Yet More Mil Spending. Only Not for Our Own Mil.

Saturday 19 June 2010 - Filed under Dumbassery + Military

Fuckin’ great.  Not only are we spending an absolutely absurd $700 billion dollars a year for our own military,¹ we’re now spending $650 million to fully arm the fledgling Afghan air corps.  And we don’t even have the decency to provide them with American arms built in American factories by American workers, but with Russian choppers.  Craig Whitlock via The Washington Post:

In a turnabout from the Cold War, when the CIA gave Stinger missiles to Afghan rebels to shoot down Soviet helicopters, the Pentagon has spent $648 million to buy or refurbish 31 Russian Mi-17 transport helicopters for the Afghan National Army Air Corps. The Defense Department is seeking to buy 10 more of the Mi-17s next year, and had planned to buy dozens more over the next decade.

Who would like to wager that within 2 decades, we’ll be fighting soldiers dropped from the very same troop transports we’re currently purchasing?

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1.  Absurd in comparison to our next closest competitor, China, which spends just barely 1/10 the amount of money on its military.  When a country spends nearly 10x the amount of money than a country over 3x our size, it leads one to think that maybe we’re a bit over-zealous in our own budget.

2010-06-19  »  madlibertarianguy