Sometimes, it's important to question the unquestionable. One area where I see that our culture has the most difficult time doing this is in talking about the funding of our military defense and public safety services. At a national/international level, it's the U.S. Military and private security contractors. At the state, county and city level, it's police officers along with firefighters and EMTs.
Lawmakers and executive branch leaders across the political spectrum are acutely aware that they'll never be criticized for "supporting the troops" that serve in these operations. In his recent speech updating the world on the status of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he also acknowledged the tenuous state of the economy, President Obama said that, "as long as I am President, we will maintain the finest fighting force that the world has ever known, and we will do whatever it takes to serve our veterans as well as they have served us." The finest in the world. Whatever it takes. These phrases mean something coming from the President of the United States.
