Like most people that go to UMass, I'm unabashedly progressive when it comes to politics. However, I have a dirty little secret.
When you ask me who I think did one of the best jobs as president, I'll look around to make sure no one else is listening and then whisper - Dwight Eisenhower. The Republican's republican.
He knew when to not touch the economy and where to put federal funding to get things going. If you enjoy our federally funded highways, you have him to thank.
And he was brave. Most people will tell you about his tenure as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during World War II as an example of this. As for me, I think the single bravest thing that he did was to give a warning on one of the final days of his presidency.
He said he feared for America's well-being if our main business was military business. He argued that large-scale disarmament was a goal to be reached through continued diplomacy.
What he cautioned against wasn't just a call for peace. What he called for was politically and economically smart. Today, the U.S. military budget is huge - very huge.
You know how everybody screamed about the U.S. government bailout of Wall Street a few weeks ago? The 2009 military budget is about equal to that - at a total cost of $713 billion.
That is an enormous sum of money. China, the country with the second highest military budget, spends about a seventh of that. In fact, you'd need to combine the next 15 military budgets of other countries to be equal to that of the United States.
We could pay off the federal education budget of the United States for a decade without cracking that number. Federal earmarks, a current symbol of monetary waste in Washington, cost us about one-fortieth of that.
Despite the huge costs of maintaining such an army, there are few politicians who would dare to bring this up. It would be considered political suicide to seem "soft on terror." This is despite only about $200 billion of the budget is spent on fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What of the other $500 billion? Some of it spent on personnel costs and veterans' benefits, which is entirely necessary. However, a giant portion - nearly another $200 billion - is spent on what military types call "Major Weapons Systems."
Those are things like tanks, stealth fighters, and nuclear attack submarines. These are things that could come in handy with World War III, but generally not useful for fighting terror cells in small towns.
Since an all-out war with Russia and China seems unlikely, and because Osama bin Laden's submarine fleets are apparently in the shop, wouldn't it make sense to cut a little cash when it comes to this area? Is that unreasonable?
The cash spent on these programs seems misapplied. Billions go into a Cold War missile defense program while our troops die by roadside bombs. The government spares no expense when it comes to buying the next generation of jet fighters, but lets Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital run itself into the ground.
Another sad part of spending that much money on the military is that problems at home tend to be ignored. Last month in Iraq, eight soldiers were killed by hostile fire.
In the same month, six people were murdered in Boston. There is something fundamentally wrong with the fact that you run nearly the same risk of being killed whether you're an American in Boston or Baghdad. It's especially wrong when the government is throwing billions of dollars at one city and barely any at another.
As mentioned before, there are few politicians that speak out against this. Democrats, while professing to want an end to the war, argue against few spending bills.
Republicans of the house may have cried that the Wall Street bailout was "socialistic," but have gladly funded the same amount of money to the military.
The only presidential candidate who argues for reduced military spending is Ralph Nader - and as anyone who has typed in "Ralph Nader and Parrot" into YouTube's search engine knows, he is two-thirds insane.
As one can plainly see, the size and misapplications of the U.S. military budget present major problems. In today's rough economic times, it makes sense to do some sensible cutting of the budget. Such an action would also have a higher purpose as well.
Going back to wise, plain-spoken Ike: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms isn't spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of their scientists, the hopes of its children. . . . This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Ted Rogers is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at twrogers@student.umass.edu.
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