Are you willing to cut the military by 50% and use those monies to unf**k ourselves? We'd still dominate the world with the $300 BILLION "pittance" to our military... we'd still be able to ruin your best Friday no matter what country you are. Are you willing to sacrifice your safety for a viable US economy? Are you willing to stop declaring proxy-de-facto war on the world by your might for some solidarity???
I think it is important that we rethink our military to make sure we are getting the best value for the dollar spent. And I think we need to continually reevaluate how we prosecute warfare. I would wager that this is an ongoing activity in the Pentagon. However we need to make sure that those charged with that responsibility are not hamered or restrained by "group think" and successfully moderated with the wisdom of experience...not an easy task.
Instead of cutting the entire military why not cut the of money spent on hardware. One B-1 Bomber cost over a billion dollars!
The Department of Defense budget is around $600 billion, but total US military spending is actually closer to around $1 trillion or more. The actual amount that the US spends on defense is pretty hard to calculate. There are all sorts of blatantly-military expenses that don't fall under the DoD budget. Even after you consider all the the expenses that are obviously military-related, there are still countless other ways that defense spending can creep into government programs. As a random example, the Space Shuttle ended up costing a lot more to design and operate because the government insisted it be designed to be able to carry out a variety of military missions (which it was never used for). No, a B-1 bomber costs about $300 million. And since we aren't buying them any more, that's not really a viable way to cut expenses.
I would rather cut every thing that is Unconstitutional under Article 1 Section 8 first, and see if that doesn't unfuck ourselves. The Military is a Constitutional Mandate under Article I of the Constitution. To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; To provide and maintain a navy; To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
Here's my 'USA" based contribution.....but the identity of the country is irrelevant, its simply a "place of residence" kinda thing.......so I'm just talking about whatever government is in charge of where I'm at. If it were my choice, I'd re-task all that spending into space technology - albeit with Military overtones. I wouldn't try to "weaponize" space per-se. More along the lines of establishing significant space-based infrastructure for the economic benefit of the country and derived from the existing Military branches.
The Constitution gives power to Congress to create an Army and a Navy. But where in the Constitution does it say anything about creating an Air Force? So are you advocating the elimination of the American Air Force (as a strict constructionalist)?
So which candidate supports cutting the military by 30-50% and using those proceeds to unfuck ourselves?
Assuming that you can mothball most of the things instead of scrap them and maintain a decent research amount than yes, I'd be willing to cut the military expenditures by 50% IF POSSIBLE.
The U.S. spends more on military than the rest of the nations combined. Most of that is in the form of entitlements that bring no return on investment. Stopping the stupid wars and bringing the economy home would come close to cutting all that in half.
Actually Dredd, it's a few percentage points below the rest of the world combined. I think that your analysis of how much that would save is a tad...off. It's actually somewhat sad you cited yourself, I was hoping for something legitimate.
We can fuck any country in the world up. I get it. So why do we need to come up with yet-more efficient ways to accomplish that goal? Pull out the mothballs, fellas.
Contrary to what most people think, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan don't contribute all that much to US defense spending. The US spends around $1 trillion/year on defense, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined "only" cost around $150-$200 billion (depending on who you ask). So they are certainly a significant chunk of the spending, but ending funding to those wars would only decrease spending something like 20%.
I still gotta go with Ron Paul on this issue- pull out; end it. Close military bases- get the hell out of the world. We can do so much good with $300 billion.
