Oscar Arias, a former president of Costa Rica and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, echoed these famous words from President Eisenhower when he wrote a decade ago that US military spending took money away from important domestic needs. Retrieved from http://www.thenation.com/blog/161378/around-globe-us-military-bases-generate-resentment-not-security. Union of Concerned Scientists. But many observers say that the United States has neglected the veterans of later wars. As large as it is, the $768 billion just cited as the official figure for the US military budget is misleading in at least two ways. Are we giant suckers? Retrieved http://www.cnn.com/. Korb, L. J., Rothman, A., & Hoffman, M. (2012). vanden Heuvel, K. (2011, June 13). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. To put that another way, between 43 percent and 48 percent of all federal income tax dollars were used for military expenditures that year. (2011, June 17). Gleditsch, N. P., & Theisen, O. M. (2010). (2012, January 8). Third, and helping to explain the success of this lobbying, military spending provides jobs and income to the home districts of members of Congress. Open Document. While social sciences attempts an objective evaluation of human and social behavior, by its very nature it must grapple with questions of equality, fairness, cohesion, and happiness, and thus, with moral issues. ORDER NOW FOR AN ORIGINAL PAPER ASSIGNMENT: SNHU Social Science Issues Assignment. Describe some of the factors that have influenced this social institution in India. According to a recent estimate, $1 billion spent by the Pentagon creates 11,200 jobs, but the same $1 billion spent in other sectors would create 16,800 clean energy jobs, 17,200 health-care jobs, and 26,700 education jobs (Pollin & Garrett-Peltier, 2011). America.gov. ABC News. Bumiller, E. (2010, July 25). Worrell, M. P. (2011). (2011). What is Social Science? Aggression and Violent Behavior, 15, 267277. In one example of what Tirman (2011, p. 153) calls a typical massacre, US soldiers arrived at a village that had just been bombed and ordered surviving residents to gather at the center of the town. The defense industry remains a powerful force in the US economy six decades after Eisenhower issued his warning, and US military spending continues unabated. One Iraq veteran with these problems is Tom Marcum, who came home with a brain injury, PTSD, and fits of violence and short-term memory loss. That is the good news and the cause for hope. Since 1993, US armed forces have waged war in Iraq and in Afghanistan and also joined international military operations in such countries as Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Libya. Chapter 1 / Exercise 3 Washington, DC: Author. History shows that when these resources become too scarce within a society, that society is more likely to go to war to wrest these resources from another society (Gleditsch & Theisen, 2010). Amherst, MA: Political Economy Research Institutes. Choose one of the five social institutions. A quick calculation shows that about 11 percent of the worlds population died from the Mongolian wars, while 2 percent died from World War II. Vietnam Veterans Against the War. ABC News. Drugs and alcohol abuse. An Associated Press photo of her running naked and screaming with burns after her village was napalmed was one of the most memorable photos of that war. One veteran recalled being gang raped by her drill sergeant and four other soldiers, who then broke several bones in her body and urinated on her. Retrieved from http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/american%20war%20casualty.htm; http://web.archive.org/web/20070711050249/http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/other/stats/warcost.htm; Hacker, J. D. (2011, September 20). That problem is rape, as at least one-fifth and perhaps as many as 84 percent of all military service are raped or sexually assaulted (including sexual harassment) by other military personnel (Turchik & Wilson, 2010). Retrieved from http://www.defense.gov/news/casualty.pdf (accessed February 16, 2012); Martinez, L. (2011, November 11). The American Civil War, also called the War Between the States, then tore it apart less than a century later. Retrieved from http://fcnl.org/assets/flyer/taxchart11.pdf. Sexual assault in the US military: A review of the literature and recommendations for the future. In 2010, more than 19,000 US military personnel, most of them women, were raped or sexually assaulted (Stalsburg, 2011). We need to confront them to ensure equal treatment for everyone. The Vietnam War marked a time when many Americans became concerned about childrens suffering during wartime. July 5, 2016. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. To do so, it routinely deployed chemical weapons such as Agent Orange (dioxin, a known carcinogen), napalm, and white phosphorous. As a news report summarized these families experience, Ms. More than 100 million soldiers and civilians are estimated to have died during the international and civil wars of the twentieth century (Leitenberg, 2006). Bombs containing napalm made by Dow Chemical were routinely used by the US military and its South Vietnamese allies during the Vietnam War to defoliate the countryside and to attack various targets. Describe some of the factors that have influenced this social institution in India. Compared to Europe, then, the United States has chosen guns over butter, leaving far less money for its social needs. Quality and affordable writing services. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Table 16.2 US Participation in Major Wars. As just one example of such waste, a 2011 federal audit found that cost overruns over the prior two years had added at least $70 billion to projected costs of various weapons systems (Drew, 2011). This article covers the concept of social issues and highlights the different experiences of rural and urban sectors. Advertisement capkay1505 His wife April had to quit her teaching job to take care of him, and their life savings slowly dwindled. Defense outlays rose by 85 percent beyond inflation between 2000 and 2011. Retrieved from http://www.america.gov/st/diversity-english/2008/February/20080225120859liameruoy0.9820215.html. In political science (as in other fields in the social sciences from economics to anthropology) there has been a kind of simmering war being waged between quantitative and qualitative researchers - and the new journal was, in part, meant to heal the rift. The Nation. This change is widely credited with helping spur the hopes of southern African Americans that racial desegregation would someday occur in their hometowns (McKeeby, 2008). Acting out wars inner wounds. Identify two social science issues related to war. These actions did destroy the countryside, but they also destroyed humans. Kaplan, F. (2012, February 13). According to this argument, war is part of our genetic heritage because the humans who survived tens of thousands of years ago were those who were most able, by virtue of their temperament and physicality, to take needed resources from other humans they attacked and to defend themselves from attackers. The deaths of others: The fate of civilians in Americas wars. Discretionary spending involves the money the president and Congress must decide how to spend each year and includes federal income tax dollars only. Federation of American Scientists. The European nations decisions to limit their military spending allows more spending for social needs. Deaths in wars and conflicts in the 20th century. Jobs, hobbies, friends, even parental obligations to young children fall by the wayside. New York Times. Other experts echo President Eisenhowers concern over the size of the military budget (Bacevich, 2011; Korb, Rothman, & Hoffman, 2012; Lochhead, 2012; Wheeler, 2009). Killer species. Second, members of Congress fear being labeled weak on defense if they try to reduce the military budget or do not agree to new weapons systems requested by the Pentagon. New research looked at 133 countries. Slashing Americas defense: A suicidal trajectory. napalm sticks to kids. The education system today faces many issues and problems of interest not just to educators and families but also to sociologists and other social scientists. These experts say the military budget is bloated for at least four reasons. When we think of the impact of war, the consequences for civilians and veterans as just discussed come most readily to mind. Tirman notes that approximately 6 million civilians and soldiers died in the Korean, Vietnam/Indochina, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars. Most arms exports from the United States and other exporters go to developing nations. In 2010, the US official military budget (defense outlays only) was $698 billion. A popular explanation for war derives from evolutionary biology. The Note 16.13 Children and Our Future box discusses this problem in greater detail. It . Halperin, S. (2004). Do we care when civilians die in war? Supporters of this role say the military has both protected and advanced the political and economic interests of the United States, while critics, as we have seen, charge that the military has been an instrument of imperialism. Scholars have attempted to explain why human beings wage war. Harrison, T. (2012). Identify two social science issues related to education. Retrieved from http://www.thenation.com/blog/165487/job-numbers-are-veterans-are-left-behind. Second, war is more readily solvable than many other human afflictions. Time. This latter fact needs some explanation. Critics also argue that military spending actually produces fewer jobs than spending in other sectors (Ledbetter, 2011). and environmental protection. McGovern, G. (2011). Religion is a very important ideology in this regard. In another example, the Navy is designing a new series of nuclear submarines, with construction planned to start in 2019. As a result, reported rapes and sexual assaults compose only a very small percentage of all military rapes and sexual assaults. (2012, February 18). Author: jstor.org; Published: 01/26/2022; policy analysis role of social science was given impetus by the Progressive movement (which had roots in Wisconsin) at the turn of the century, which held that application of the scientific method to political problems could lead to more effective governmental performance. Lochhead, C. (2012, February 14). Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2012/02/_2013_pentagon_budget_why_so_much_spending_on_big_war_weapons_.html. Social Issues are any behavior or circumstance that impacts most members of a community. When it comes to our wars overseas, he adds, concern for the victims is limited to U.S. troops.. A key focus of their concern was the use of napalm. Some 400,000 tons of napalm were used altogether. The APSA acknowledged dissatisfaction after analyzing a 1998 survey of members and ex-members. Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan War have a higher suicide rate than that of the general public. US veterans: By the numbers. New York, NY: Routledge. The enormity of war has long stimulated scholarly interest in why humans wage war (Levy & Thompson, 2010). Although she survived, it took seventeen surgeries to turn her whole again. 9.5 million children receiving low-income health care (Medicaid), 1.7 million students receiving full-tuition scholarships at state universities, 1.6 million Head Start slots for children. If warfare is not biological in origin, then it is best understood as a social phenomenon, one that has its roots in the decisions of political and military officials. When one woman who was raped by two soldiers in Iraq told her commander, he threatened her with a charge of adultery because she was married (Speier, 2012). Fourth, military waste in the form of cost overruns from poor accounting and other management failures is rampant. Americans are hurt, he warned, when the defense budget squanders money that could be used to repair schools or to guarantee universal health care (Arias, 1999, p. A19). US military spending amounts to more than $1 trillion annually. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. The science wars were a series of scholarly and public discussions in the 1990s over the social place of science in making authoritative claims about the world.HighBeam Encyclopedia, [unreliable source?] Obamas defense cuts are a drop in the bucket. As one scholar said of the military bases, It makes as much sense for the Pentagon to hold onto 227 military bases in Germany as it would for the post office to maintain a fleet of horses and buggies (vanden Heuvel, 2011). Trade-offs. Many veterans are experiencing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), marked by nightmares, panic attacks, and other symptoms (Dao, 2012). As the Marcums situation indicates, spouses and other family members of veterans also are casualties of war. In contrast, the United States spends 5.1 percent of its economy on its base military budget, which does not include costs for veterans benefits, for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and military spending that falls outside the Pentagons budget. Human beings live in a society with other humans. Arias, O. 221232). Although wars, other armed conflicts, terrorism, and genocide certainly continue, and 100 million is a terribly high number of deaths, the world overall is in fact more peaceful now than in the past. Additionally, some people lose their homes due to the war leading to homelessness as a social problem in the community. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books. Although this is almost an unimaginable number, there is cause for some hope, even as there is also cause for despair. World War II had a direct influence on the social justice movements after the war and even today. While the US blows money on the military, Europe spends dough on social programs. Choose one of the five social institutions. At the end of that war, however, the nuclear age began when the United States dropped two atomic weapons on Japan that killed tens of thousands instantly and tens of thousands more from radiation exposure. This fear can take a psychological toll on all members of these families, but perhaps especially on children. (2012). Friends Committee on National Legislation. Analysis of the FY2012 defense budget. When napalm ends up on human skin, it causes incredibly severe pain and burns down to the bone, with death often resulting. In M. D. Cavelty & V. Mauer (Eds. As this brief discussion indicates, although the massacre of 347 Vietnamese at the hamlet of My Lai is undoubtedly the Vietnam massacre that is best known (and perhaps the only known) to the American public, massacres were far from rare and in fact were rather common. Now, all I see is blood (Herdy & Moffeit, 2004, p. 4). While it is undoubtedly true that a biomedical perspective dominated public health in the first half of the twentieth century, there has emerged, largely since World War II, a social science perspective in public health.This perspective has developed in departments of social and community medicine in Europe and in schools of public health in the United States . By any measure, then, the US military has played a fundamental role, for better or worse, in the nations foreign affairs historically and also today. Washington, DC: Center for International Policy. (2009). These more basic causes of war include population change and environmental change. If warlike tendencies were part of human genetic heritage, these convictions would not exist. The psychological effect of war on veterans and their families We have textbook solutions for you! As we move further into the twenty-first century, the issue of military spending will present a major challenge for US political and economic institutions to address in a way that meets Americas international and domestic interests. The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Max Weber) Brunner and Suddarth's Textbook of Medical-Surgical Nursing (Janice L. Hinkle; Kerry H. Cheever) Voices of Freedom (Eric Foner) Biological Science (Freeman Scott; Quillin Kim; Allison Lizabeth) Forecasting, Time Series, and Regression (Richard T. O'Connell; Anne B. Koehler) If this high rate had held true during the twentieth century, 2 billion people would have died in twentieth-century wars rather than the 100 million who did die (Pinker, 2012). Russia ranked second with $5.3 billion in arms deliveries, while Germany ranked third with $2.6 billion (Grimmett, 2011). Identify two social science issues related to education. San Francisco Chronicle, p. A6. Shah, A. Another issue would be the stress on the families who have a service member deployed in a war zone . The National Guard New York National Guard CC BY 2.0. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab. The psychological effect of war on veterans and their families 1 ) . This is a social problem. Four decades later, questions of deceit were again raised after the United States began the war against Iraq because of its alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction. Retrieved from https://www.warresisters.org/sites/default/files/FY2012piechart-color.pdf. It would of course be a curious kind of "understanding" that had no implications for action, and this is perhaps especially true for the social sciences. When the war began, a sort of truce developed between management and labor, as workers wanted to appear patriotic by supporting the war effort and hoped that they would win important labor rights for doing so. Second, many societies studied by anthropologists have been very peaceful, suggesting that a tendency to warfare is more cultural than biological. A., & Wilson, S. M. (2010). Many came back addicted to heroin and other drugs, many were unemployed, and many became homeless. Retrieved from http://bangordailynews.com/2011/07/22/health/children-of-deployed-troops-struggle-researchers-find. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service. As Chapter 15 Population and the Environment discussed, population growth may lead to armed conflict of various types, including war, because growing populations need more food, water, and other resources. Retrieved from http://defensenewsstand.com/NewsStand-General/The-INSIDER-Free-Article/dod-new-nuclear-subs-will-cost-347-billion-to-acquire-operate/menu-id-720.html. Once they were evacuated, their villages were designated free fire zones, and then often bombed indiscriminately once again, killing any villagers who managed to remain in these zones despite the evacuations. Evidence from a national survey of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans underscores the problems they face (Pew Research Center, 2011). Baker, L. (2012, February 18). England, G. (2012, February 5). The minimum estimate almost matches the number of American deaths in all the other wars the United States has fought, and the maximum estimate greatly exceeds this number (see Table 16.2 US Participation in Major Wars). Danner, M. (2006). New York Times, p. A1. These weapons were never found, and critics charged that the White House had fabricated and exaggerated evidence of the weapons in order to win public and congressional support for the war (Danner, 2006). 1.2 Sociological Perspectives on Social Problems, 1.3 Continuity and Change in Social Problems, 2.1 The Measurement and Extent of Poverty, 2.2 Who the Poor Are: Social Patterns of Poverty, 3.1 Racial and Ethnic Inequality: A Historical Prelude, 3.5 Dimensions of Racial and Ethnic Inequality, 3.6 Explaining Racial and Ethnic Inequality, 3.7 Reducing Racial and Ethnic Inequality, 4.4 Violence against Women: Rape and Sexual Assault, 5.2 Public Attitudes about Sexual Orientation, 5.3 Inequality Based on Sexual Orientation, 5.4 Improving the Lives of the LGBT Community, 6.3 Life Expectancy and the Graying of Society, 6.4 Biological and Psychological Aspects of Aging, 6.6 Reducing Ageism and Helping Older Americans, 7.5 Drug Policy and the War on Illegal Drugs, 7.6 Addressing the Drug Problem and Reducing Drug Use, 10.2 Sociological Perspectives on the Family, 10.3 Changes and Problems in American Families, 11.1 An Overview of Education in the United States, 11.2 Sociological Perspectives on Education, 11.3 Issues and Problems in Elementary and Secondary Education, 11.4 Issues and Problems in Higher Education, 12.2 Sociological Perspectives on Work and the Economy, 13.1 Sociological Perspectives on Health and Health Care, 13.2 Global Aspects of Health and Health Care, 13.3 Problems of Health in the United States, 13.4 Problems of Health Care in the United States, 14.2 Sociological Perspectives on Urbanization, 15.1 Sociological Perspectives on Population and the Environment, 15.4 Addressing Population Problems and Improving the Environment, 16.1 Sociological Perspectives on War and Terrorism, 16.4 Preventing War and Stopping Terrorism.