By Jim Hoover

Exactly when did we go insane with our military policy and why do we allow this insanity to continue?

As of today, the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is over $1.21 trillion. If you go to “costofwar.com” you will see that the cost in Iraq is not mounting as fast as that of Afghanistan right now, though Iraq’s cost stands at over $784.3 billion, while Afghanistan’s is $426.5 billion, and rising much more rapidly.

Taxpayers in the US will pay $122 billion for the Afghanistan War spending alone for FY2011. For the same amount of money, the following could be provided, according to “costofwar.com”:

• 62.5 million children receiving low-income healthcare for one year or
• 1.9 million elementary school teachers for one year or
• 2.1 million firefighters for one year or
• 16.0 million Head Start slots for children for one year or
• 27.6 million households with renewable electricity – photovoltaic – for one year or
• 73.7 million households with renewable electricity – wind power – for one year or
• 15.6 million military veterans receiving VA medical care for one year or
• 15.5 million scholarships for university students for one year.

Alright, you get the picture. All the social spending cuts politicians are talking about at the federal level, and the education, Medicaid, and infrastructure cuts politicians are making in most of the states would not be necessary.

Just consider! We would be investing in our people, not destruction!

But that’s not even close to covering all the military madness.

As of December, 2010, we have 1.5 million troops stationed in the US and the rest of the world. Of the almost half a million stationed overseas, only about 200,000 are in Iraq and Afghanistan, with only a few of those in Libya. If you saw Obama’s speech on withdrawals in Afghanistan, you know the withdrawals only covered his surge and nothing else.

We still have almost 54,000 troops in Germany, 10,000 in Kuwait, and 60,000 are in Japan and South Korea. Why?

But wait! We had something like 200,000 civilian contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009. There has been a drawdown but it’s difficult to know how much, including the number of contractors still there. Politicians don’t talk about civilian contractors – we could probably even label those with CIA contracts, mercenaries.

I can’t even to begin to say how much more we could do for our own people if we decided to negotiate with allies and rethink our military policy. How much would we save if we got rid of most of the 50 military bases in Germany or all of the 34 bases in Iraq?

China is holding our debt (much for the wars) and eating our lunch economically, and we are puttering around with needless wars and military bases everywhere. How much longer can we afford to finance this military empire?

Can somebody provide an answer, or do we let the “deadheads” in Washington continue to decide?