It's time to pare down U.S. military spending

[rogerbox]

@Dissonance

It wasn’t some people, somewhere. It was decision makers back in 2004 deciding to invade Iraq. One of the justifications given was to spread democracy throughout the Mid East, the virtue being that democracies (supposedly) don’t go to war with each other. The relevence is that you brought up the canard that democracies don’t go to war with each other.

It’s not a canard because the rule is generally true. However, even though it is generally true, it’s rather stupid and counter productive to bomb a country to bring democracy to decrease it’s likelyhood of being at war. It was a false justification for the Iraq war and the Bush regime knew it and it has nothing to do with anything I have said. In fact, it BACKS UP my point that being a democracy is more likely to protect you from wars against other democracies and that the USA is NOT a net positive for world peace considering we will go to war under false pretenses ala Iraq.

[bump]

@solosam

There are a great number of wars where people have said, “It’s not our problem, let them fight their own war,” and then had to live with the moral consequences of apathy while genocide unfolds.

There do seem to be a great number of “Damned if we do, damned if we don’t” situations in international politics and relations. Intervene in some 3rd world civil war, and we’re accused of meddling and being imperialist, but don’t intervene, and we’re accused of letting one side indiscriminately slaughter the other in a genocidal frenzy.

I can’t ever recall having heard of any UN or anyone else’s guidelines for identifying the point at which we(the US and other Western nations) should violate some other country’s internal affairs in the furtherance of human rights or stability or whatever.

[Kearsen]

@QuickSilver

I’m not looking to play the devil’s advocate here. I agree that military spending is higher than it should be and that means testing is a good way to reduce entitlement spending growth. I would love to see the money moved from the DoD and put into NIH or public schools (for example). But that isn’t what happens… Or does it?

Not that exactly but you see, people see that money and then they think, “man, we spent that before, we can again” (only this time on MY sacred cow)

You need to read that using the deep thoughts voice from SNL.

[Kearsen]

Ultimately I agree that spending needs to be brought in line. Military spending is one the left surely looks to as low hanging fruit, much like the right looks at entitlement spending.
Both will need to happen to make a decent dent in the deficit.

[Human_Action]

@Kearsen

Ultimately I agree that spending needs to be brought in line. Military spending is one the left surely looks to as low hanging fruit, much like the right looks at entitlement spending.
Both will need to happen to make a decent dent in the deficit.

I’m not on the left, nor are many critics of our standing military (see palecons for one such strain). I simply fail to see a benefit from our military that justifies the costs, both in terms of deficit spending, and allowing for needless military entanglements.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@RickJay

Who holds these accounts? Because if it’s the same party holding both accounts, it doesn’t make a whit of difference in terms of how much you’re in debt.

There is no requirement that the government borrow a penny in excess of what the various trust funds lend to it.

You can’t just ignore the debt instruments held by the social security trust fund and pretend that social security is being paid out of something other than the trust fund.