What Is “Smart Security”?

The Pennsylvania contingent of the New Priorities campaign is called “Smart Security” and you can find out more about it at the website www.smartsecuritypa.org.  Why is it called “smart security”?

The United States neither needs nor can afford the gigantic military structure we now have spread across our country and around the world. That is not a smart way to protect ourselves.

1. Smart Security means maintaining armed forces of sufficient size and competence to defend the United States from foreign attack. That should require a relatively small army, air force, and navy.

2. Smart Security means defending the United States without bankrupting it. We now spend about half our discretionary budget on the military and we can not afford the sort of health, education, housing, transportation, and energy programs we need.

3. Smart Security means presenting a reasonable and friendly face to the world. It means not kindling hatred against us and motivating people in other countries to attack us.

4. Smart Security means divesting ourselves of the thousand overseas bases we now operate – bases that get us involved in local politics, cost us a fortune, and encourage us to act as if we had an empire.

5. Smart Security means developing the sort of sustainable economy that does not depend on the importation of oil, with all the diplomatic and military entanglements that generates.