America is spending too much on the wrong weapons

I. America is spending too much on the wrong weapons
By Pascal Boniface, Thursday, March 20, 2008
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=90084


II. Summary:

Approaching the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, more and more countries become skeptics about how much America is actually spending on their military budget, and its consequences. In this article, Germany questions the Bush administrations intentions in Iraq and its intentions with the spending splurge on its military. The U.S. is accounted for nearly 50% of the world's military expenditures and spends the most money on weaponry and their military which is an estimated $600 billion dollars annually, whereas the second-ranked country is the United Kingdom, lagging far behind at a mere $55 billion. Germany believes that the U.S. is more focused on increasing its military power that solving the political issues in Iraq. Iran which is an alleged “threat” to the U.S. with its suspected nuclear weaponry only spends $6.6 billion a year on military expenses. Germany thinks that it would be more beneficial if America focused on solving the Israeli-Palestine issue rather than spend their money on military power. Still, it only seems that as time goes on that the U.S. consistently is increasing their military spending, as well as threats that face them.

III. Reaction:

A) I believe that this article and issue is associated with the AP World History Theme of State building, expansion, and conflict because it discusses the issue of military spending and power as well as conflict they are causing in Iraq, rather than solving political issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
B) In the past, the U.S. has always been one to spend big on military protection. However, more recently the U.S. has spent more on military power than it had on the Cold War or in World War II. The U.S. though, has also always been one to maintain conflicts around the world, giving reason to “military splurge”.
C) The Author of this article is Pascal Boniface, a French male, writing for the German Times. Due to the fact that his home country is not involved with fighting the current war on terror, and also that he has no idea what the American government has at hand right now, I’d say Pascal Boniface is definitely an outsider simply reflecting on our actions.
D) This author is most definitely one-sided about this situation. He continues to state that the U.S. is not spending their time and money wisely, and that they could be focusing on more beneficial matters. He is probably bias due to the fact that he is French and they do not have good relations with America. He probably does not understand to what extent the U.S. is involved militarily around the entire world. Boniface made it seem in this article as if all that military money was being spent on just the Middle East conflict, and its not. The U.S. has more soldiers and military power around the world than any other country does, protecting and maintaining hot spots. France, on the other hand, is clearly not as involved as we are, they push these problems off to the side and America is one of the few countries that has to deal with this kind of issues. I strongly don’t believe that Boniface shouldn’t even be criticizing the U.S. because he has absolutely no idea what responsibilities America has, that France simply is not faced with. He is not one to judge.
E) A missing voice in this article would be one from the German government because this article is posted in the German Times, so it probably would make sense to be able to hear from German officials instead of French writers. Also, I would like to hear what an American government official would like to say about this article because I’m very sure that he or she would probably not 100% agree with this point of view. It would be useful to hear from an American official to see actually where all this military money and energy has been put into effect.
F) As you can probably tell from reaction (D) I personally don’t agree with this article. However, I very much enjoyed reading about other countries and peoples points of view on the War in Iraq and how America holds itself up militarily. I just think that people who don’t know first hand shouldn’t necessarily get involved with these kind of situations. I do appreciate this article because it does open your eyes to how the rest of the world perceives us as a country and what other countries think what we should do to improve.

By Alea Connolly=]