The crash of a stealth bomber reminds us what it is.

Let me start by quoting two articles from recent news reports just to put things in perspective.

From the BBC, reporting on Japan’s recent successful launch of a super high-speed data transmission satellite:

Jaxa spokeswoman Asaka Hagiwara said the total cost of the development, launch and operation of the satellite was estimated at 52bn yen (US$480m; £240m).

From Associated Press, reporting on the crash of a stealth bomber on the island of Guam in the Pacific:

Each B-2 bomber costs about $1.2 billion to build.

Some quick math will tell you that Japan’s program to push out the frontiers of science and communication cost less than half of just one stealth bomber. We built 21 of them. With that kind of money, we could have paid for fifty of Japan’s unprecedented systems.

I don’t think people realize just how much money we pound down the military rathole in America. This is what President Dwight Eisenhower, the only career military man to be the President in the last century, meant in his farewell address to the American people in 1961:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.