People that would cut military spending need to ask themselves this

No other country on Earth has the obligations or far flung interests of the United States or has 20 million citizens overseas at any one time.

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Unfortunately, in our country those same ignorant people's vote counts the same as mine.

 

This is not a reason to spend more on our military than the next ten countries combined. Using that argument we could argue for 20 CBG's. There would be no end to it.

 

Unfortunate that they possess a never-ending capacity to talk out their asses.

 

Was the US at war with Grenada?

 

The US has only the interests abroad it agrees to. We do not run the planet. Close at least half the bases around the world, decommission half the CBG's and bring our troops home. Increase the reserves which are far cheaper than active duty and we could eliminate our national debt in a decade.

 

If we don't have a hundred unit squadron of gold-plated, football field-sized, atomic-powered bombers, that cost $500 Billion a piece.....


how are we going to defeat the terr'urrrists????????

 

Personally, Vegas I don't advocate unlimited spending on the U.S. military or unlimited amounts of military hardware to deploy.

Personally I would prefer 13 carriers with one of those permanently assigned to the vital training role. The remaining 12 would enable you to have four deployed overseas at any one time with the capability of deploying a total of four more within about two weeks of a conflict breaking out. That would give the U.S. enough to cover projected peace time contingencies and be ready for most conceivable worst case war scenarios.

 

And I would prefer four off our shores and we start telling people they need to defend themselves.

 

The cost of all the "wars" fought by the US since 1945 has been very high. The benefits minimal if any at all.

"Good" does not seem to have been a real priority.

 

Good plan. Just make sure the nuclear deterrent is credible.

 

The carrier groups have become very big targets. They are too vulnerable. Especially in the Persian Gulf and anywhere near China and N. Korea.

 

Meaningless because the U.S. cannot use its nuclear weapons except in response to a nuclear attack.

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And what if they will not defend themselves?

 

What if they abandon all military capability and say we are just going to depend on the US to protect us? (Costa Rica did this a long time ago). At what point do we say it is YOUR responsibility to protect yourself?

 

A nuclear deterrent is meaningless unless it is credible. It is only credible when their is certainty that a massive counter strike will be delivered. Of course, that is now far from certain.

Ditto the carriers. If they will not be defended and a devastating counter attack will not be launched if they are attacked they would serve better as scrap.

 

The further the world gets away from Nagasaki (now 71 years ago) and from the U.S. even conducting a nuclear test (now 25 years ago) the credibility of nuclear deterrence continues to fade no matter what we do.

 

There is so much that could be cut from the military without reducing what you mentioned.

There are no great threats to our security today, from a nation state that justifies the size and war budget. We were supposed to see peace dividends after the end of the cold war, when that great war was ended. We have remained on a footing as if we were at war with the world, when that has not been the case. In fact, the only wars we spend trillions on, are the ones we start, for various reasons, mostly involving looking after the profit interests of our elites.

We have been at war with someone my entire life, if you include the war on drugs. 70 years of perpetual war for perpetual peace, and the only time we have been attacked was by a group of radical muslims who flew planes into buildings but do not have the ability to attack America with their military.

Our war spending is that of a world's police force, which is not what we should be doing, as our infrastructure gets a D rating and needs to be modernized. And yet, we would rather spend money on starting wars and killing people, in the interest of our oligarchs.

So where is this great threat that will attack America with their military that justifies this obscene degree of war spending?

 

You are wrong.

During the 1990s, U.S. military spending was basically frozen in place yielding an effective after inflation cut of 20-30%.

Or hundreds of billions during the 90s.

How else do you think we ended up with federal budget surpluses for four years? That was one of the three major factors.

The U.S. got its peace dividend.

 

It is not our job to protect the world.

 

so our current military cannot even defeat isis. Do you think upgrading our aircraft or adding 5 new carriers will change this? or maybe the problem lies in tying our soldiers hands behind thier backs?

 

Let me fix that for you:

Our military, as currently led, chooses to not defeat ISIS.

There you go.

 

that was my point wit hthe rest of my post ;__;

 

To paraphrase Muhammad Ali....no one is ISIS ever messed with me.

 

One of the current problems with military budget is how much is spent on maintain its sunk capital costs in foreign bases and continuing contracts that modern military strategies and technologies have rendered unnecessary. Another huge problem is the graft and corruption in the weapons development and acquisition programs, not to mention the congressionally mandated acquisition of weapons systems that are not necessary other than to keep some constituency factories open.

for some reason the patriotic right seems to equate military strength with the amount of $$$ in the budget, and not in how those $$$ are spent. I find it rather amusing that to some there isn't enough money for adequate defense but more than enough to hire virtual armies of mercenaries... oh sorry "contractors".

Long and short of it, the debate shouldn't be about the amount of money, it should be about why and how the money is to be spent.

 

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4750106488001/iran-mocks-captured-us-sailors-at-parade/?#sp=show-clips

lol our military sux

 

Then we had better conduct a test.