insults are the response of people who has lost the arguments. as usual you make statements without any proof: All your predictions have been wrong so far. why don't you list them instead of shooting from the hip. I forgot that is your forte. Insults are the weapon of last resort of people who have lost the debate. congratulations you have arrived.
Yes, this is exactly where the US government is coming from. The military is one place where they can siphon off young men with no education and few good prospects and render them psychologically impotent or worse, do away with them. They don't give a damn about them. And yes, it's only the US unwillingness (for now) to carpet bomb these places that renders the wars a standoff. For those of us involuntarily funding them, they will continue to invent someone or something new every few years for us to be afraid of. Frequently something vague, nameless, faceless, or a nonstarter: WMDs, whatever-ism, or a bunch of stone age warriors operating off the dregs of our abandoned equipment.
A book relative to the subject IMO might be: An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations., by William Playfair I haven't read about it since 1991ish. As I recall, he says that military power drives economics and is subject to disruptions like the invention of gunpowder. Rome fell because their military could no longer contain the barbarians and even though they had inferior weapons, there were simply too many of them to contain. The weapons did not confer enough advantage.
I haven't read all the posts so apols for any repetition... to put it succinctly, both the US and Greece has huge liabilities compared to their respective gdps. However, the US also has huge amount of assets whilst Greece has fuck all.
We are way worse off than Greece. The US would have its cash station machines spitting out IOUs if it were not for the fact that we are the only RESERVE CURRENCY - Period. We are capable of printing money just like Obama did with his $10 trillion spending spree on nothing. No shovel ready projects were done, and none were created, BUT we went another $10 trillion in debt. We are a FIAT currency. Other countrys do not have the luxury of starting up the printing press and require loans to go into debt. This creates situations like what is going on in Venizuela. And when China and Russia create a barter system to get around the US Dollar, you will see it crash. Once this happens people will lose faith in it, go to BIT COIN, Gold and other currencies (as a hedge). A weak US dollar will prevent other countries from wanting to buy our bonds as they will get paid almost no intetest on a devalued dollar. From there....>We have to print more money again, but poeple will get sick of it. From there, we will hit debt ceileings, banks will not lend, and we fall harder than in 2009. This time we will not have the ability to bail out like we did in 2009. Then it is worse than Greece as Germany will not bail us out like they did in Greece. Save your beans and bandaides.