Because we’ve undertaken the role of the world’s police, to some extent. Even when the cut-and-run types get into power, they still mix it up with the Bosnia’s and Lybia’s, on humanitarian grounds (which was at least some of the justification behind the previous administration’s adventures.)
If we had no powerful military, then Taiwan would be a province of China by now, Iraq would likely own Kuwait, Lybia would have crushed their rebellion, etc.
I’m not saying that those missions are right or not, but that’s the ostensible reason we maintain the force we have.
As for having two nextgen fighters - they have two specific missions: the F-22 is an uber-stealthy plane for knocking out Chinese ground radars and air defense in advance of a main body attack. The F-35 is a compromise replacement for the F-15’s, which are falling apart in the sky and mostly only used by National Guard and Northcom, F-16’s, and early-model F-18’s. The F-35 (JSF) will theoretically save the US taxpayer money because it provides a common platform for the services to tweak as they need, plus there is beaucoup FMS opportunity, selling to the Brits, Indians, and other friends, instead of letting them buy Eurofighters.
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If there’s no reason for them to spend more, why isn’t the same true for us? What makes us different from the EU or Japan, that we need to spend so much money and they don’t?
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History. Japan lost in WWII and was demilitarized. Europe got hammered. The US chose, in the post war and cold war era to move into a primary role in confronting the Soviets. And in the post-Soviet era we chose to remain the strong arm of the west wrt the ability to project military force globally.
Whether it was the right thing to do in the past or the wrong one, or whether we should have ramped down our military greatly in the post-Soviet era is a different question. Eventually the US won’t be able to afford to maintain such a large and powerful military with the capabilities that we and the west take for granted. At that point either someone else (or several someones) will have to step up and take on the mantle, or The West™ will not be able to project military force on the global stage, or have a credible threat of such military force to protect all our collective interests overseas. Guess we’ll see what happens at that point.
Military budget, plus CIA budget, plus TSA budget = too damn much money.
Ike said guns or butter. It has been guns even when there is no threat. We could use some butter.
Did it ever occur to you that there was no threat BECAUSE we had the guns AND the butter? That they went hand in hand?
ETA: Also, did it ever occur to you that the 50’s couldn’t last forever? I know it was your golden time, but it wasn’t something that could or would last indefinitely.
Here is a recent thread I started, titled “US military bases in other nations: worth the cost?”
From the OP of that thread:
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“The military of the United States is deployed in more than 150[1] countries around the world, with more than 369,000 of its 1,580,255[2] active-duty personnel serving outside the United States and its territories.”
I say overseas deployments should be cut back, especially in Iraq, Afghanistan and Europe. Europe can go take a dry dive off of a tall building for all I care. Europe needs to pay its own defense costs. We are just putting off the inevitable by remaining in Iraq. The result in Iraq will be the same if the US leaves now or in ten years. I would favor leaving a strong mobile strike capability in Afghanistan.
The US had Very large military bases in the Philippines until 1991. They were closed at the insistence of the Phillipines legislature. Good on them! WTF is wrong with Europe? Why don’t they ask the US to leave? Maybe it’s because they are getting something for free.
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The US could make lots of money selling arms if we and cut back on being the enforcers for Western Civilization.
Guns and Butter | Schreibe's Blog You would argue wrongly. According to Ike
Every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the common sense a theft from those whon hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Any nation that pours its treasury into armaments is spending the sweat of its workers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children.
I don’t post here too much, but. I can make a nice Biased case.
I’m a defense contractor. I make stuff that kills people, a little bit direct, most of it subcontracted. It’s just 2 of us doing most of it, we have a cleaning guy 4 hours a week and a sales lady 5-10 hours a week. Classic American small business.
First off, with military spending, you are actually paying somebody to do something. 2 years of unemployment is just paying somebody to do nothing. Welfare is paying somebody to do nothing. Food stamps is paying somebody to do nothing.
The technology that comes out of the DoD and NASA is insane. In my opinion its what has kept the US on top for as long as its been there. Its going away, but…
I’ll even toss in an example. 90+% of what we do here is for the DoD. Keeps us on our game. Some of that 10-% is tooling that goes to other countries. Apparently our technological advantage lets us make tooling to make products, the tooling lands in China and Mexico.
The tools we make let them make products they ship back here. Apparently they can’t make the tools to make the products.
I’d say pretty close to every dollar spent from the DoD ends up right here in the US. I know there are exceptions, like Haliburton. I’m in the US, 95% of of my machines were made in the US. A majority of my cutting tools were made in the US (Tungsten from China). Well over 50% of my raw materials are made here.
I know how fricken hard I work for that government money, they are getting their money’s worth.
As for those $2000 wrenches, you can’t buy those at Sears. I’m just waiting for the day I get to make a toilet seat.
Probably true, but misleading. The dollars may stay in the US, but the wealth doesn’t. When you spend a bunch of money to make a bomb and then blow that bomb up, you’re destroying wealth, no matter where you blow it up. And if you’re blowing up that bomb to destroy something else (which is, after all, what most bombs are used for), it just gets even worse. Yeah, with unemployment benefits, you’re paying someone to do nothing, but doing nothing is at least better than doing a negative amount.
While your language is very poetic, your argument is ridiculous. To follow that statement to its conclusion, the US should maintain no military whatsoever; after all, it’s a ‘theft’ from domestic usage. :rolleyes:
Unless you’re just mocking Ike, in which case, I’m whooshed.
I hear this a lot as a reason why it is important to keep spending on the military. Instead, I think should be a lesson for us all about letting the spending get out of control.
Something to consider - you’re putting a big focus on cutting $300 billion or so from the military budget - Do you realize that by the middle of the decade the interest on the national debt will be about $500 billion dollars? And that this year alone, the government will be adding 1.5 trillion to the debt, which will incur a minimum of a permanent $45 billion dollars per year in debt servicing costs?
The military budget needs to be cut, but so do a whole bunch of other programs. The U.S. could completely eliminate the military budget and it would still be in deep fiscal trouble.
Well, the main way to cut that is not be in a recession. The CBO projections project that the deficit will go from 1.4 trillion to 700 billion over the next 3 years, not out of any specific cuts but because revenues will rebound as the economy recovers. If the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire, the outlook is even better (down to 400 billion).
But as for balancing what remains, Defense is a natural place to look. Its the biggest part of discretionary spending, the biggest part of the budget that doesn’t have a dedicated tax to pay for it, and its fairly debatable whether having such a large budget actually accomplishes anything. Say what you will about Medicaid, I don’t think anyone argues that it does not, in fact, provide health insurance for the poor.
Well, prepare to be disappointed. GDP numbers have fallen significantly below CBO projections already. I believe 700 billion was CBO’s prediction for this year - two years ago.
In any event, if the deficit comes down it’s only for a short time, and then the entitlement shortfall starts to balloon it up again.
And good luck with the government allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. Not even Obama wants to expire the cuts given to the middle class. And next year is an election year. I don’t see it happening.
Oh, don’t forget the Medicare ‘doc fix’ that was baked into the CBO projections. That’s going to be kicked down the road too.
Those are Ike’s words. He also warned us about the Military/Industrial complex. He was telling you as an insider, a top leader.
Why do you think it is valid to say it distills down to all or nothing? An enormous military or none at all. You are missing a huge space in between.
Ike was in charge of a huge part of the military and could see how easily it devours our wealth while enriching the contractors.
You can not spend the money twice. It you bury billions and more in the military, that is less for peaceful uses. That is less for schools and infrastructure. That is less for research.
You should be aware our infrastructure is crumbling. We have to fix it. We built bridges to last 50 years. The average bridge is 43 now. Time is running out.
Why is it all or nothing? Please, Gonzo, please re-read your poetic posting.
“Every” … “Theft” …
And I’d argue that we don’t have ‘an enormous’ military, at least not for the missions we’ve called upon it to do. If anything, it’s too small, as OPTEMPO can’t keep up with this.
The headband-and-tiedye crowd would say, “why are we doing all these (humanitarian) missions in the first place”? And I’d say, hey, your boy who got elected is the one calling the shots now. Stop voting for him.
If you build a huge military, you will use it. If it wasn’t so easy to enter wars, we might not do it so often.
Iraq was the product of Bush’s team. They were a group of military “experts” who never were in the service.But they sure loved it. They declared themselves experts and acted like it.
I suppose they were after privatizing the military . They were libertarians who proved what a stupid idea by doing it . Nine billion dollars went missing in the beginning of the war. Blackwater , Haliburton and other companies made billions in no bid contracts. What a debacle.
Certainly the downturn has lasted longer then people were predicting, but that emphisizes my point. Most of the current deficits are due to the poor economy, they aren’t the result of any particular program, defense or otherwise. Compared to the size of current deficits the Defense budget is small, but compared to the deficits that aren’t due to the Recession, the Defense budget is large, and the OP’s proposed cut would make a large difference.
Entitlement shortfalls will be a problem, but your post was current deficits. Entitlements aren’t a major contributer to the current deficit. Certainly when the short and mid-term budgets are balanced, we’ll still need to make changes to entitlements to balance the long-term budgets. But also hopefully the ACA will be successful in holding down cost-growth in the same window, so this will be easier to do.
Well, thats why I gave numbers both with and without. I’m actually semi-optimistic the (full) Bush tax cuts will sunset though, if for no other reason then Congress seems unlikely to be able to agree on anything that close to an election, and sunsetting is the default outcome.
Thats probably true, though the cost is something like 25 billion/yr, so not so large as the other things we’re discussing.
Those words aren’t gonzomax’s - they’re from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Cross of Iron speech in 1953. Nitpicking the words of a general and president who’s been dead for 40 years evades the point, in addition to the fact that speeches typically sacrifice pedantic accuracy for rhetorical flourish. I don’t think anyone can take seriously the notion that Eisenhower actually meant there should be zero military, but we all (whether you agree or disagree with him) know that his point was that the U.S. built up too much of one.