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I would personally prefer a public works project with fruits that have a little bit more return on them than blowing up Afghani farmers.

Plus acquisitions and operations/maintenance eat up much more than personnel costs anyway, and the surplus of that money goes to defense investors (who I personally don't enjoy subsidizing so much).

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There was a A Whitney Young video a while back about that. He was going on about "what good are dead Iraqis to me?" basically. And he had a point.

Instead of killing people, and destroying their civilization's infrastructure, we could have instead spent that on R&D for our own energy independence. More of that money would have stayed in the country, enriching us all and boosting our own economy rather than producing goods used for destruction.

Even not doing R&D, but just putting that money into basic infrastructure in the USA, like roads and bridges, would promote local economic growth.

Oh agreed, it's terrible in terms of being a public works project. I'd rather put everyone to work building a national high speed rail system.

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