I think we should cut the military budget in half and start minding out own business. We thank you for your service if you served in Afghanistan but what was the point? It was all for naught. You can keep your medals and ribbons if that's any consolation. This pull out should have happened 15 years ago.
I think it's more a matter of when you have a tool you use it. Either that or you look for an "unfair" situation and then you go to help out and in this world you will always find such a situation and you will always be fighting. Nation building never works out for us but we seem to forget that each time. Once you get it it's hard to get out. The commercial aspect doesn't help either. Defense industries are big business with jobs in most states so it gets entrenched politically.
Defense contractors are very politically savvy. They take one system and break it down into dozens of parts, each part, then, is manufactured in a different congressional district. One system 20-30 votes, or more.
We? The worst of them (the one responsible for your list there) was elected by the Supreme Court, five votes of the nine possible. He was re-elected by an enthusiastic and cheering majority of the less educated white citizenry, according to them because they had personal objections to the other candidates standing for office. That was after his sadistic military and law enforcement policies, his awe-inspiring ability to foster corruption in the US federal government, and his penchant for slaughtering foreigners who were stubbornly resistant to cutting deals with American oil and gas corporations, had been featured on the covers of national magazines and the programming of every major news corporation as examples of strong American masculinity. The rest were elected in more or less desperate attempts to pander to white male voters in key electoral college States - they had panicked when attacked by black people and terrorists, and it was proving difficult to get them to calm down, breathe, quit setting their shit toupees on fire.
... and a substantial part of the savings will be put toward restoring your health and reintegrating you into civilian life.
They also fall when their military becomes over-extended, just as when their food supply becomes over-extended and the same for their economies. Do we really want to be an empire in the first place?
America? Of course the citizens do. Of course the citizens need to sort themselves out first Then form a United Nations with one boss, America. Sure other nations have representation there, to take American instructions back to their nations Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I don't recall it not turning out well but I think Candy is probably referring to the Carter/Iran fiasco. I think that's a false choice however. You could cut our military budget in half and we would still have a larger military that everyone else by a long shot. A reduced military doesn't have to mean an under equipped or unprepared military. It just means a smaller, well equipped and prepared military that is focusing on fewer hotspots rather than having 800 bases around the world and being involved in every conflict and starting most of them. You can even have a "tough" Presidential leadership style and still have a reduced military. You don't have to have Carter and an ineffective military.
The year before Carter took office the US military budget was $94 billion. Over his term in office it rose to $176 billion.(an 87% increase) There was no lack of funding for the military industrial complex. It seems, most likely, that the Desert 1/Operation Eagle Claw operation was designed to fail in an attempt to embarrass the president. and, In that, (with the help of the mass media), it was a wild success. either that, or The military personnel involved in the planning of the operation were all fucking idiots. 50/50?
Pre-civil war, it was usually "These united states are" After the massive slaughter, it became "The United States is" The original concept of "free and independent states" was seriously curtailed