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Debunking The 'Gutting Of The Military' Storyline
Submitted by Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform blog,
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” –
General Smedley Butler – War is a Racket
I peruse a number of websites everyday as I look for interesting articles to post or reference in one of my articles. I agree with many conservative leaning websites when it comes to economic issues, but when it comes to war mongering and wave flagging, I go my own way. Any site that supports our empire building and excessive spending on war is not a conservative website. You can’t act in a fiscally responsible sustainable manner without dismantling our war machine and taking on the military industrial complex. You’re a faux fiscal conservative if you think we can continue to spend $800 billion per year on war with no financial implications. The entire Federal budget was $800 billion in 1983.
The latest storyline being propagandized by Mad Dog McCain and his band of merry neo-cons is that Obama’s latest defense budget will gut our military and make us susceptible to attack from all of our enemies. The mainstream media mouthpieces like Fox News repeat these boldfaced lies without seeking facts or real data. The power of the military industrial complex is dangerous to our citizens. They have bought off Republicans and Democrats in Congress and they control journalists who get paid to write scary articles about the horrific budget cuts and danger to our nation. It’s all lies. Spineless corrupt politicians like Bush and Obama do and say whatever is necessary to win the most votes. Statesmen like Dwight D. Eisenhower stood up to the military industrial complex and their bought off lackeys in Congress.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Statesmen are like bald eagles around here – almost extinct.
The United States spends more per year on war than the next thirteen countries combined. That imminent attack by the Iranian navy may be overblown. Our generals blather about the threat from China, that spends 18% of our budget, and threat from Russia, that spends 7% of our budget. The mainstream media articles and fear mongering drivel from our corrupt bought off politicians are nothing but propaganda designed to keep the billions flowing to the arms peddlers like Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, and the rest of the dealers of death. Politicians who have been bribed with decades of “political contributions” won’t even vote to get rid of weapons programs the military no longer wants.
It’s interesting how politicians are able to tell citizens they are only spending $520 billion per year on war when the true figure is $820 billion. Obama’s FY15 budget says we are going to spend $520 billion. He conveniently leaves out the cost of ongoing wars and the cost of past wars. We are still spending over $100 billion per year on our ongoing wars in Afghanistan, occupation in Iraq, and provocations in Libya and Syria. We are also providing military support of $50 billion to Egypt, Israel and dozens of other countries around the globe. Lastly, we spend over $150 billion per year on veterans of past wars. Our beloved leaders move that expense to another line item in the budget and pretend it is not a cost of war. The American people have short attention spans and once our wars of choice aren’t on the nightly news anymore they think it’s over. Tell that to the families of the 7,100 dead soldiers killed in our Middle East invasions, along with the 50,000 badly wounded servicemen, and the thousands more mentally damaged by the ordeal. The cost of war goes on forever. Government obfuscation does not fool anyone with critical thinking skills.
The dogs of war – McCain and Graham, along with hundreds of other war mongering pricks in Congress claim Obama is some pacifist attempting to dismantle our beloved military. These traitors of truth evidently can’t understand math or charts. Bush’s last war budget was $731 billion. The Iraq war has ceased and Obama is still spending $820 billion per year on war. Does it sound like the military is being gutted? Are we more in danger of being attacked by another country today than we were in 1999? That is the question that should be asked. They call it the DEFENSE budget because it is supposed to be used to defend us from attack, not to bully countries throughout the world and attack sovereign countries who are no threat to our security. Isn’t it convenient that the U.S. provoked overthrow of the democratically elected government of the Ukraine has initiated a new media created “Cold War”?
The country was sufficiently defended with a war budget of $333 billion in 1999. No one invaded us or threatened to invade. The Cold War was long over. The military industrial complex needed a 9/11 to revitalize their profits. The neo-con/military industrial complex created War on Terror has opened the door to never ending wars of choice around the world with no consent or approval from the people. War spending grew to $879 billion by 2011, a 164% increase in 13 years. Over this same time frame GDP grew by 74%. Does this sound like the military has been short changed? The fear mongering neo-cons and conservative websites are nothing but nattering nabobs of nonsense. Even the hint of slowing in spending on our empire building creates an urgency for a new evil enemy. Is it a coincidence that Vlad Putin has now emerged as an existential threat to our freedom and liberty according to the den of vipers in Congress, the military industrial complex, and the corporate media mouthpieces?
Even the dreaded sequester would have done nothing but slowed the rate of growth in war spending. You have to understand that a Federal government spending “cut” isn’t really a cut. It means the increase in spending you anticipated will be slightly lower. Of course, the one party system in Washington DC compromised and eliminated the sequester “cuts”. Those politicians need those “political contributions” to get re-elected in 2014. Defense spending will be far higher over the next decade, not including the inevitable wars of choice we are led into by our noble leaders. Putin must be stopped. Assad must be stopped. Iran must be stopped. China must be stopped. The world policeman must do his job and bankrupt the empire. War is highly profitable for peddlers of debt, corporate dealers of death, and the politicians getting bribed by Wall Street and the military industrial complex. The peasants who are sent off to die are nothing but cannon fodder for the power brokers of death, destruction and debt.
The war mongers will continue to use propaganda and misinformation to convince you we are in danger if the war budget is cut by 2%. The truth is that we need to cut the military by 50%, stop trying to operate a world empire, and withdrawal our troops from Germany, Japan, and the dozens of other countries around the globe. We need to stop handing billions of dollars we don’t have to Israel, Egypt and dozens of other countries so they can buy arms from our arms dealers. We are the cause of all the war and violence in this world. The job of our military is to protect our borders, not to police the world. Hubris, arrogance, and overreach, financed by central bank created debt, is how empires die.
“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.” – Ron Paul
Understand where they are spending your money:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_20XXUSbn_XXbs2n_3031_051
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The US government hates its own population for its (few remaining) freedoms.
I'd strongly discourage any young white straight man from joining the military today. Besides making your life a living hell in the name of "diversity", our military is dangerously over-extended around the world. In the 1930s, we cut our military budget to pay for socialism at home, and look what happened. If you enlist now, you're signing up for the next Bataan Death March.
There would be no reason to wish a Death March on a young lesbian Latina or a gay black youth either....it ain't only straight white enlistees that get used as cannon fodder.....
I was arguing with some gay folks about how it is that they were happy to be recognized as cannon fodder. I pointed out that I too thought that we all should be treated equal and that as such NONE of us should be sucked into the MIC.
And on top of that - the best military leaders have been purged by Obama and replaced with less competent military minds who agree with the new social agenda.
Fucking Party Pussy shit!
It's the same shit repeated every fucking time the administration changes.
And, really, are you blovating for more military action? You're measuring competence how? The entire fucking premise is wrong, but... no, Party Pussies play the game of it being about the "other side's" puppet...
What the military story line has done to Libya post Q-daffy.
Made it into a non state with regional clannic anarchy and no central state.
For those who love ANARCHY this is a perfect basket case to study :
Armed Militias Are Holding Libya Hostage - Business Insider
Land of the Gun and face of perfect "no mans land, grab as grab can", that will be ripe to be governed by a puppet government of a foreign Hegemonic regime. When the dystopia induced by anarchy will have disseminated total cave in.
No place for a patriot or a modern state.
If the third world has to choose between a despotic statist regime like in Venezuela and no regime like Libya, its an ideal world for Oligarchs, who play "divide and rule" to rake in the last unclaimed or tamed resources left on planet.
Your RM and our profits...and you stay gut hungry and mad as hornets. The important thing for us is to avoid you get a patriotic regime. 'Cos then our gravy train goes belly up.
Play on exported and drone managed anarchy.
Wrong.
What you are describing is government in the making, probably with external government help. Born in violence, survives in violence.
One or more of the militias/clans is going to end up as the government. A government supported by idiots like you - just as it happened in the past 5-10 thousand years.
riight and you support the status quo nirvanic anarchy; who is the bigger idiot?
As for saying that all history is about "idiocies" is a simplification that makes you a candidate to sit on St Peter's side, up in heaven.
You should go straight there and never set foot on mother earth. Cos for us humans the past is not about idiocies but about the stuff civilization is made off.
Admittedly most of the time its not an ideal world which is not surpring as we don't seem to deserve such an utopian state of affairs.
It it caused by the psychopaths that want government - like you.
It is the mindset that you and your ilk have, the desire to control others. It developed over millions of years in a tribal society to promote the survival of about 150 people and is not conducive to civilization and progress in the modern world.
Why are you possessed with the desire to force your beliefs on everyone? You are the instigator of wars, slavery, slaughter, theft and a seemingly endless display of tyranny and yet you think government brings civilization.
Keep your failed beliefs to yourself.
Arrogance, delusion or just plain mendacity. Fake Falak Pinhead is definitely one of the strangest fish around here.
Gonna have to disagree with you here (rare that I do).
Libya was a fabrication to begin with. Assuming it is as you suggest, a failed nation-state, its lifespan was remarkedly short
Now that, as you put it, is not a nation-state it's been so for HOW LONG? I'd have to say that you're being a bit quick to judge "success" and "failure."
Tribalism is pretty much the historical norm. Whether you or I like this it has no bearing on this fact. And, as the norm I'd have to say that, given that complex governments require more resources/energy and that is NOT what lies ahead in this world (shortages looming), that is where it will return.
A bit of Libya's history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya
(a nation state only since 1951; it lasted about as long as fiat currencies [which are another total fabrication])
I'd have to say that oligarchs rely on nation-states more than non-nation-states. Did you miss why the US invaded Afghanistan and installed a "government?" (it was to create control in order that business could be done- get pipelines done; something that was failing with tribalism)
This article describes a reality so foreign to the average American saturated with the belief that we are always the defenders agains aggression, supporting the underdog in their fight against oppression.
The reality is that American armed forces have been involved, almost continuously since 1900, in military conflicts. We have killed people all over the globe on a daily basis. And, everywhere our military goes our profit oriented economic system with hidden winners and visible losers follows.
Fox watching fellow serfs simply can't understand how America won the world hate lottery. But, live outside the US, be exposed to media other than the infotainment crap you see here and you will understand.
The leftist own the government and military expenditures - this is on them now.
The CNN watchers barely can spell their name let alone understand the world dynamics and how the left has destroyed more in 6 years than all of the past fifty.
Sad that so much of this is true. Sad that empires die this way. Even more sad that the US has passed the point of no return...
It's important to recognize the US has considerable and unusually challenging geographical barriers which make a direct attack by any means short of full-scale nuclear weapons an expensive and difficult mission for any potential adversary. Under all non-nuclear scenarios, strategy for a successful military campaign depends heavily on logistics. It's a very long way (by air or by sea) to cross a vast ocean as the first, non-trivial step to mount a credible threat of assault and follow up with sufficient and lasting occupation necessary to displace existing government authority.
The cost of readiness for defense (which is vastly smaller than cost of readiness for credible offense) should be roughly proportional to the foreseeable threats. Who will threaten us from nearby? Mexico? Canada? It is certainly true Russia could attack Alaska across the narrow Strait. But whether they could successfully occupy is an open question, and even if successful, such an occupation would drain enormous resources from a country having a relatively tiny military compared to the US. (Indeed, the military is tiny in every other country compared to ours.) Never mind the practical fact that occupation requires significant boots on the ground, which in turn presents a logistical limitation on how to deliver them across the water safely. And Alaska has an armed population spread over rough country. Russia would probably find it easier to attack Switzerland -- and nobody has yet been brave enough to undertake that task simply because of equally forbidding advantages to the defenders and their readiness to fight on their home turf.
The US military establishment today is simply too large. We are paying a fortune to maintain a standing army. But the greater danger is not the exhorbitant cost. It's the danger to a free people of constant meddling in affairs of other nations and making alliances which will necessarily suck us into war if any of our many "friends" come under existential threat of their government by another power not presently counted amongst our "friends". And NATO is a prime example of the kind of bear-baiting behavior which simply invites military conflict. The problem with an oversized military is that it conveys to our political leaders the implied necessity to use it for oversized deployment on "missions" declared vital to our national interests. When we loose (or simply abandon) those "just war" campaigns, it turns out in retrospect that their objectives were never really in our vital national interests -- but only on behalf of (often marginal) commercial interests of large companies whose offshore profits come under threat. Or came under threat precisely because no war profits were at hand.
Smedley Butler was right. The amazing thing is that despite the self-evident truth of the evil he described generations ago has only become an even greater threat to the actual vital interests of the nation to the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. It will not end until (like the Soviets) our soldiers are left afield to fend for themselves when our extended empire of hubris and political false alarms leads to economic collapse.
Great (and rich) nations are not defined by outsized military establishments (again consider Switzerland). They are defined by powerful economies adequately defended to assure maximum prosperity and liberty of the people and their markets. That, in turn, implies necessity for open and free trade relations with all nations willing to trade in return. How other countries mind their own local affairs is none of our business. An outsized, ever-vigilant military eager to interlope globally only assures vast resources must be steadily misdirected from the real economy to counter an unlimited supply of imagined boogymen, with the bizarre result that they may quickly be made real solely owing to our threat of overwhelming retaliation for some entirely imaginary injury of no vital interest to the US. Washington taught us that, as did the other Founders. We haven't merely forgotten. We've disregarded their advice in the belief that "this time is different" because we Americans are "exceptional". As history demonstrates from earliest known times, it's never different. Never.
An outsized, ever-vigilant military eager to interlope globally only assures vast resources must be steadily misdirected from the real economy.
Exactly. Waste 4% of GDP on a global empire for 70 years, and your country ends up resembling the Soviet Union a year before its collapse: military powerful on the outside, but hollowed out and poor on the inside.
Close down NATO today.
Are folks missing the point that the US military is protecting global trade? I'm not defending this position, just stating what it really does.
Even without "waste" we'd meet our demise, as it is impossible to have perpetual growth (add in the FACT that ALL empires collapse and you'll see how insignificant that 4% looks).
Well hell yeah. 500 million for 1 fighter jet, 450 of which is siphoned off to the unions, thus to the libtards.It's time to cut.
Sequester is a joke. The cuts should start in the ranks of the so called generals and admirals and progress down.
The dogface or squid should be the only ones still supported.
100k dogfaces or squids= 1 general, 1 admiral, 10-10 millon dollar planes and 50 ageis missle ships, and hundreds of humvees in all configurations cause they look functional.
Don't need no AF except as a branch of the Army because no AF ever took over or held enemy occupied land.
and NO MORE fucking wars that we don't go in TOTAL WAR using the Ghengus Kahn method, only survivors are children as tall as a humvee tire. All others released to their final reward.
"Don't need no AF except as a branch of the Army because no AF ever took over or held enemy occupied land."
Um... it's the Marines who TAKE ground, it's the Army that holds it. (the Navy takes the Marines around)
"and NO MORE fucking wars that we don't go in TOTAL WAR using the Ghengus Kahn method, only survivors are children as tall as a humvee tire. All others released to their final reward."
And WTF would we wish/need to embark on such?
ALL WARS ARE ABOUT RESOURCES. THIS is the ugly truth that is not discussed, as if it were we would come to realize that victories would one day cease and that there would be hell to pay.
Warmongers generally have never served...
The military industrial complex DID 9/11 to revitalize their profits.
There... fixed it for you Quinn!
The geo/political/financial illiteracy of the self-deluded Smokey(Jim)Quinn, and the willful ignorance of the supposedly highly educated bloviating classes, has never been more evident than when examining the concept of the official CIA 9/11 narrative and their aiding and abetting in treason and murder.
Once again you… FAIL!!!
The Litmus Test…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21pPpYw_axQ
When will Quinn address the Fourteen Year Old War and Terror which was declared against the people of the world on September 11, 2001.
Enough of the fancy bar charts and meaningless graphs already Quinn.
Get down to the real nitty-gritty and 9/11Truth or… STFU!
……………………………………..
An Eye Opener https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do6o57N_SVA#t=60We don't have a "defense" dept. See 911 for how well that worked out.
We have an Offense Dept.
....and they are extremely offensive
Don't volunteer - they shoot back - just a thought.
Rafterman FMJ : I cannot see why the DHS doesn't begin construction of concrete pillboxes at all strategic intersections, mountain passes, beaches, etc.
....ahem....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMn7ZD8Zruk
tldr.
my take on it, this Jim Quinn guy obviously hates the troops.
Bring the soldiers home and deploy 'em on the southern border. Two problems solved at once. If you want to solve a third, bigger problem, send another large contingent to DC to flush out all the treasonous actors that control that area
Military spending in reality will never be cut because too many politicians in Washington have defence related jobs in their didtricts.It's integrated into every level of the economy.Why do you think that America needs more wars more often?Debt expansion has to continue.
Prolly one of the most powerful and profound stories ever printed on ZH. It nails down the exact reason for the economic crash. Thank you for just telling the truth it like it is. The truth will save us all. The lies and dis/mis-information will kill us all. What would any rational person choose?
What is factual and what is the biggest stinkiest nasty hog in the room, is the truth that if America stopped spending all these billions of dollars on the war machine that is not defending the United States of America, but attacking every other nation in the world, it would save the economy and a boom would take place if all this useless spending on useless endless wars for profit was suddenly ended. Spend the billions rebuilding America, get rid of the communist/socialist/fascist/zionist puppets in govt, and stop sending any moar money to isreal, or any other country. Spend the money feeding America's homeless and hungry instead. It is the one way to save the world's economy, and it is so simple to do.
The blatant answer to the world's problems and America's crashing dollar is right here in this article. Will a hand full of evil hate filled psychopathic profiteers be allowed to continue to fool a nation of sheep until the sheep are all dead? There must begin now a campaign to call and rain down on the congress critters and senate toads the American people wants and desires to end these wars, and to STOP SPENDING BILLIONS OF DOLLARS ON WAR. Stop spending billions of wasted dollars on the defense of every other country's borders in the world, but our own! THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DO NOT SUPPORT THE PUPPETS OF WARMONGERING INC!
(switches channels)
On a very important side note, is there one person here today that can be a savior to help the Republic Broadcasting Network survive to continue to give us good truth? Please help by downloading the app, and donating any funds if you can. They need you all to dig deep so we can stop those who want to kill us all. Imagine just one million dollars being sent to RBN to insure that we will ALL have access to the truth every day, and no matter how dark things get, at least there will be a candle in the window of uncertain false flag waters ahead still to be a clarions call to all who care for their future. Donate now for the sakes of your children. The world will be freer if you donate now.
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"It nails down the exact reason for the economic crash."
No, the REASON is based on being a self-declared empire. The trajectory of empires is pretty predictable: military spending and other such is but a symptom/behavior. Can't pursue perpetual growth without incursions into other peoples' lands (for resources), and one needs ever-more larger military forces to follow this path.
After reading MG Butlers book, I felt a deep sense of regret and shame about my service. I was deceived into all sorts of despicable and heinous acts on behalf of the "country". Maybe thats whats wrong mentally with all the line vets. Even if they dont realize it yet, their conscience is screaming at them, there never was any real terror. There never were any WMD or "mushroom clouds". There is no Al Qaeda. The Mujahideen, Taliban are also lies. What would Americas countryside look like if someone landed here and started smashing us for some shit we never even knew happened? Seriously, in the mountains in between Khost and Waziristan, they thought we were Russians. They didnt even know what our flag was. Now consider these people mostly have no internet or real connection to global going ons. Theyve lived tribal warfare and paternal dominated warlord culture for what, 7500 years? Even longer? And here we come, 200 something years old ( I dont count the last 101 years really with the Fed and all ) thinking we can impose what we "believe collectively" because these ancient cultures are "doing it wrong". Cut the military overseas. End all war now. Close in, we do have real enemies, but theyre bigger and scarier than lightly armed muslim guerillas. Isolationism is a defensive strategy, and given our current internal stress and divide, rampant white collar criminality, economic malaise and rising powers looking to dipose our standard of living (petrodebt), we could use some fuggin defense. Lastly, Im sorry I wore our flag overseas in your names and became a low rent petty thug who did nothing but destroy and maim and intimidate and steal. Those arent the American peoples values or morale standard. Im ashamed and embarassed.
I saw on the newsstand today PEOPLE Magazine’s collectors’ edition –“ Mad For MILEY CYRUS, celebrating a beautiful REBEL.”
This is the latest insult to the America we once knew, a filthy pornographic image demonstrating that the media and the bankers will tell us who is a star and what America will be. This woman is pure filth. And not a rebel. But is the advance of a culture in decay.
Instead, you are the rebel. You have faced the truth and you are not alone; there are millions of us who stand with your standards.
And your revelations give hope to us all that this long nightmare of the use of America as a battering ram against the innocent peoples of the world for banker profit can be stopped.
Those who seized America’s once representative government through the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, not only seized economic control over Americans but have turned murder into a political weapon in their ultimate quest for world domination.
God help us! And thank you for your post.
"But is the advance of a culture in decay."
It's the cycle that ALL empires go through.
"God help us!"
God has NEVER spared an empire.
Hey, there were/are some lies told about Iraq, but the service men and women didn't tell them.
And it was a good thing, even with all the wasted lives and fortune, Hussein, his sons, and the members of his party were scumsucking lowlifes that raped, murdered, and used poison gas on their own people.
Y'all done gone. Thanks.
Where the fuck to start on dissecting your BS?
"there were/are some lies told about Iraq, but the service men and women didn't tell them."
Would that not include the Joint Chiefs of Staff? How about those who enabled the Jessica Lynch story? And the Pat Tillman "story?"
Saddam was supported by the US. Only when it was seen that he was going to nationalize the oil industry there did he become persona non gratia.
I'm sure you're proud as Madeline Albright was to declare that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children was "worth it."
Enjoy hell, for that's where you should end up...
I like what you wrote, but all of it misses the point, and that it was always about resources, as ALL wars are about resources. In the case of Afghanistan it was to push back Russia (which was the case when the Taliban were spawned as Al Qaeda- to push back the Soviets and to then infiltrate and much up their periphery [circle Russia to lock it out of the resource game]).
Nationalism is all about swallowing lies. TPTB's means of pushing propaganda are unparalleled today. I just hope that when it collapses, which it most assuredly will, such a propaganda machine is never seen again (warning also to watch out for Russia's and China's propaganda machines).
Hope that baby in Uncle Sam's gut in it's third trimester explodes something ugly...
The father's a son of a bitch and the mother both is and has been a whore for too long!
Forget about an abortion at this late stage...
It will be a stillborn for sure without any eyes, mouth and ears!!!
Has any ZeroHero mentioned new Constitution and reset? Much less how hard and long the process would be.
How much do the PIIGS spend on their military? Didn't Ukraine cut their military to the bone? Now they've borrowed billions more from the IMF.
ZeroHeroes want fantasy.
The Ukraine isn't an empire, the US is.
Empires don't allow themselves to be rolled over. Change is never pleasant.
Lastly, the system has inherent problems, with the biggest being that it's predicated on perpetual growth (which is what all other empires suffered from, and eventually succumed to [inability to continue to grow]).
"It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."
And lives don't matter.
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At least download the app. You can delete it or use it after the contest is over. Everyone who downloads the app has a chance to win 50,000 dollars. What if you were that lucky one?
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Stop trolling for contributions. And fuck the "app".
Don't kid yourselves, to run an effective military today is gonna be expensive no matter how you do it. And when you run humongous budgets because you have to, it's an unfortunate detail of human nature that a lot of it is going to be wasted.
Is the F-35 waaaay more expensive than makes any kind of sense? Yeah. Even Aviation Week is looking at the new Saab Viggen jet and saying, maybe cheaper is a better way to go.
But supporting a lot of high tech weaponry is a huge US tradition with a ton of benefits to the economy, just having these capabilities is more of a weapon than the weapons themselves. And there is a lot of new tech weaponry that should get done, we really can't cut way back right now. Gonna be seriously unfortunate if we do.
And bring back the Crusader, a very cost-effective weapon and I'm more than fine with the name.
In the immortal words of Dov Zakheim whispering in the ear of Don Rumsfeld September 10, 2001...
Audits? Who needs audits!
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)
A 50% cut??!! Are you crazy!!!!!???? Cut it by at LEAST 90% and get rid of this war machine. Cut the Federal Government by 90% as well. Tell congress that being a congressman is one term and there's NO PAY. Bring in a Constitutional Committee and review EVERY FRIGGIN LAW passed in the the last 40 years and if it's NOT Constitutional GET RID OF IT!! HANG ALL TRAITORS including the President and any past Presidents.
90%? Are you crazy? WTF stop there? 100%!
TPTB ain't going to roll over and allow 90% and a review of laws that empower them, let's be real here... It's the system (10% is still cancer).
I notice there is no chart with defense spending as a percent of GDP. Hmm...
Um, well... it's a rorschach, you can make out the ink blots however you wish...
I served 4 years in the USMC under Clinton, including a deployment to Somalia and a trip to Liberia to evacuate Americans and foreign nationals.
What I witnessed on Okinawa made my skin crawl. Dirtbag senior-enlisteds and officers just marking time and punching their time cards, trying desperately to spend as much time over there as humanly possible, so they could get closer to retirement without doing any actual work. The Corps was about 165,000 strong then.
The Marines should be cut by two-thirds,, same for the Army. Close the bases on Okinawa, including Kadena, and be done with it. Chalmers Johnson was right, Okinawa is a military colony for the U.S., and I'd venture to guess the neo-con types would love to have more military colonies across the world.
The armed forces have become too much of a jobs program for most on the uniform side, and too many folks are using it as merely yet another welfare program. Time to cut the personnel by at least one-half, and be done with it.
I was in a bit earlier (also USMC) and I can agree with you on this.
I miss Chalmers Johnson, he was one of a handful of folks "in the know" that I trusted.
Smedley Butler had the right call: use the US military ONLY to make the borders so tight that a gnat an squeeze in.
"Time to cut the personnel by at least one-half, and be done with it."
Sadly, I'm thinking that the MIC is salivating over this as it would mean they could have more money to toss at Lockheed/Boeing et al...
All empires die. Knowing this I don't get as worked up about it all as I once allowed myself to do...
"We are the cause of all violence and war in the world". What utterly bombastic bullshit. Jim Quinn is the cause of all hysterical and fucking clueless commentary.
ALL WARS are about resources.
US is largest per-capita consumer of resoruces. No surprise to see that it also maintains the largest military force.
To be fair, there is only so much violence to be had, and when it gets supressed (through oppression) it eventually breaks out. Military is only there to hold the oppressive side of things down in order to exploit markets. Eventually, however, there's not enough ability to continue to feed the growth necessary to continue and it implodes (inability to overcome someone else's military).
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-30/abdullah-sees-surprise-first-ro...
Abdullah Abdullah, who finished second in Afghanistan’s 2009 presidential election, is confident he can win enough ballots on April 5 to avoid a runoff and sign a deal “within a month” to keep U.S. troops in the country.
Gee, I wonder why he is so confident? </sarc>
And the puppet masters play on...
The budget itself is an important weapon, it terrifies would-be enemies, so theymake a little compromise with the big spenders and ask for "aid" which is often a significant part of many state's GDP. Sort of a comedy where the good guy is talked into farce by the bad guy. Dudley Doright takes it in the chops - again and again. And Congress cleans up.
My experience as part of the Navy was never satisfying, and retirement is a joke on those who thought they were getting something after 30 years of service. The facts are the PayOff comes after retirement when one charges what he can for work with defense contractors, News organizations and of course, being an expert consultant to the Pent and the Cong. The Stars are a license to rob the public until you die. Of course, the civil side of the war machine is its own story of sin and reward. It is the dance of history - never ending and seldom understood by the societies who shed the blood, pay for security and believe, oh yes, believe that they saved their time from the horrors of war, or occupation, or you name your causes.
Rome was about as bad as any state today, and we know about its storied decline and fall (Gibbons). Relax, it is true, as sure as anything we know in science, anthropology, history or fiction. Corruption is the nature of man. Ask yourself, you know who tolerates it all in each generation.