More Butter, Less Guns

Worldwide defense spending for 2006 has been projected to reach a whooping 1 trillion plus dollars, with the United States expected to shell out nearly half a trillion dollars for its defense needs, with more than $300 billion earmarked to fund operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and for Homeland Security.
One trillion dollars! Wow! You can bail out several countries from the Third World with that humongous fortune! Think about it! A top-of-the-line fighter plane, say an F-16C Fighthing Falcon Block 50 has a price tag of $40 million-more if spare parts, weapons, training and maintenance are thrown in; at current exchange rates, that's more than 2 billion pesos! That's enough to build 5,000 classrooms in the Philippines that can be used by hundreds of thousands of public school students annually.
Okay, I'll get to the point. If the United States will only spend a tenth of what it coughs up every year to maintain a decisive edge in warfare, it will project an image as a global philantropist, it will gain them more allies and friends worldwide and it will cripple terrorism by eradicating poverty which serve as a viable talent pool for Al-quida and other extremist nutcases.
The reverse is true in the Philippines. The country is facing threats on many fronts from Communist and Moro insurgents, terrorism, the encroachment on the Spratlys but it has neglected to upgrage the capability of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to fight these serious threats to national security. There are other social services that deserve more attention like education and health care, but when the enemies of the state are knocking at the gate, I think that it is reasonable to discover if the warriors who are holding back the barbarian hordes are adequately equipped and rectify the woeful inadequacy in weaponry within the limits of our pockets. I am not saying that we should neglect infrastructure development, education and health care, but there are billions of pesos in idle funds that can be tapped(the 5 billion pesos set aside for the AFP's modernization has not been spent- hopefully it is still intact) before they end up in some sleazy politician's bank account.