1. Donate surplus military armaments not only to our police, but to other providers of public service (city governments, schools)So, we in the US have a semi-infinite appetite for feeding the military industrial complex; our designated representatives have never met a defense industry that they do not want to fund.
2. Facilitate the sale of these surplus military armaments to public government entities to friends (for cheap!) & enemies (for expensive!) abroad
3. Use funds from the sale to help pay for desperately needed domestic goods and services, especially employing young men and women who might otherwise have to enlist in the military to find work.
Because at the confluence of war, corporations who produce munitions, and human beings, there is profit to be made, and there are jobs to be had.
Unfortunately, we produce too many munitions, and/or are involved in too few wars to use those up at the rate that the corporations that produce them would prefer for them to be used up.
But we do not like it when our soldiers actually get hurt. We don't like it when they die. We cannot be bothered to even count the civilian dead on the other side of the wars we pursue in countries we cannot find on the map, but as the toll of our own dead mounts, one-by-one, we lose appetite for conflict (temporarily).
So it is hard for us to engage in overseas conflicts. We don't really have the stomach for it. But when we are not involved in actual overseas conflicts, we produce surplus munitions, and when these are given to police forces to use on our own civilians, the civilians get cranky. And the media makes a big deal about civilian casualties when the civilians are our own (hypocritical media)!
Another problem of the current state of affairs is that one of the side effects of so much spending on the military is that there is little money left for the people at home who actually do the useful things that people need. So we rob Peter the teacher to pay Paul the CEO of Haliburton. We rob the salaries, pensions, and benefits of public employees of all stripes to pay for men and women in uniform, and for the large and small arms they require.
So what could we do to continue to fund the military industrial complex, reduce casualties in our armed forces, use up extra unused munitions, reduce the munitions turned on our own civilians, and still enable us to feel as though we are making a difference? If this would have a side effect of raising money for public employees at home, especially if this would allow funding for additional jobs that could be done at home -- building schools at home! building roads at home! making it safe for people to vote in free and fair elections! -- wouldn't that be peachy keen?
And I have an idea how this can be done.
First, we take all the weaponry that we produce. The federal government purchases it just as usual from the private corporations that make it. Half is then painted red, and half of it blue (this in fact can be outsourced to other private corporations). Then we figure out who our friend is in any particular conflict (this may be the hardest part of this solution, as a friend one year can become a foe the next year -- but no problem, my solution takes this into account). Next, the painted weaponry is donated directly to our public institutions: schools, fire departments, municipal governments, police departments, etc (this idea springs from the splendid results of donated surplus military equipment to police departments, but takes it a step further as you will soon see). Then, according to state department dictates, the weaponry will be either sold to "foes" -- at roughly four times the cost of each item purchased from the manufacturer; or given to "friends" -- at no cost. "Foes" and "Friends" can then duke it out using our weapons at no cost to our own military personnel. We can continue to not count foreign civilian casualties. We will have no civilian casualties at home (the military hardware will all be gone)!
Best of all, we can use the proceeds of the munitions sales to "foes" to fund goods and services we need desperately at home. Need a little more $ to fund the pension of your favorite children's librarian? Sell a few more matched red'n'blue made in 'Murica machine guns. Need that bridge repaired? Hows about a pair of B-52 bombers to the Israelies and the Palestinians (note how I'm not saying which is "friend" and which is "foe" -- I'm too cagey for that). Need more money in the coffers of city government to hire that out-of-work military vet for a school bus driver job? No problem....
thanks to...a modest proposal.