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You answered your own question. DETERENT. I do think we have gone overboard with projecting strength, regime change, and world policemen. However, an element is necessary to avoid conflict on our soil, and to be PROACTIVE in protecting our shores. You don't want to wait until they are here to act, but again, I think we have used that argument a bit to liberally.
100% on point.
Those who think we should just bury our heads in the sand and wait until Russia and China are 12 miles off our shore are delusional. You put out the small fires before they become raging infernos. That means having bases overseas, monitoring situations on the ground, and projecting strength to deter our adversaries from rising up. It means acting as "world policemen" when called upon by other countries in need of help, and stopping totalitarian dictators from intentionally harming innocent civilians.
I'd rather have us as the "world policemen" than Russia or China. Simple put, if we step down, they step up. Take your pick.
I completely disagree. We need a strong military for the safety and security of this country and to help our allies.
We need to make sure nobody dares to do anything like 9/11 again.
I don’t recall saying that I want a weak military.
Strong militaries don’t have to eat up vast amounts of financial resources from wealthy nations. That’s just bull. 700 billion a year is shameful. That’s nothing to be proud of. You should be embarrassed.
Those who think we should just bury our heads in the sand and wait until Russia and China are 12 miles off our shore are delusional. You put out the small fires before they become raging infernos. That means having bases overseas, monitoring situations on the ground, and projecting strength to deter our adversaries from rising up. It means acting as "world policemen" when called upon by other countries in need of help, and stopping totalitarian dictators from intentionally harming innocent civilians.
I'd rather have us as the "world policemen" than Russia or China. Simple put, if we step down, they step up. Take your pick.
Jesus, that’s a false dichotomy if there ever was one.
They don’t spend enough money of their military to even DREAM of stepping into our role. Get real.
The only way to reduce military spending would be to convince Corn Bread America that the military is secretly controlled by African Americans and Muslims.
This is a very interesting piece in Mother Jones about the voracious appetite of the military industrial complex and how entrenched it’s become.
Quote:
Simply put, Americans are too militaristic for their own good. Diplomacy is seen as weak in this country. We think the military is the solution to ALL of our foreign policy issues. We think we can just shoot and airstrike our way out of every dilemma despite the fact that such thinking continues to fail us time and again.
The piece also lays out other issues with the Pentagon culture that keeps leading to the defense establishment robbing the budget to pay for nonsense that we don’t even need.
Are we as taxpayers ever gonna put an end to this foolishness?
More than 30 after the public was outraged over $640 toilet seats and other Cold War military waste, the DOD remains the last Federal Department still unable to conduct a financial audit, despite laws in the 90’s requiring full accounting.
Has not mattered who sat the oval or held the majority.
Military spending went down under Bill Clinton and our military was weakened.
We should have gone more aggressively after Bin Laden and killed him in the 1990s when he was committing his repeated acts of terrorism then.
Congress voted for that decrease in spending during the elder Bush administration as a "Cold War Dividend" when the USSR collapsed. It was a broadly bi-partisan vote, because every Congresscritter wanted his cut of the "dividend."
Clinton went along with the spending cut passed by Congress--he had no case not to go along with it.
You answered your own question. DETERENT. I do think we have gone overboard with projecting strength, regime change, and world policemen. However, an element is necessary to avoid conflict on our soil, and to be PROACTIVE in protecting our shores. You don't want to wait until they are here to act, but again, I think we have used that argument a bit to liberally.
To piggyback on Pilot1's comment, which I agree with, the key is determining where we draw the line. How much military spending do we need to remain the most powerful military? How much do we need for it be so strong as to have this deterrent effect against aggression from other countries?
If all we have to justify our $600 billion/year in military spending is "we need to have the strongest military for its deterrent effect", then we can apply that reasoning to justify any level of spending. The simple fact of the matter is there's tons of military waste, but politically neither party has ever been willing to address it.
Do we need to spend 4x the amount that the China spends on defense? Or 10x the amount that Russia does? Because that's where we stand currently.
Is it really such a stretch to think that U.S. would still be the alpha dog if we spent, say, only double the amount of China's budget? Hell what about triple? If the latter, that frees up at least $150 billion that could be better spent elsewhere to improve the lives of Americans while leaving us all well-protected.
The only way to reduce military spending would be to convince Corn Bread America that the military is secretly controlled by African Americans and Muslims.
Lol..they’d set the Pentagon on fire and hang every military official.
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