America has pledged not to use anti-personnel landmines(APL) anywhere outside of the Korean peninsula. I suspect (although obviously can't confirm) America has reserved this right but probably does not exercise it.
> The United States is the world’s single largest financial supporter of humanitarian mine action, which includes not only clearance of landmines, but also medical rehabilitation and vocational training for those injured by landmines and other explosive remnants of war. Since the United States Humanitarian Mine Action Program was established in 1993, the United States has provided over $2.3 billion in aid in over 90 countries for conventional weapons destruction programs.[0]
While I am quite cynical and definitively against a lot of the ways our military has been employed, the degree of safety and the diplomatic security I receive as a result of it, provides more utility to me than a parking lot.
More broadly, roads and localized infrastructure are quite important, as is the military. I agree that personally I would allocate more money for infrastructure than to the military, and agree if this is the point you were making. I do want to illustrate the counterpoints that many people (once again, not me personally) would "Rather have their names on the bombs that kill terrorists"[1], than on a highway.
I don't live in America. And my country makes all kinds of crap. Clusterbombs and what not. The landmine was meant as an illustration, not as a particular item, it could just as well have been a clusterbomb or some other intrinsically negative item.
Sorry, that was a pretty ethnocentric assumption on my part. A case could be made that landmines are intrinsically negative as they are non-discriminating hazards that render large portions of land unsafe well after a conflict has ended. Bombs, missiles tanks etc, I am not so sure of. I would appraise them as neutral, with the potential to be negative or positive.
