The continuous harping on the national security of the United States by the two candidates and the unrelenting din of the media would make you believe that the US is indeed in danger of being overrun by the mongol hordes of the past.
That is clearly far from reality.
For the record,this is a country that has launched wars on the flimsiest pretexts,manufacturing many of these pretexts on its own and taking the fight to its perceived enemies far from our own own shores.No other nation on earth maintains and feeds a massive high technology military or even comes close.To augment this capability is a huge network of intelligence with paid and unpaid informers in every continent,including the elites of the countries who are bribed to maintain their allegiance to Uncle Sam.Subverting popular will as in Chile,assassinations and installing puppets are routine for the CIA.
Yet, we are led to believe that somehow ogres materialize from thin air and pose a serious threat to us.That was the premise of the war on Vietnam and that is the premise of the war on Iraq.
The mindless repetition of national security threats has now become a congenital defect of the American political scene with both parties taking turns at who is better or worse on national security issues.No candidate for either party can even suggest that there is indeed no security threat to the U.S. from any source in the world.Such a statement would condemn the candidate to the scrap heap right away and no politician worth his salt would dare to utter such a thought.In fact, if you come right down to it, an honest politician would have to say that it is the United States that has posed a threat to the security of many nations of the world and continues to do so with impunity.
As a cruel joke, one may want to consider if our economic crisis has a military origin.You would think that the sheer magnitude of our military budget,nearing one trillion dollars per year, would make some politicians question at least the size of this bloated budget if not the basis of such a gargantuan budget.
That would be a thought crime on a par with considering Sara Palin for the Nobel Prize in economics.