Uh, England, France, China, and Russia already defend their interest with their military forces. Ask any Chechan rebel.
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I’m sure the US would love to cooperate with our allies in the fight against terrorism. That doesn’t mean the United States is going to agree with everyone all the time though.
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US policy shouldn’t be dictated by what the rest of the world thinks.
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The UN finally got off their asses and made Saddam accept inspection teams. They would have continued to sit on their hands unless the United States started rattling the sabres.
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I wasn’t aware that we were starting a war because of the price of oil. Oh wait, I forgot that everything the United States does is in the interest of oil. :rolleyes:
Marc
Well, let’s think about who our potential enemies are:
North Korea
China
Iraq
Iran
Other ‘rogue’ states and terrorist groups
Now you have to remember that the majority of military spending is not on building weapons and blowing things up but taking care of its personnel. Members of the United States Armed Forces are among the best paid and well-cared for in the world. Besides, America is among the richest countries in the world, and these military personnel have to be paid competitively. Our enemies, as listed above, are not exactly governments that are known for taking care of their people and being the most humanitarian in the world. That, in large part, is why we are forced to spend so much.:smack:
You are leaving something out of a quote. Then answering to apart of a quote with a false statement. And naturally You do not answer the question.
Clearly enogh, You do not read the thread, just parts of it, othervise You would have seen what, and which posters, I am referring at in the discussion “of the gas-pumps.”
Does this sort of statement not disgust anybody else? Am I alone here in being appalled by the ignorance and callous indifference inherent in this kind of statement?
I mean, how evil do you have to be to call upholding a murderous sanctions regime that has killed more than 500,000 children “sitting on their hands”?
We are not forced to spend so much. It is a public policy decision. We would be quite immune from attack by foreign armies with a military budget of $10 billion and a different foreign policy.
This is sort of the whole point of the thread. The U.S. military is NOT used to defend America, but rather to enforce the will of capital.
And Saddam killing his own people is perfectly OK with you, apparently, since me and my band of bloodthirsty, murderous, unthinking military warmongers are pure evil for wanting to go after Saddam.
Hell, most of the people in my unit are disappointed that they can’t go and get a piece just yet.
People who join the military are people just like you, Chump. We just have a little more discipline, a little more pride, and much more comraderie (in general) than your average Joe. And we do it for people like you, believe it or not.
The first article of the Code of Conduct says this:
Our going over into Iraq is first and foremost to defend our way of life. Getting rid of Saddam eliminates a major threat to our country and, yes, keeps the oil flowing, which is kinda important, unless you like walking endless miles in the dark. But in one’s zeal to label people warmongers and murderers, one tends to overlook things like this.
I just wanted to remind you that there is a reason why military people hang it out every day. Just in case you care. In fact, you should actually show some friggin’ gratitude. But that would be asking a lot.
Your warmongering leaders couldn’t care less how many people Saddam has killed. Here this can actually be checked. Many of the exact same people who are leading the call for war were good friends with Saddam in the 1980’s, when he committed his worst atrocities. And, the support continued until Saddam committed the one unpardonable crime: disobedience.
Actually, I have always been opposed to Saddam, even when he was a U.S. ally. I still am. I just don’t think that a U.S. invasion of Iraq is going to do any good, and in fact will create vastly more misery for millions of people.
Bullshit. I utterly repudiate the notion that anything the U.S. military does is done for me or the average American. You are nothing but a global rent-a-cop for multi-national corporations. You don’t serve the people of America, but Wall Street. I feel a mixture of pity and contempt for the members of the U.S. military. On the one hand, you have been lied to and brainwashed about what your true mission is. You will kill and die for a lie, to protect the power of the powerful.
Complete nonsense. But, it does show how brainwashed people can be in order to believe that a third world country devastated by two wars and ten years of murderous economic sanctions can threaten the most powerful state in the world. Alas, there is nothing like military training to produce blind, unthinking automotons.
It is not “our way of life” that is being “defended.” How incredible it is that anyone can believe that an invasion equals defense.
Do me a favor and don’t do me any favors. Don’t hang it out for me.
Most of all, don’t pretend that you and the other mercenaries are doing anything other than protecting the interests of the powerful. At least have the decency to be honest about it, at the minimum, don’t lie to yourself. If you really want my respect, you will stand for principle and refuse to follow unlawful orders. Hiding behind a gun takes no courage, but standing for principle does. The question is whether or not you have any principles.
What exactly did Iraq do with the oil they sold while under the sanctions? They were suppose to use that oil for medical supplies, food, and other needs for the people. Is that what it was used for?
I’m sorry, Chumpsky, but you seem to have it all wrong. Yea we might have been allies with Iraq during their war with Iran, but then Saddam did something on August 2, 1990. He invaded one of HIS allies from the same war with Iran, a country that had no chance of defending itself. It was the duty of the United States, a major (to say the least) constituent of the United Nations, to uphold democracy and free the Kuwaitis. That they did with the help of a multi-national coalition. The United States and Iraq were now no longer allies, and Saddam was boasting and building his weapons of mass destruction program. You see, when two countries aren’t allies and one is run by a dictator that has had a record of using chemical and biological weapons and is actively trying to obtain nuclear ones, that poses a threat to the United States.
Yes, invasion can be a means of defense. A preeminent strike in prevention of an attack by Saddam. Or a historic example, such as D-Day. We were invading France in defense of everywhere else in Europe that had not been conquered by the Nazis, as well as our way of life.
Lastly, yea Rumsfeld shook hands with Saddam. And I’m sure there are plenty of photos of Churchill and Stalin or Clinton and Arafat. So what? If we were truly to be on the defensive one day, Chumpsky, with another nation invading us, would you rather have inexperienced and poorly motivated recruitees fighting for our freedom, or highly motivated, dedicated, elite soldiers fighting? You might say that will never happen again. Um, and I believe World War I was supposed to be the “War to end all wars.” Draw your own conclusions.
I believe that I may speak for Airman Doors and myself in saying that your supposed ‘hatred’ for our policy and in particular our fighting soldiers is shameful, pitiful, and outright disgusting. If you don’t like the people that are willing to give their life for you, I ask you to get out. LEAVE. Move to Iraq or a Hippie commune in Greenland.
Actually, rougy, that’s a pretty elementary fact of economics. A dollar turns over several times after its earner spends it.
Many people who work at factories like Boeing and at defense establishments make quite good wages on the whole. As for “I can’t see your point of view”, I live about 15 miles north of Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center military base in Indiana. If this base shuts down, 4 counties would immediately be plunged into a depression and several others would have people who would be hurtin’.
I know people at Crane (my landlady is one) who make wages that are well above the average for this rural area. These people don’t hoard that money; they spend it at the grocery stores, the taverns, the liquor stores, the pharmacies, the hardware stores, the restaurants, the car dealerships, etc. They also make donations that enable the churches to help some of the poor and they make the donations that enable the summer theatre near me to stay open. They pay the taxes, far more taxes than wage slaves like myself, that enable our county government and schools to function.
I really hate to clue you in, rougy, but not every factory is Wallyworld.
As for me defending the powerful, that is a laugh. I suspect that you and many other leftists would shudder at horror were you asked to live on my salary. However, I believe in the facts, as every Doper should, and you & Chumpsky have presented little factual information to support your hysterical screeds.
I notice that the great Chumpsky still has not responded to my question about whether he favors the use of nukes to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Rougy actually meant the USA’s total budget (a laughably wrong number, too) was 736 billion.
Since we quite openly made a public allowance for Saddam to sell resources and other things to support his economy and prevent system collapse in Iraq, and the man himself deliberately withheld from excercising the option (apparently to try and gain sympathy), not we are not imposing “murderous sanction”. Saddam is murder “his” own people, and using this as an excuse.
Do you even try to look at situations honestly?
Asode from which, you should try and do to math on your “500,00” children number. Apparently, not only do our sanctions kill children, but they manufacture them as well.
Given the average life expectancy in Iraq, those 500K kiddy deaths weight it such that most people who survive childhoos now live 125 years or so! Must be those magical “sanctions” again!
Those 500K kiddy deaths is given by Madeline Albright. She made the claim.
Anyhow, the number is shown to be lower, but that is another story.
The lower numbers are given in the Slate-magazine if I remember right.
I have seen this argument made a few times on these boards - that the U.S. military budget is 40-50% of the U.S. budget, because only “discretionary” spending counts as part of the budget. I think it’s time for a lesson on the differences between “discretionary” and “non-discretionary” spending by the U.S. government.
The term “discretionary” is a misnomer. All spending by the U.S. government is discretionary - the U.S. has no obligation to spend a penny on anything (except for, arguably, the salary and physical plant of the U.S. Supreme Court and the President’s office. Nothing else.) What is deemed “discretionary” spending is simply that spending which is decided on a year to year basis. “Non-discretionary” spending is that spending which is spent each year according to pre-determined formulae.
But those formulae may be changed at any time by the U.S. Congress. For political reasons it won’t, but Congress could completely eliminate Medicare, welfare, Social Security, veterans’ benefits, and all other “non-discretionary” spending tomorrow. There is no legal impediment to doing so. Congress could also change the formulae to significantly decrease “non-discretionary” spending - or, for that matter, greatly increase it.
So one cannot simply eliminate non-discretionary spending from consideration when trying to determine the percentage of the U.S. budget is spent on military matters. Or one could - at the cost of their own credibility.
Fair enough. However, if your outrage is focused on truly outrageous sums of money spent ‘uselessly,’ why are you complaining about military spending when the real villian is tourism? Worldwide, almost four times as much GDP is wasted on such things as trips to the Grand Canyon as is wasted on the military - and, while I haven’t located U.S.-specific figures yet, I’d wager that the U.S. GDP percentage spending on tourism is higher than the world average.
To paraphrase Ike: “Every souvenir T-shirt that is made, every cruiseship launched, every paint-gun fired signifies in a final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”
And, of course, the CEOs of Hyatt and the like make millions, too.
Let’s face it. There is hell of a lot of money spent on wasteful things, from tourism to movie tickets to SUVs, that, individually or in the aggregate, dwarf U.S. military spending. If the issue is that the money spent on the military could be better used to help the poor, there are considerably richer sources of that money, and it would make more sense to hit those richer sources first.
All oil sold by Iraq through the “oil for food program” is administered by a U.N. agency (read U.S. and U.K.) through an office in New York. Iraq has no say over what is done with the proceeds. This same agency restricts what can go into Iraq, and they restrict such things as medical supplies and other necessities such as water treatment supplies, and also pencils, for fear that the Iraqis will build a giant pencil of mass destruction.
While it is convenient to blame official enemies for all of our crimes, it is really quite despicable. What we have done in Iraq is one of the worst crimes against humanity in history.
Recall that Iraq was designated an “emerging first world country” at the beginning of the 1990’s. They had an elaborate social system, with free health care for all, free education for all, women included, up to the Ph.D. level, and a very generous welfare program. You see, Saddam’s major crime was that he became an economic nationalist. The murders and tortures didn’t bother the west at all. However, when he started investing the profit from oil in his country, instead of funneling them to the west, like the other dictatorships in the region do, he became an enemy that had to be destroyed.
Iraq had the highest standard of living in the Middle East in 1990. Now it is a poverty-stricken third world country. This is, of course, the whole point. U.S. foreign policy is very consistent in that it seeks to prevent countries from following an independent path of development.
It might soothe your conscience to blame the huge human catastrophe we have created in Iraq, but it really doesn’t say much for your character.
