The Wear Red on Fridays e-mail

If you haven't gotten it yet, you will probably receive the "Wear Red on Fridays" email as a way of supporting the troops. I got one and this was my answer.

I wish patriotism were so simple a thing as wearing red on Fridays.

The United States currently spends 626 billion dollars a year, yes, a year on defense. Most of this money is being borrowed from places like China. Many people don't realize we aren't paying for this war. We are borrowing to fund it. That's one reason why we're paying more at the pump. A dollar weakened by massive borrowing isn't worth as much. Then, too, we have less money because of tax breaks to the rich.

Instead of paying that money to defend the country, we could give everyone on the planet $96 a year. One billion people live on less than $1 a day. 2.2 billion people live on less than $2 a day. $96 a year wouldn't mean much to you, but to nearly half the people on the planet, it would make a huge difference.

President Eisenhower warned the nation about the military industrial complex. Guess which industries we haven't sent overseas. Industries which make bullets, bombs and military hardware. This current war has been very, very good for them. Most of them were quite easily convinced to vote for a party which would keep them employed. Unfortunately, no matter how sophisticated the hardware, a nation needs boots on the ground. Rather than instituting a draft and thereby requiring more or less equal sacrifice by rich and poor, white and black, educated and uneducated, we rely on a volunteer army and the national guard. And instead of paying them a decent wage, military families are often among the nation's working poor. If you don't believe this, check communities like Tacoma or San Diego. After they get home the government makes it very difficult to get the health benefits they so richly deserve.

We must carefully analyze stories like this one as to whether it really supports our troops, or whether it supports the causes of people who send our volunteer army and no so volunteer national guard into battle on endless deployments then fails to support them with appropriate benefits, heath care and a GI Bill which will allow them to educational benefits. I see no source for this story and it is just a little too cute to be real.