Mine is an argument of pragmatism. Having grown up neck-deep in the Military Industrial Complex, I can say without reservation that arguments of principle gain no traction. On the other hand, saying "You should give us a bazillion dollars to invent satellites. We can probably figure out a way to kill people with them andmaybefosteraglobalcommunicationnetworkmumblemumblemumble" generally works pretty well. After all, ArXiv.org was developed by Paul Ginsparg in his spare time while working at T division at LANL - and T division is all about killing the shit out of Russkies.
The world is shrinking, and war isn't what it used to be. It's too messy, and doesn't provide the returns it used to. It once provided a tax base. Now it doesn't even guarantee puppet states. If anything, it's just become dirty work and a distraction. This isn't just principle as far as I see it. It's a smart move in an evolving game.
We have been able to have troops on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq - simultaneously - for longer than we had troops on the ground in Vietnam simply by sanitizing their coverage and framing their participation. This was one of the primary reason we "embedded" reporters with our troops - it eliminates their impartiality. And while UAV attacks on civilians has been an occasional issue in US papers, it has been the.driving.issue for much of the Arab world. War certainly isn't what it used to be. It is now sustainable, engageable by remote, and practical 24/7. When your frontline warriors live in the suburbs of Vegas and get to clock out at the end of the day to hug their families, there is zero pressure to remove them from battle. Not only that, but when the majority of your armed forces on the ground aren't regular military but "contractors" you don't even have to report most of what you do. We've done to the military what we did to the power companies - created Enron. It's extraordinarily lucrative and there's no oversight. You are, in fact, pushing for a pie-in-the-sky love-fest. The culture has shifted, man. You missed it. You're saying "we can just give more for cancer research" as if NASA's budget hadn't been cut ~7 percent every year since 1991. As if the NSF weren't cut deeply every year since 2003. DARPA gets $3 billion a year. NASA gets 18. If DARPA wants to do NASA's research, let 'em do it. DARPA is not going to be sending probes to Mars any time soon and if DARPA simply wanted a novel way to kill people, they've got a long fuckin' list that costs less, kills more and doesn't require a Vandenberg launch to test.
In time, the everyday Joe is going to be able to confound traditional governance. IMO the next Rome is going to be riding a wave that has little to do with national interests or geography. Trust me, I'm no hippy. I just see that the writing is on the wall that the military industrial complex is not what it used to be. The US is probably going to follow it down the drain. We are spending a lot of resources sewing redcoats.