Ok I have been thinking about this, end the wars

there is a reason actually why we can't... at least not in the short term.

And trust me I am tired of them.

We depend on the MIC for jobs. If we closed the wars tomorrow and brought every soldier, airman and marine home, and the coasties too... the economy would collapse.

No I hate to say this, but at this point our economy depends on the least efficient method of stimulating the economy. your local military contractor. And it is not like a few of our military and war dependent businesses can do what Singer did the day after VJ-Day... yep, they converted from Thomsom SMGs to well, what they used to do before the war. And even in a country that was far more ready to go back to civilian production. the sudden release of military personnel into the civilian world led to a hell of a recession at the end of the war.

And trust me, I want to end them... and end them now... and quite frankly the collapse will take care of that... (And we are in a terminal imperial stage) but ending the wars needs to take into account converting some of our remaining manufacturing capacity from making war toys to... civilian goods. That requires planning and yes... STATE help.

I don't know what is more depressing... knowing WHY we cannot end the wars now... or understanding that this has been done on purpose like every other empire in history... we have so much in common with Spain it is not even funny... and I mean that.

When I was about seven we moved into a house that had a large stack of old National Geographics in a closet, included were all the issues from 1941 to 1945.. Every single issue had at least one story and usually several about the war effort, everything from the Battle of Britain to Anzio to Iwo Jima to scrap metal drives and victory gardens.

WWII was an all-out drive to win at any cost with about 15 million under arms when the population was less than half what it is today.

It's really not a one-to-one comparable situation.

what I am saying is that this country makes some of the finest cruise missiles around...

It is how we have configured the economy...

And I am not saying don't do it... just that when we do, there will be some unintended consequences. That is all.

Oh and by the way that does not mean cutting down the number of personnel.. we spend most than everywhere else, but by percentage of population our current military is not that large.

We cold keep the military at its current size, but bring them home to serve out their tours of duty here. It costs 20 billion to keep the airconditioning running in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody is looking at bringing the military home and terminating their employment. Operating large forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, while continuing operations throughout the world is very expensive.

But that would require a comitment to disband the empire and allowing one of the up and comers to take our place a few years early.

It is quite likely that the economy will collapse anyway.

most of the spending actually is not personnel related.

There are people that would like to see the military cut down to the size of a postage stamp and the military industrial complex cut off at the knees. We don't need to do that to end the wars. But it requires a realignment of national priorities that no President would consider.

it will happen, sooner rather than later. If the pugs burn the village to save it, much sooner indeed.

Bring the soldiers home. End the wars. Redirect the same $$$ to badly needed infrastructure and conservation programs. Those same dollars will strengthen us. Our wars make us weaker, cost a great deal more than money, and Dubai laughs.

If war is our only fuel, our economy deserves to fail.

The priority of the U.S. government is to maintain world dominance. The military and its industrial complex is just a means to that end. As long as our national priority is to maintain world dominance, there will be no meaningful change in the wars. The happiness and well being of citizens play a very second fiddle to our national priority, thus we see a hard push to end entitlement programs and destroy the social safety net. The empire has reached the point that we can no longer maintain the social safety net and our national priority.

My historical knowledge is mostly spotty, but isn't this roughly the trajectory of the decline of Rome? I really must do some reading.

though there are some Parallels to the decline of the British Empire. All empires reach a point where is is economical impossible to maintain their empire. Rome took centuries to decline before it broke into two empires. Britain took about 100 years. The Soviets military exploits, especially in Afghanistan, strained their economy to the breaking point and they collapsed.

Here in the U.S., we've reached a point where maintaining military adventures on foregin soil is too expensive. Rather than change priorities, we are not fighting to see how much they will cut the social safety net.

or is that simply not in our genetic makeup?

Empires, by their very nature, have a very strong sense of denial by the end

If our only tool is taking it to the streets, we are hosed. (See Greece.)

we might want to try to get ahead of the dynamic and taking to the streets is it... but the pattern is pretty much universal. It is almost as if, insert empire here, gets into a rut and cannot think outside of a wet paper bag.

The pattern usually involves cannibalizing the metropolitan area at the end.

We have one advantage over Rome or even the USSR... we are using it right now... so we need to plan and chiefly act.

But Spain is a better parallel

We could simply pay them to do NOTHING. Seriously, extend their contracts for 2 - 4 years gradually tapering them off. Allow them to pursue whatever peaceful technologies they think they could make money at. It would save lives, of all nationalities, and would be cheaper, far cheaper in the long run.

Problem solved.

If you want to get more ambitious, do what JFK did and simply redirect these contractors to outer space.

we are not talking of them, as is we have actually a small military by percentage of the population. I am talking of Rayttheon, McDonnel Douglass and the rest of the boys in the MIC.

I actually meant just writing checks to the corporations! Just pay them the protection/kickback money right up front. Let them do anything they want with it excepting military purposes. Just absolute pure profit. Gotta fight greed with money. Kind of like setting a backfire to put out a forest fire.

Jobs were outsourced and the economy was scuttled during the mid to late 1990s so the young able bodied would be forced to join the military. That much is clear.

I can't believe this thoughtful topic is getting un-recs! *GRRR*

All the big corporations were coming in to recruit us while still in high school. GE, Dow, GM, you name it. That was while the Vietnam War was ongoing.

They wanted to get us before we enlisted or got drafted.

Only recruiters coming into my old high school these days are with the military.

And my import car driving neighbors can't figure out why there are no jobs for their kids who are still living at home. Its a mystery to them. They think they got a "good deal", on those imported cars.

Don

Yesterday I perused a big 'Brandsmart' store. 2 megafloors of electronics and household goods, ALL made in China. It was sad.

and that Toyota is buit at a non union shop in Tennessee.

That speaks to ANOTHER issue we will have to deal with... LABOR needs to get over this US, CANADA or Mexico... and organize across borders. That idea of International Federations goes back a long time (1880s) but has never been implemented. I am sure that if the UAW was across all three countries... things would be better for all.

The other issue... we need to have those kids who cannot or will not go to college, in technical school, and in appretenseshipts before they leave HS... Germany (and ironically the US) offer moders for this. That said, the US... we used to do that.

Alas none of this will happen until the Empire falls. And it will be difficult at best anyway.

It is with Raytheon and the rest of the boys. They are the ones NOT set for civilian production, or do they have products that can be sold to you. I am not being a smart ass when I say I am not in the market for an F-35 or whatever the front line fighter plane is about. Yes the pilot runs a million to train... and over the career, assuming they do a full career, you are talking of maybe a million including medical. I am assuming an uneventful career. The fighter is orders of magnitude the cost of the cog in the machine and the R&D is into the billion dollar department.

They have a lot of people in DC to make sure the EMPIRE, and their sweet train does not go away. As is there are reasons why I cannot use active duty military in the CONUS area, but coasties could and should be redirected to do exclusively what they do.

actually is the cheap side of this. It is the toy makers that are the problem. Or are you in the market for a Bradley APC? Parking sucks, gas mileage sucks, but people will give you the right of way on the freeway.

But is is THEM who are the problem.

An F-35 runs what sixty million and we paid for the R&D so we are talking of close to a billion. The pilot costs about two mil between training and full carrer, add another quarter of a mil for retirement.

companies. Unfortunately.