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Do we really need a trillion dollar a year military

Give me the current total


Do you even know?

The United States maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories despite recently closing hundreds of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, but China so far has only one base in Djibouti.
That's irrelevant, they have built islands in the Sea of China, and are expanding their port agreements in the region to support their expanding blue water navy. Try learning to ask the right questions, instead of you Democratic Underground talking points sent to you each morning.
 
That's irrelevant, they have built islands in the Sea of China, and are expanding their port agreements in the region to support their expanding blue water navy. Try learning to ask the right questions, instead of you Democratic Underground talking points sent to you each morning.
So you dont know? You dont know they have far less that 1% of what we have in overseas bases.


Guess how many carrier groups they have?
 
to defeat the russians?

Seems all they have is their nuclear weapons. The entire western world wants no part of a nuclear exchange with Russia.

so is all this conventional military really kind of unnecessary?

The bloated military budget isn't about defending anyone, it's about allocating resources away from the American people. There is bipartisan support to give everything to defense contractors, then when a social program comes up, shrug and say, 'Sorry, we already spent the money.'
 
I mean....that IS their mission. It's the US military and it's job is to protect the US. It was never supposed to be Team Ameica World Police. It's been vastly misappropriated and often times incoherent and self-destructive.
Who else is willing to step up? No one that I can see, and I'll guarantee that China is not waiting around for anyone else either. I understand we could more efficiently appropriate the budget, but withdrawing back to our shoreline, is naïve to say the least, and many would like. And not a single elected official would reduce our budget one penny , and return money to the public.
 
So you dont know? You dont know they have far less that 1% of what we have in overseas bases.


Guess how many carrier groups they have?
And so now you want to withdraw us from everywhere. Insanity!
 
And so now you want to withdraw us from everywhere. Insanity!
Odd that you wouk6d say that because I didn't



So you want to triple the size of the military?


Is this the game you want to play now?
 
Who else is willing to step up? No one that I can see, and I'll guarantee that China is not waiting around for anyone else either. I understand we could more efficiently appropriate the budget, but withdrawing back to our shoreline, is naïve to say the least, and many would like. And not a single elected official would reduce our budget one penny , and return money to the public.
I don't particularly care if other people step up or not. If other countries want to kill each other then they can go for it.
 
Who else is willing to step up? No one that I can see, and I'll guarantee that China is not waiting around for anyone else either. I understand we could more efficiently appropriate the budget, but withdrawing back to our shoreline, is naïve to say the least, and many would like. And not a single elected official would reduce our budget one penny , and return money to the public.
Dont care. If china is a problem for the world then they can step up or not
 
That's irrelevant, they have built islands in the Sea of China, and are expanding their port agreements in the region to support their expanding blue water navy. Try learning to ask the right questions, instead of you Democratic Underground talking points sent to you each morning.
:mad:
 
I mean....that IS their mission. It's the US military and it's job is to protect the US. It was never supposed to be Team Ameica World Police. It's been vastly misappropriated and often times incoherent and self-destructive.

Nope, their mission is whatever congress decides to fund, which includes having bases and troops stationed all over the planet. Your assertion of what it is supposed to be means absolutely nothing.

Education is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution as being a federal government power, yet now has a cabinet level department with an annual budget of over $70B.
 
Nope, their mission is whatever congress decides to fund, which includes having bases and troops stationed all over the planet. Your assertion of what it is supposed to be means absolutely nothing.
That's not a healthy POV to have, that opens the door to all kinds of abuse.
Education is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution as being a federal government power, yet now has a cabinet level department with an annual budget of over $70B.
You're making my case for me here?
 
That's not a healthy POV to have, that opens the door to all kinds of abuse.

You're making my case for me here?

Yes, if something deemed ‘important’ can be loosely tied to the (general) federal powers of revenue (taxation?), spending (commerce?) or to promote the general welfare (anything else?) then it can become a (new) federal government power.

National defense is clearly a federal government power, thus congress can use that fact to fund whatever DoD ‘missions’ they wish using that power.
 
to defeat the russians?

Seems all they have is their nuclear weapons. The entire western world wants no part of a nuclear exchange with Russia.

so is all this conventional military really kind of unnecessary?
The problem with this topic is that it's a complicated one, made of many different topics, weapon systems, views of policies, but it's heard to remember one public discussion of it ever that dealt with much of any of that instead just treating it all as one thing, the two sides of the argument being you either want to make America defenseless or you want to spend unlimited amounts.

For example. One topic is foreign bases, but even that topic is made of many topics. The issues with a base in Okinawa are not the same as for a base in Poland. There are issues with troop compensation and benefits, VETERAN benefits - think of all the VA controversies. Issues with conventional responses versus nuclear, issues with what we should do on chemical and biological weapons to prepare for risks from others.

Especially important are systemic issues with the Pentagon, where military companies with many billions of dollars at stake have aggressively set things up to manipulate the government to serve them and not the people - setting up jobs in every state and every key district and as many as possible, jobs that can be used as a political threat if the Congress person doesn't vote how the companies want, and essentially a takeover of the Pentagon where senior officers who decide on weapon system purchase recommendations are co-opted, themselves with the 'revolving door' where after 'good service' for the companies they can retire to become a well-paid employee of a company, but where the officials protect that system by ensuring anyone promoted to senior positions is 'on the team' and will 'play ball' with the system rather than challenge it - I suspect.

I could tell a first-hand story of an example of seeing this happen, where there was a military project run by an officer for years, which was 'really' operationally run by contractors for their benefit - and after some years of this the officer in charge retired from the military, I heard, to work for that contractor. I saw a case firsthand where profits were protected in this project.

My point is, there are a thousand specific to discuss - how is it decided how many ships we need versus how many aircraft versus how many other systems and weapons, for which parts of the world, where do things like being prepared to be able to give Ukraine many weapons quickly fit in? It's an enormous topic, but only gets discussed in 'you want the US to be conquered' or you don't.

My short answer is, yes, we greatly overspend.

But when there are cuts - if there were, hypothetically - where do you think they'd come from in this corrupted system where spending priorities are set by the companies? Probably in ways to cause the most political damage to those calling for cuts. Let's cut spending on the troops, angering the public to create a backlash against the cuts... let's cut a popular system that the public is angered by and makes the public feel unsafe.
 
But you have no idea how to do it.



Wrong. Progressives would happily do that.

I doubt that your definition of returning money to the public (spend it in other ways by the federal government?) matches that poster’s intended meaning (reduce federal taxation?).
 
I mean....that IS their mission. It's the US military and it's job is to protect the US. It was never supposed to be Team Ameica World Police. It's been vastly misappropriated and often times incoherent and self-destructive.

Well when Russia invaded Ukraine as you can see our Allies have stepped up to the plate. We don't need to be the world's policeman if the free world will continue to step to the plate.

Seems to me our military has been used to protect/expand corporate interest more than protecting America. I think in the past it was called imperialism.

Reality is right thinking people have an overactive fear response. That fear response makes them susceptible to believing we need a military larger than all the rest of the world's combined.

We can't go to war directly with China or Russia and they can't with us. We have seen that with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. No country in the world wants to provoke a world ending nuclear exchange. So what is the point?
 
Well when Russia invaded Ukraine as you can see our Allies have stepped up to the plate. We don't need to be the world's policeman if the free world will continue to step to the plate.

This could have gone very wrong. Bickering over 'you didn't give as much as I did', a country to who decides to give nothing for domestic political reasons (think 'America first') and angers others, bickering over who gives what, on and on.

Seems to me our military has been used to protect/expand corporate interest more than protecting America. I think in the past it was called imperialism.

Mandatory mention of Smedley Butler.

Reality is right thinking people have an overactive fear response. That fear response makes them susceptible to believing we need a military larger than all the rest of the world's combined.

There's also just the manipulation and people's ignorance about what needs actually are, it's easy to paint in broad emotional arguments.

We can't go to war directly with China or Russia and they can't with us. We have seen that with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. No country in the world wants to provoke a world ending nuclear exchange. So what is the point?

Who 'wanted' the disastrous results of WWI, or WWII, or the Vietnam war?
 
to defeat the russians?

Seems all they have is their nuclear weapons. The entire western world wants no part of a nuclear exchange with Russia.

so is all this conventional military really kind of unnecessary?
Our military is there to protect assets for our greedy corporations. That's it. it's not protection, its about the ability to influence change or protect places where there is a huge uS corporation financial interests, as well as to fun the defense industry
 
Militarism is killing us and the planetary ecosystems that support us. Militarism needs to go away or we're further risking us going away.
 
Here's an easy solution to reduce a lot of costs that not only won't do much negative to our economy but will be a net gain. Close down most foreign bases and stop interventionism.

Those foreign bases take money out of our pockets and dumps them into other government's pockets. Bring those personnel, facilities, and equipment back to the US and expand our bases here to fit them. Then all that money will be spent here instead.

We live in a global economy, we need to be present globally. Your MAGA BS is the definition for failing.
 
We live in a global economy, we need to be present globally. Your MAGA BS is the definition for failing.
By we you should mean the world not just the US
 
Offense or defense? If we built an impenetrable defense of the good ol' USA, the only offense necessary would be nuclear, and that would require only out gunning possible offenses dumb enough to fire on us. SDI - build the modern day castle. A bombproof and invasion-proof country would kneecap major superpowers from any aggression against North America, and save massive amounts of money and personel. Might change the directives of vicious and aggressive countries to adopt a similar approach too - make sure every other country on the planet knows they would be walking into a running propeller if they attempted an attack against us.
 
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