What America is creating with our heavy investments in war

I've written here, at least several times, I think, about the gross insanity of our US military spending and how obscene and even unwise to the point of ignorant it is. To briefly resprise, we spend at least an estimated 711 billion dollars per year on war, in one form or another. We heavily outspend the entire world on what we call "defense."

The two biggest factors, I think, that need to be emphasized are that, first, the United States accounts for a total of 43% of all military or "defense spending", nationwide and that a full 39% of our entire budget goes only for this spending, for all those bombs and planes and weapons. It's all negative, it's all destructive and beyond that, it's not sustainable in at least a few ways. We can't go on like this. Instead of making us strong and stronger, our military spending is not only weakening us as a nation, it is, I think it can intelligently, legitimately be argued, destroying us both financially and physically. Following are some of the worst results of all that emphasis on war:

From The New York Times today (see link below): "An American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan. Veterans kill themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year — more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since those wars began." To close, I want to quote an American Founding Father because it seems so clearly relevant to where we find ourselves today, unfortunately, sadly and tragically: "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." — James Madison, Political Observations, 1795 Links: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-veterans-death-the-nations-shame.html?scp=1&sq=a%20veteran's%20death,%20the%20nation's%20shame&st=cse; http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending; http://www.realclearworld.com/blog/2011/04/us_military_spending_vs_the_world.html