Col. Dan Smith Speaks at the Ashland Center of Nonviolence

I had the opportunity to attend the last lecture of the Ashland Center of Nonviolence* yesterday with Col. Daniel Smith speaking on the cost of our national defense.

I agree with Col. Smith that the government does not effectively spend its money. Col. Smith is right that we are currently spending ourselves into oblivion. With social program spending notching up to $.44 on the tax-dollar (not to mention all the money we have borrowed and created ex nihilo on the printing presses), we will end up causing complete economic collapse of our nation.

Col. Smith is also right that there is much irresponsibility in military spending. For example, paying for outdated machines and planes just because people's jobs depend upon it and not because our nation needs them for the defense of our country.

But there were some things that Col. Smith said that were absolutely absurd and would work against the purpose of peace that the Center of Nonviolence seeks to promote. For one, Col. Smith said we should sit down with people like Kim Jong Il of North Korea as an equal and begin talks for economic and political peace. As I said, this is absurd! North Korea is renowned for terrorizing its own people, having been ranked #1 for the seventh year running in the persecution of Christians. If that is the way it treats its own people, how can we trust them to deal faithfully with its enemies? Kim Jong Il is an unstable man and cannot be talked to rationally or trusted to deal faithfully with us.

Along those same lines Col. Smith said we should not worry about Iran and N. Korea having nuclear weapons. He basically said that we interfere with their development as a nation if we seek to make them dismantle their nuclear weapon development. But if the development of your nation is based on a weapon of mass destruction, you can be guaranteed that you are not a stable nation (or stable leader of that nation). If the guy living a few doors down from me is a renown terrorist and unabashedly speaks hatred toward me, I think that it is in my best interest to make sure that he does not have any weapons in his house (especially really deadly weapons).

Col. Smith also expressed concern at the spending that occurs beyond what he terms the "institutional military," which entails things such as recruiting, training, and regular non-war military upkeep. The spending for our current campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq compose the majority of his fears regarding the additional spending. But this would not be of such great concern if two things were to happen: a) that we would concentrate our tax dollars on items that were expressed by our Constitution (i.e. not for social programs) and b) we would stop killing off many of our nation's producers. If we hadn't killed over 40 million children through abortions, none of items Col. Smith's lamented would be of much concern.

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*I feel that I should let everyone that I do believe in just war and am not a pacifist. From what I understand the same can be said for Col. Smith. Col. Smith was simply speaking on the deficiencies he saw in our national defense.