die from within. We have to use these technologies for saving lives and making the lives we have better, not tear down what already is with bombs and missiles. We need to put these people to work to make life better for the living, not make a living off people dieing.