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I think most people, myself included, don't *want* to be able to fight a war anywhere in the world at a moments notice. I wish we would stop getting involved in business in other countries that doesn't directly involve us (and no, our oil prices rising because of instability in a region isn't direct involvement, that would be indirect). The amount of money we spend on the military is ridiculous. Beyond ridiculous, ludicrous. It would be far better to get some backlash about not getting involved in something than the eventual severe backlash that will happen when we get involved in something we shouldn't have.
So you would rather fight those battles right here at home? Easy to say that as you sit comfortably and safely at home without a skirmish on our soil in over 100 years with notable exception to Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
So you would rather fight those battles right here at home? Easy to say that as you sit comfortably and safely at home without a skirmish on our soil in over 100 years with notable exception to Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
We should get our allies to significantly chip into the cost of costly foreign military entanglements, or avoid them entirely.
I would say it's easy for you to sit comfortably in your home, supporting a $700 billion /year military bombing other countries when you've never had to put up with your family members and hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens being killed in US attacks, and many more having to abandon their homes and flee.
Plus, many of our foreign military entanglements were not done to prevent people from attacking the United States - e.g. Vietnam and Iraq.
So you would rather fight those battles right here at home? Easy to say that as you sit comfortably and safely at home without a skirmish on our soil in over 100 years with notable exception to Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
That's an awfully large conclusion to make with absolutely no proof or citations.
We should get our allies to significantly chip into the cost of costly foreign military entanglements, or avoid them entirely.
I would say it's easy for you to sit comfortably in your home, supporting a $700 billion /year military bombing other countries when you've never had to put up with your family members and hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens being killed in US attacks, and many more having to abandon their homes and flee.
Plus, many of our foreign military entanglements were not done to prevent people from attacking the United States - e.g. Vietnam and Iraq.
We went to Vietnam for bauxite, rubber, offshore oil, to deny the Soviets a year round Pacific port, and to put lots of money into special interest's pockets. As for "stopping the spread of communism", I would remind us that Kissinger made his famous trip to communist China while we were still engaged militarily in Vietnam.
Do you think the Viet Cong were going to invade America?
The Viet Cong came to be in great part from the frustration of a 95% Bhuddist population with no representation in the Catholic controlled Saigon government. The famous pictures of monks burning themselves to death "in protest of the war" were actually protesting the corrupt and oppressive Saigon government.
If anyone has actually done work for either the military or NASA, you'd know that much of our technology is OLD and much of it still running on legacy systems from the cold war. But hey at least some stuff will still be operational after an EMP pulse!
I do such work every day and I can say with 100% conviction that this statement is true. In less than a handful of cases do we actually have the best technology at our disposal. A lot of the gear with are given to use is the very same gear that came from Vietnam or Cold war era's. And in some cases we still use gear that was used as far back as WWII. No joke.
So that's where you're huge defense budget comes from. The big wigs pushing papers in their office feel it would be cheaper to continue to fix and replace old gear that breaks all the time rather than invest in more proven, technologically up-to-date gear. And when all that gear comes from outside contractors not in any way owned or operated by the military or the government, they get to charge the government whatever they like for those parts. Ever pay 5k for a walke-talke? lol
That is a large part of why your defense budget is so high.
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