President Obama said Tuesday the United States will spend $90 million over the next three years to clear unexploded bombs dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War.

A decade ago we began spending $2.5 million a year to $15 million this year. During the Vietnam War America spent nine years bombing Laos with the goal of blocking supplies to Vietnam and fighting communist forces in northern Laos.

Our bombing effort left tens of millions of unexploded cluster bombs. These bombs are about the size of a baseball.

During the nine-year bombing, we conducted 580,000 missions over Laos and dropped over 270 million cluster bombs on this neutral country. An estimated 80 million of the cluster bombs failed to detonate, and thousands have been killed since 1973, when we ended the bombing.

We need to clean our mess up in Laos. This is good news for that tiny country. It's not so great news for America.

Our war expenditures continue to be bad news for America: $90 million out the window for more international efforts. We have communities all over our country with dilapidated schools, outdated or unsafe water supplies, desperate economies, and yet we take from our own people to spend more overseas.

How much more will we spend in Southeast Asia? The numbers are worse than horrific: 58,220 Americans died, 153,303 wounded and 1,643 missing. It is estimated that up to 300,000 Vietnam Veterans committed suicide and approximately 700,000 soldiers suffered psychological trauma.

The Vietnam War cost us $168 billion — almost $950 billion in today's dollars; this doesn't include the $350 billion up to $900 billion in veterans' benefits and interest.

Because of the Vietnam War, the American economy suffered. The ’60s were a great economic growth time in this country that spiraled to an economic crisis in the 1970s.

Since Vietnam, we have spent trillions on Iraq and Afghanistan. In just Iraq, over 4,400 U.S. service personnel were killed directly. The numbers again are brutal: 32,223 troops were injured and 134,000 civilians killed directly. 655,000 persons died in Iraq since the invasion who would have not died if we had not have invaded the country. America spent $1.7 trillion in war expenses.

We gave $75 billion to American subcontracting companies, largest of all Halliburton. We aren't done in Iraq. We still have military personnel deployed, and some of our military leadership looks back and wishes we had kept a stronger presence. Therefore, because of ISIS, we will never leave Afghanistan.

 It seems like we can never really leave. How many places can we go and still maintain an American military presence?

Currently, we have 662 military bases in 38 countries. Many of these bases are small, yet we are there.

How long can we afford to maintain so much military and American efforts throughout the world?

There is so much to do in America. I'm not anti helping other people, but we are way overboard.  We can't afford to pay our retirees what we promised and we are in a medical crisis.

Helping Laos is not the wrong gesture. It just proves that we never really leave.

Glenn Mollette is an American syndicated columnist and author.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: MOLLETTE: America's wars — we never really leave

NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick said, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street … This is not something that I am going to run by anybody. I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed … I know that I stood up for what is right.”

First, he had more “I” in what he says than a President Obama speech about someone else. Beyond that, this pampered athlete certainly has the right to make a statement that has no factual basis.  He can say stupid and hypocritical things; it’s every American’s right to be an idiot.

And it’s my right to make fun of him.

SUPPORTING OPPRESSION

With his whole body tattooed almost all the way up to his neck, you know Kaepernick makes good decisions. His latest rant might trigger the NFL concussion protocol.

He has been fined for using the “N” word against an opponent and then lying about it. Tapes proved he lied and the NFL fined him. A woman accused him of abuse that sent her to the hospital. So he is a racist, a liar and he abuses women. But let’s hear him out on this one as he lectures us on the oppressive conditions in America while wearing a Fidel Castro T-shirt.

Apparently, they do not teach history well at the University of Nevada-Reno. It is estimated that Castro killed between 15,000 and 33,000 people during his self-proclaimed reign as Communist dictator of Cuba.

Again, Kaepernick honored Castro, while lecturing us on oppression.

The now 85-year-old Castro oppressed and killed his own people. He ravaged Cuba’s economy and stole — his net worth is around $1 billion — before retiring to spend more time oppressing his family.

Just imagine how much Castro would be worth if he were not a “share the wealth” communist.

DISPROVING A LIE

Both “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” and Black Lives Matter are founded on a lie. Michael Brown didn’t have his hands up in Ferguson. As to Kaepernick’s anti-cop (pro-Black Lives Matter) assertion that blacks are being shot by cops at alarming rates, the facts prove him wrong.

In her new book, “The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe,” Heather MacDonald cites simple FBI crime statistics that disprove the lie on which Black Lives Matter is based.

First, black and Hispanic cops are far more likely — 3.3 times — than a white cop to shoot an unarmed black suspect. While they are only 6 percent of the population, black males make up 40 percent of all cop killers.

Thus, she determines that a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is likely to be killed by a cop.

Blacks commit homicide at a rate eight times higher than whites and Hispanics combined. Blacks are 13 percent of the population but commit 52 percent of all murders. This puts them into more tense and more regular contact with police. That’s the issue Kaepernick should speak out about, but that won’t endear him to the media.

The media love Kaepernick’s faux protest but ridiculed Tim Tebow’s Christian values. Now Tebow has a baseball tryout with the Braves — not bad for a guy who has never gotten to third base.

Of course, this is about race, so Obama had to fan the fires. “I’d rather have young people who are engaged in the argument … than people who are just sitting on the sidelines…” Obama said.

Kaepernick is sitting on the sideline and arguing, so he is doing both.

Ron Hart, a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author, is a frequent guest on CNN. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: HART: Kaepernick speaks out on oppression while supporting it

About a year ago, I wrote about the science fair project called HI-SEAS. The project put people in a dome on a Hawaiian lava slope to see if they could live with no outside resources for an entire year.

The participants were practicing for life on Mars.

This week, the six “astronauts” who lived through a year of simulating life on the red planet came out of their two-story high dome and found themselves in 1952.

Unfortunately, the 2016 presidential campaign is reminiscent of the race from 64 years ago.

The names change, but the tactics and types of issues remain the same.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”

That is true in many ways, and politics is one of them.

Let’s compare the 2016 race to 1952.

In 1952, everyone was scared of communists. They were everywhere if you listened to politicians.

There was even “extreme vetting” where alleged communists were called before Congress to prove their American allegiance. Many in the GOP must really believe those were the good old days.

In 2016, all illegal immigrants are rapists, drug dealers and killers. It seems odd that with at least 11 million of them here, campaigns keep using the same five families to show how horrible illegal immigrants made life for their families.

I’m not sure, but I bet you are statistically as likely to be raped by a Stanford University swimmer as you are an illegal immigrant.

There is no more popular television interview than the member of a group discriminated against going live on television and agreeing with the racists who hate him but appreciate his acceptance of it.

A recent example of that is the founder of what is I’m sure a small group called Latinos for Trump. Marco Gutierrez said he agreed that illegal immigration must be stopped. Mexican culture, he argued, was far too dominant to be assimilated. If they are allowed to stay, they will destroy America.

“My culture is a very dominant culture,” he said. “It’s imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.”

One man’s nightmare is another man’s fantasy.

Those poor people who came out of the dome in Hawaii may wish they were back on fake Mars soon. When the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton ads take over the airwaves, we may all want to join them.

This race is scary for many reasons, but the biggest problem is that you have the two least popular candidates ever highlighting each other’s many faults constantly.

That will not help either candidate’s public perception.

Think about how this ends.

Sometime late in the evening on Nov. 8, the biggest selection of voters in United States history will immediately feel a sense of doom and despair because the one of the least favorable candidates ever has just been elected.

I don’t know about the doom and despair, but America will elect one of these two and the lesser of two evils will make a reservation for four years in the White House.

We need to start now in thinking beyond 2016. How can each party develop and promote better candidates? Trump and Clinton may be horrible but both parties used an extensive process to select them.

If horrible is the best you’ve got, maybe it is time to change the system.

Six participants survived for a year in a fake Martian habitat in Hawaii. America survived the Red Scare in 1952. We will survive the presidential election of 2016.

It is time for us to learn from our mistakes and begin building better political parties and processes.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: BUSH: It is time to improve the process