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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: stockman_scott who wrote (43227)	9/11/2002 10:56:35 AM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Read Replies (2) of 281500

Imagine the difference the U.S. alone would make if we reprioritized our spending choices and committed a mere 10 percent of our military budget to meaningful, directed development assistance, or "national security support." Imagine a world where someday we spend more on building the world than defending it. It would be nice to imagine a world uninhabited by all the kleptomaniacs who have lined their pockets from the initiatives already in place to aid the world. All you have to do is look at the situation in Zimbabwe for the kinds of people one has to deal with if they're going to give aid; under a flimsy pretext about "genetically modified foodstuffs" Mugabe is committing genocide. It's because the world is so dangerous that we have such a disproportional sounding military, but when you consider the value of western democracy going forward, it's worth preserving at great cost, even after factoring out the obvious self interest to our country in so much of what goes on. I'm hardly calling for isolationism, but when you see the difficulties close to home, such as repairing dysfunctional school systems (Cleveland for example), throwing money at these problems will not magically solve them.

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