You cannot educate me about spending...and spending does not have a fucking thing to do with your false statement..."Our military is bigger than the next top ten countries COMBINED."

You are counting guys? That's how you are determining the strength of a military?
Really?

"Bigger" doesn't mean how many soldiers you have. This isn't ancient Rome. One nuke and all those soldiers in China are dead.

My whole point is that we are being told to be scared of our own freakin' shadows in this country. Why? To make money for the defense contractors.

It's time to stop being scared of everything. All those fighter planes, nuclear weapons, soldiers in the field, guns, ships, tanks,etc. aren't going to save anybody from the big bad "terrorist" anyway.

And if any country were to actually try to engage the U.S. in an old-fashioned "our army against your army" war...we would quickly mobilize and defend ourselves. As I said: Look at what we did as nation in WW2.

There is absolutely no reason for this country to be at "war" in a perpetual state.

Our founding fathers never wanted it to be this way. It's downright Un-American to keep going around the world killing people with our military and claiming to be "defending freedom" while we're doing it.

It's ALL about the blood money that those companies are making and the Congressmen and Senators who funnel it to them.

Like I said, he's a fucking retard.

I'd love to know how pathfinder thinks the government can DOUBLE the current Military and afford it when the USA is up shits creak without a paddle.

Bigger means bigger...and does not determine strength...and I of course know that as I am not ignorant as you are to have made this statement..."Our military is bigger than the next top ten countries COMBINED."

the worst is that you will have lobbyist that will say equally stupid nonsense but opposed to pathfinder, they have actually influence

Apparently all we need to do is just hire 1 million more soldiers!

It's brilliant really. We can actually cut the military budget at the same time!

Better yet...Fuck it! Let's make the standing PEACETIME army 3 MILLION "strong"!

With our current budget we could pay 3 MILLION soldiers 223 thousand dollars a year each!

We would have the biggest and richest motherfuckin' army in the world!!! HELL YES!

That's all that counts right? How many soldiers we have?

the f35 project alone costs $1.5 trillion dollars. cancel that money sucker and spend that money on troops. current troop salaries = $135 billion per year.

Yes, you are nitpicking words.

Let me simplify it down to your level:
BIGGER means we spend more than the next 10 countries COMBINED on our giant death machine of an army.

I'm sure that one of our soldiers equipped with a million dollars worth of high tech gear strapped to him is more deadly than 1000 Chinese soldiers with lesser gear.
And I'm also sure that those $100,000,000 high tech planes and such that we have are probably more deadly than a dozen Chinese planes.

But if you want to play kindergarten games about what "bigger" means and try to hide the FACT that you didn't have a CLUE how much more our military is than anyone else's...then go ahead and try to hide it.

Got bad news for you brother...everyone reading this is thinking that you totally made a fool out of yourself.

I now realize that you are a poster child for..."This is your brain on drugs."

Why does the US need 1 million troops? They don't.

In case the Soviet Union attacks us in 1955. :1orglaugh

That's because no politician in today's era will ever vote for a draft in order to go to war. No politician will ever vote to raise taxes in order to pay for those wars.

They know the only way we can continue to run around satisfying the neocons wildest dreams of overthrowing every country in the Middle East is by having a standing army with a big budget. You can bet your ass we would have never gone to Iraq if Bush would of had to stand before the American people and tell them he was reinstating a draft and going to create a war tax...

Every war the US was involved in up until Vietnam was paid for by a war tax. Every major war also required a draft which also stopped with Vietnam. After Vietnam we kept a large standing army and have constantly raised the military budget every year.


I say cut the budgets for standing armies and require a draft and war tax in order to go to war.

I didn't say we did. I did say that the US government does 2 things right and that's make war materials and hire people.

Those are simple facts. The military budget won't ever be cut in any real way. We've been a military industrial complex since ww 2 with the budget going up up up over those last 75 years.

I'm surprised anyone knows what an A10 is really.

I'm reading a book right now called "The Outpost" and they are talking about a firefight where A10s were called in.

I am and always have been aware of spending by us and by other countries. I am and always have been aware of the different strengths of different military's in the world. You simply cannot admit that you made a misinformed statement...end of story sport.

No, I'm the poster child for "My brain can kick your brain's ass with one arm tied behind it's back" :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

You're a clown! LOL!

I'm not sure that you are "aware" of much of anything.

Like I said earlier...why are you even on GFY anyway? You aren't even in this biz anymore. I'd think you'd want to hang out and chat with people that you have something in common with?

Incase pathfinder does not realize and I'm positive he does not. Traditional wars are a thing of past. This is why iraq and Afghanistan can never be considered victory.

both of those were more occupations

That's sort of what I am getting at.

I know what they are because I have personally seen them in action.

Not only that...but neither Iraq or Afghanistan's armies ever attacked the United States or threatened to invade us in any way.

WE did all of that because they did not OBEY us when we told them what to do.

This is supposed to be America. Our country was meant to stand for some ideals that are important.

Having a giant military and invading countries, occupying countries, overthrowing govt.'s and killing people all over the world are NOT even remotely part of the ideals that this once great nation was founded on.

The pieces of shit politicians and bureaucrats have made us a nation of scared, dependent people who live in fear and think that it's for our "own good" to be searched at airports and eavesdrop on our citizens and build a wall to keep the "evil" Mexicans out of the U.S.

I believe that if George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, or any of the other founding fathers were to meet a person like "theking", they would hang him from a tree for treason.

Did you just pull that number out of a hat?

China has 2.2 million men under arms, where as the US has only 1.4. India, btw, has 1.3 million men under arms.

When was the last time the US was invaded? 1812. (Yeah, Japan landed a small force on some islands in Alaska, but that was not a serious force.)

Who is going to invade us? China? Russia? Iran?

While I agree with you to an extent, but you have to look at the larger picture. It's not like we are pouring money down a hole and not getting anything back from it. We are. Computers, GPS, television... The Internet itself was a DOD project paid for with tax dollar moneys. (We sure got our money's worth there huh?)

We do need to pull back. We don't need all of these forces in Europe, Korea.... In the event we need to, the US can have boots on the ground in force pretty quickly anywhere in the world.

occupations are a little different than wars, and why it generally means 'there is never a victory'

I am the last one standing in my family...when I die the family name dies with me. So I will be the last of a long line of military men going back to the civil war. I have studied military history/wars since I was old enough to read...also at university. I served 12 years in the 82nd Airborne and have seen combat in Grenada...Panama...and Iraq. I also served during desert storm being one of the first 2500 troops sent into Saudi. I have maintained close ties with the military since I was medically discharged in '92...and I am still in contact with a few who are still serving.

There is little if anything you can educate me about the military...thank you very much. You are now dismissed...sport.

Actually... In 1854 the United States first used gunboat diplomacy with Japan. Five US ships sailed into Tokyo Bay and blocked the port until Japan opened two of their ports to trade with the US. We have a long history of big stick diplomacy and dollar diplomacy. It didn't start in the last 50 years.

Also most wars this country have been in we were not attacked first.

Maybe you should get a girlfriend and think about having a kid? :pimp

he would, but it's more dramatic this way

Thanks for the clarification Richard. Please go back to thinking you are better than everyone. Its not a good characteristic pal.

It took the US almost 2 years to fully mobilize AFTER Pearl Harbor, and that's after the lend-lease act was in place and things were geared up. It's unrealistic to think the US can mobilize in a reasonable amount of time to react to hostilities as quickly as things would ramp up in today's warfare. Thank fully in those days, radar and such was brand new nobody knew where anybody was in the Pacific until they were spotted, that slowed things down. ANd the Japanese never intended an invasion, they only wanted to eradicate our Pacific fleet.

Actually they only wanted to set us back from establishing a naval blockade against them long enough to consolidate their positions in their other conflicts...and then intended to sue us for peace. You know what they say about the best of laid plans.

You're right.
At the time the Whaling industry needed Japanese ports to refuel while they slaughtered whales (ironic now that Japan is the whaling country).

So Pres. Fillmore sent Commander Perry in and threatened the Japanese with bombarding their cities if they didn't sign a "friendship" agreement with us.

It wasn't really a "blockade" because the Japanese only had sailing ships and thought the U.S. Steam ships were "dragons". lol

By the way, Pres. Fillmore is constantly ranked in the bottom 10 of all U.S. Presidents. He only was President because Pres. Taylor died and he took over. His whole Presidency was scandal after scandal.

So I guess you could say that was an early example of the U.S. govt. using the military to bully another country and force them to obey.

It doesn't mean that the true IDEALS of which this country were founded in 1776 are part of that nonsense.

There are always BAD people in this world. And Fillmore was one of them.

At least back then, it seemed that there was some semblance of restraint. The govt. would get "cleaned up" for a while before the next would-be tyrant stepped in.

But goddamn...it seems that NOW, it just never ends.
We just openly invade any country we want to (as long as they don't have a military that can actually fight back), and then we occupy them for as long as we want to. :(

They wanted and needed complete control of the pacific to fullfull their plans of conquest. The only thing that stood in their way was our Pacific fleet, they knew that.

thank god i don't have it

it's definitely not a good characteristic walking around thinking everyone thinks they're better than you.

dafuq man

I think it's just that now we hear about it. Our govt hasn't been that nice around the world for a very long time. It's just before the things we did were usually kept quiet. Now it's pretty much impossible to keep anything quiet so we hear about everything,

You are correct but you are leaving out the fact that we had demanded Japan cease and desist from their would be conquests or we would establish a naval blockade...and that is the reason they attacked us at Perl Harbor. They knew that we would recover but they hoped to consolidate their conquests before we recovered and then they intended to sue for peace.

A good case can be made that the US needs 1 million newly unemployed dumped into it's current job market even less.

A lot less.

That's how you come across :2 cents:

BTW I am not just talking about this thread.

sounds good, Bryan, and duly noted.

ill be sure to look out for peoples feelings a little more.