Cook letter: Military budget

Our morally deficient president proposes gutting the State Department budget while simultaneously increasing the military by more than $50 billion. As the son of a decorated career Marine Corps officer, I ask what is the ultimate aim, armageddon?

Consider the words of this noted leftist:

“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 are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. ... We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. ... 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.”

— President Eisenhower, 1953

Here’s a novel idea; how about we wage peace?

This story was originally published March 10, 2017 at 8:13 PM with the headline "Cook letter: Military budget."