Time to prune the Pentagon

Sun., Feb. 7, 2010

The Spokesman-Review

The United States plans to spend over 41 percent of global spending on military defense (The Spokesman- Review on Feb. 2 and Wikipedia.org).

Why not reduce our military budget, which also supports U.S. forces in many foreign countries, e.g., Japan, Norway, South Africa? Yet, I have not seen any newspaper or heard any TV or radio talk about reducing our military budget. Do we have opponents, perhaps even enemies? Iran, North Korea, some would include mainland China, have military budgets that add up to only $7.5 billion or far, far less than the proposed $895 billion by the U.S.

Yes, the numbers can be mind-numbing but they are real. What to do? Rather than suffer in silence and pay for it, let’s tell Congress to cut the defense budget.

Julian Powers

Spokane

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