duckznutz, you're wrong about soldiers. Sure, in some countries (former USSR, North-Korea, China, other totalitarian countries) soldiers are seen as cannon fodder, to do as their officers tell them to. In the West, however, this is clearly not the case. Here, they're not turned into robots at all. They're supposed to THINK during combat, not do whatever their moronic leader tells them to.
As far as I know, in the US, blind obedience is not compatible with the requirement that soldiers have to uphold the Geneva convention, for example; even if ordered to go against those rules, they're supposed to say no.
And your claim that the US spends 50% of it's GNP on the military is clearly wrong... I quote:
Quote:
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The Bush Administration is requesting $343.2 billion for the Pentagon in Fiscal Year 2002. This is $32.6 billion above current levels, and includes the $14.2 billion increase requested for the military in the March budget release (see below). This total also includes $14.3 billion for the defense functions of the Department of Energy. With the new funds, Pentagon spending now accounts for over half (50.5%) of all discretionary spending -- those funds that the Administration must request and Congress must act on each year. (source: <a href="http://www.cdi.org/issues/budget/fy'02/index.html">http://www.cdi.org/issues/budget/fy'02/index.html</a>
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Now, it does say 50%, but of *what* exactly? Not of the GNP anyway, which is some $6737.0 billion (<a href="http://www.unep.ch/islands/CTT.htm">http://www.unep.ch/islands/CTT.htm</a>). A quick calculation shows that military spending is about 5% of the US GNP, which is high, but not excessive given the size of the US military, and the many things it does around the world. (Oh, and it's not 50% of your tax dollars either - the total 2002 budget spending is some 2,011 billion dollars.)