Enough with American Military Worship

I'm no expert on this issue, but i am an 'emotional far leftist', so bear with me. Everytime some RW bonehead has SOMETHING IMPORTANT to say about how great our military is, it always comes back to how grateful us bush haters should be that the military "secured our freedom to dissent". Take this example:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002915776_frilets07.html

Editor, The Times:

I believe nature seeks balance. Thus there must be as many right-wing dolts as left-wing ones. So I don't worry much about the antics of the anti-military folks trying to ban recruiters from Seattle schools <"Initiative targets military recruiting," Times, Local news, April 4>.

Nevertheless, it's important to point out the, mmm, difficulties with their point of view.

First, they obviously don't see the irony of trying to ban representatives of the very people who secure their freedom to be fools. Their prejudice reminds me of another ugly bigotry, where once upon a time people allowed customers of a particular race — as long as they used the back door.

Also, when we face a real enemy on our soil, I'm sure they'll be the first to scream, "Where's the military?" Especially if the president is Republican. They'll conveniently "forget" they tried to get rid of it altogether.

— Bal Simon, Bellevue

If by 'secure' my 'freedom' you are referring to the Revolutionary War, ok. And maybe ww2, although the Axis was never a serious threat to invade Amurka. but there ain't been shit for securing my freedom in my lifetime. Vietnam? Grenada? Iraq? puh leez. How come Costa Rica doesn't have a military and no freedom-haters invade?

How much freedom could we secure if we didn't spend this much on our bloated military that we worship without question?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x873146

I'm putting this in my journal

20,000 nukes w/ the facilities to launch them? We're spending trillions on something that we'll never use because it would destroy the world if we did? WTF?

I'd really like our next (sane) president to commit to an international effort to ban nuclear weapons.

wait, did you mean a 'sane' Democrat will be elected? well, they'll certainly put a stop to the bloated military... :sarcasm:

if we cut it by 2/3 we'd still have the biggest military budget on the planet. and we'd still be able to fuck up in Iraq in almost exactly the same way.

the Russkies as they pour through the Fulda Gap. We're storing surgical equipment including cotton tie back surgical gowns from WWII. We're storing warehouses full of C-rations, D rations and K rations. Every year the procurement officers squander millions of dollars on shit like this and then pay to store it in perpetuity just so the lavish Pentagon budget can be used up.

I want to put that building on a very strict diet. I want payment and supplies for the troops mandated. I want care for veterans mandated. Anything else those old boys do has to come out of a sharply reduced budget.

This scam has been going on since the end of WWII. We can't afford it any more. If the rich and the corporate really feel the need for such a lavishly endowed military bureaucracy, let them start footing the damned bill.

The Pentagon is the most fiscally irresponsible federal agency - I remember last year or two years ago or something some internal audit revealed that something like 700 million dollars was completely unaccounted for. 700 million dollars the Pentagon CHEATED out of American taxpayers and the government!

But it's really important to crack down on people who owe $5000 on their credit card bills - can't let them keep evading their responsibilities and their debts to MBNA, oh no. :sarcasm:

These are two different things.

To the many slaves in ante-bellum south, a sucessful defeat of their military brought their emancipation. The independent sovereignty of their governments directly contradicted their own freedom.

Freedom is protected by citizens who value freedom. No military might can grant freedom to people who are willfully ignorant. The forces that wish to take our freedom away are internal corruption and unchecked power - not an outside militry force

well said. i think i'll dig out 'double nickels on the dime' tonight!

If you want to thank anyone for our rights, thank those who constantly fight to make certain we have those rights in the America - the leftwing lawyers of America, the first amendment advocates, the ACLU.

:applause:

Bal Simon can feel free to blow me

nt

and god knows what else, and it goes virtually unpunished.
then these criminals come home and are set loose upon us.

the horrors they are forced to inflict/endure often ruin their lives, too.

all to project the power of our corporate hegemony across the globe.

he will never be the same.God knows what he has seen.

Worshipping anything is a sure way to make it corrupt.

No, I respect those that fight, but I do not put them up on pedestals. When you do that you create people who think they dont need no steeenkin rules.

How else can we compete with Al Quaida's box-cutters but a brand spanking new submarine! Take that Osama!

In all honesty could we not compare our over-exuberance to maintain a high military budget while our enemies, who spend peanuts, but have fanaticism on their side (the real ones and ones we are creating at this moment) to our running the Soviets into the ground in the 1980s? Who are we racing?

Eisenhower was right...beware the Military Industrial Complex.

in their graves. The Second Amendment positioned an armed citizenry as an alternative to a professional army.

http://polyticks.com/polyticks/beararms/fathers.htm

http://en.thinkexist.com/keyword/standing_army

:thumbsup:

not just the causes a president has

How many times has the USA been actiually attacked since then?

How is it that our trillions spent couldn't stop 19 young men armed with boxcutters?


I want a better ROI.

you shouldn't let yourself be wound up by some know-nothing shill writing a LTTE. That letter is riddled with muddle-headed arguments and logical contradictions, for instance the writer said:so equating people protesting about the conflict in Iraq with segregationists. This is a feeble attempt to smear rather than argue a logical point.

It deserves to be ignored rather than dissected. The writer of that LTTE is one of the worst kinds of fool, one that doesn't know that he's a fool or doesn't care that the rest of the world knows that he is.

and the question running through my mind is "Where does all that money GO?!"

Clearly we could cut the pentagon budget in half amd still outstrop the top six military powers below us by a landslide, and still come out ahead compared to all of them. Where. Does. It. Go?

Because of the title (which comes from CIA jargon), I assumed this book was going to be about clandestine operations. Rather, it's about the consequences of America's overseas military empire -- and empire is not too strong a word to use. Following WWII, American military bases overseas should have been phased out, but with the 'Cold War' as justification, were instead converted to permanent installations, which create disruption and danger for the countries where they are based. Johnson, a former CIA analyst (IIRC), has the facts and figures to make his case.

With the Cold War over, it seemed once again time to begin a phaseout, but the MIC made sure this didn't happen, and the much-vaunted "Peace Dividend" disappeared without a trace -- and without much comment, either.