The biggest threat to U.S. security has been spending lives & treasure on muddle headed 'adventures' that have effectively bankrupted us. Now China, Russia, Japan and other such losers in wars (hot or cold) against us hold a commanding position in our treasuries. In the meantime, some are thinking in 1950s terms still. - - - - How would U.S. pulling out of Okinawa (where I lived for awhille BTW) make you less secure in your home in the states right now ? What if the Japanese demanded the pull-out ? If they did so would that mean you'd support war against Japan because U.S. security was 'threatened' ? - - Think a little and don't just parrot what you've heard for years.
I don't 'like' any of it. I'm from a career military family and was in the service myself. - - It took a damned long time for me to wrap my mind around this. A good book to read is "The Empire of Debt" by William Bonner. - - - I owned it for a couple years before I actually finished it. He wrote about the need to cut back on these worldwide military commitments or we'd go broke like the Romans. (He writes on many subjects; its very interesting & the guy also has a sense of humor which helps alot when reading about this kind of stuff.) I tossed it after reading that Roman crack, cursing the guy for being some kind of dumbass 'peace-nik' old hippy. Then after a while I'd pick it up and read it some more, till running into something else I didn't like again, and tossed it again. Much better to read the book completely through. This nation was originally founded on the principles of protecting personal Liberty, property rights, and minding our own damned business. Around the turn of the century when certain blow-hards got cocky about Americas growing economic prosperity, they thought we needed to show the Europeans and the rest of the world a thing or two, that 'we' were now Players to be respected. Thus the gasbag Teddy R helped encourage the start of a war against Spain and its been down hill from there. An ego maniac ivory tower professor - Wilson - got us in The War to End All Wars that cost thousands of American lives and millions of dead Europeans. Afterwards, no body could really figure out why they fought the damned thing; it just seemed to roll along out of some kind of momentum. The aftermath set up the conditions for World War Round 2 and the deaths of millions of more people.- - - - Maybe some day people will learn from the past. Its a damned long shot, but we can only 'hope'. - - - -
Yeah, I wish the US had lost against the Nazi's. I had 4 years of German in school and kind of liked speaking it. Sounded really cool. The Nazi's had really cool helmets too. And uniforms. Most of us would be wearing them right now. What fun that would be!
The US doesn't "need" to do anything. Nobody can touch us, militarily. We're 4 generations ahead of the nearest Power. The affairs of other nations are none of our concern. The Koreas can settle their own disputes. South Koreas economy is 25 TIMES BIGGER than the North! The North is a shithole and the South is highly industrialized! No sensible American wants to risk WW4 over Taiwan. The days of building enemies only later to cut them down, are over. Its a fools game to keep defense contractors rich and war-mongering politicians in a job.
Up to Pearl Harbor in '41, America mostly was an isolationist... (well, at least tried with lip service). If we brought home our troops and had them defend AMERICA's borders, we'd cut maybe $1 TRILLION from our deficit and would do us a GREAT benefit. America has gone to the expense of being a military superpower while other countries (allies, I guess) relied upon America to be prepared to and to come to their aid if necessary. All the while, money which other countries might have been required to allocate to defense instead went into building their economies, infrastructure, etc. Basically, America wanted to be MUY MACHO and THE BIG DOG...much to our detriment, I think.
not the first time thay've asked this <img src = "http://doubledeckerbuses.org/blog/media/AntiJapanesePropagandaTakeDayOff.png">
I agree. Canada and Europe got away with zero military spending post WW2. In return, America built a high-tech arms industry that put everyone back to the Stone Age. Military superiority is a must. No doubt. But America doesn't need 100's of foreign bases and deployed troops + bs wars to accomplish that. We can do 95% of that from home. And save a desperately needed Trillion, pa!