Military Spending Is Already Bankrupting America

If I had a dollar for every time someone took credit for something they had nothing to do with I'd be rich beyond dreams.

 

The correct lines are "clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle again".

 

If I had a dollar for every tidbit of misinformation released by the government and media, I would be rich beyond dreams.

 

And together we could found a hedge fund and interfere politically in every nation in the world...

 

Actually, that is not true.

The primary recipients of US aid were the tribes in Northern Afghanistan. This was a group known as the Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen, and was a coalition of 7 different organizations (known as the "Peshawar 7"). All Afghan, all working to initially evict the Soviets, then return the King to power. These were Afghan fighters, working to free Afghanistan for Afghans. The most prominent group was the Supervisory Council of the North, led by Ahmad Shah Massoud.

When the USSR left, a coalition government was formed among the various organizations. This was the Islamic State of Afghanistan. It incorporated all of the Peshawar 7, and other organizations. Including the Taliban. But the Taliban and other organizations pulled out and refused to participate in a coalition government. This led to almost a decade of Civil War.

To me, the US made 2 huge blunders in Afghanistan.

First, once the Soviets pulled out, we simply ignored it. We blew a golden opportunity to help the nation restore itself by simply walking away.

Then we did it again after the Taliban were overthrown in 2002. We should have backed King Mohammed Zahir Shah and the Monarchists who fought the Soviets for so long in order to restore their monarchy. The king was highly popular, and the main inspiration for the resistance against the Soviets. He was even popular after the Taliban were kicked out, and there was still a strong movement to restore him to his throne. But some pinheads in the State Department thought it would be best to turn them instead into a Democracy, and we all know how well that went.

2 times in the last 2 decades we had a chance to restore a nation, and the US blew it both times. The Afghan King was not restored because of pressure from the US, even though he was named "Father of the Nation" by Afghanistan. He was not overthrown because he was weak, or corrupt, or bad. It was a coup by a Communist member of his family who wanted power for himself.

Our biggest mistakes in Afghanistan was in ignoring it, then in thrusting upon them a form of government they were still to fractured to accept. We made the same mistake in Iraq.

 

military spending is bankrupting the world.... the Americans have been using the World Bank and IMF to drain countries of their resources, provide American companies with large and extremely profitable infrastructure projects while leaving these countries with billions in debt... in much the same way the Chinese Belt and Road does.... in fact the Chinese are likely just copying the American's version of Belt and Road and ended up with a Trade war for their trouble.

 

What percent of the Federal budget goes to the military? What percentage of GDP? What is the largest part of the Federal budget?

This is like saying you are going bankrupt because of the price of gasoline while driving a Maserati parked in the 4 car garage of your $4 M house.

 

Reference? Care to give us any examples of this?

This is why I rarely wander down into the political areas of this forum. People down in the sewers here think they win because they can throw their beliefs around and simply by their saying so make their point. Myself, I like to see proof before I accept such claims.

So go on, try to convince us of your points. Care to give us some confirmable references to validate your claims?

 

Oh, I am not afraid to answer those questions at all.

The US military uses 16% of the US budget.

The US military uses 3.1% of the GDP of the US.

The largest part of the US budget is Social Security, Unemployment & Labor ($1.2 trillion, 33%), and Medicare & Health ($1.05 trillion, 27%). The military comes in 3rd to those, at $609 billion, 16%.

But be careful when people try to claim otherwise. Most of the spending in the largest 2 is what is known as mandatory spending, the government has little it can do to change it. The chart that most love to try and confuse people with is the one that is Discretionary Spending. That is the one that makes it look like the military sucks up almost 3/5 of the US budget. And that is what it sounds like, it is the spending that the government can decide not to pay, so spends as it likes.

Technically they can fire 90% of the military and scrap most of the equipment, and cut that part of the spending to almost nothing. But they can not simply stop paying out Social Security and Medicare, so nothing can be done to reduce those payments.

Oh, and I will even add some comparisons. China spends 2.5% of their GDP on the military. Israel, 4.7%. Russia, 4.3%. Ukraine, 3.4% of their GDP is military spending. The US spends the most, because it has the largest economy and one of the highest standards of living.

But as a percentage of our GDP, we are actually outstripped by a great many countries in military spending.

Oman spends 12.1% of their GDP in military spending. Saudi Arabia, 10.3%. The Congo spends 6.2%.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...d-medicare-for-all/ar-BBQtBE1?ocid=spartandhp

Refuting the unbelievably stupid claim that the Pentagon has "lost" 21 TRILLION dollars.

Like I said...

 

lol this is the type of Anti-American propaganda that those who understand history simply laugh at.

 

It's impossible to talk to these people because they just spit out the same old propaganda without even talking about actual figures and numbers.

Like the fact that the world has been in the longest "peace streak" ever and has the lowest % of people dying from violence in war in history, since the US hegemony began.

What was Europe doing while America was building a now almost empty continent the 1800's? Oh yeah, they were "scrambling for Africa" and getting ready to start a war that would basically last 40 years and kill 50+ million people.

But America is the bad guy? Right ....

People just have a massive "I hate America" complex. Luckily though, they are in the minority as most people around the world do not buy into the Progressive tripe that America is somehow worse than .... Utopia I guess?

It's comical if nothing else

 

I think we spend more than the next ten countries combined

 

You were given the numbers.

 

Utterly irrelevant statistic. And one that cannot be confirmed as the U.S. has no idea how much China and Russia spend on their militaries.

 

Its pretty common knowledge actually. We know what they have and how much it costs.

 

How does the U.S. know that? Not even the Soviet Union knew how much they were spending on their own military during most of the Cold War.

 

Now that is just funny.

 

According to what I've read during the Cold War, only FOUR people in the entire Soviet Union knew about how much the country spent on its military.

 

Well we sure knew. They got smart and cut spending. We need to cut much much more

 

No we didn't. The CIA estimates of Soviet spending were all over the place and not remotely accurate.

 

Thank you for your opinion.


We spend far far too much on the military

 

That is your opinion. Based on our overseas commitments and the desire of the American people to minimize casualties (both our own and those of our enemies) we don't spend enough.

It takes a lot of money to win wars. Even more to win so overwhelmingly that your soldiers are barely scratched. An order of magnitude more to win so overwhelmingly that not only are your own soldiers largely untouched but that the enemy also takes minimal casualties.

Weren't you the one who claimed we had too many aircraft carrier battle groups yet when I asked you to define exactly what our carrier groups should be responsible for doing I pointed out that we would actually need TWENTY FOUR carrier battle groups (more than twice what we have now) to fulfill the commitments you indicated.

 

Of course it is an opinion. We need to stop waging war. Defend the homeland.

No. We frankly don't really need more than three carriers. One on each coast and one in port. We need to stop defending the world. China does not do it, ruissia does not do it....neither should we

 

The combat radius for most of the carrier based aircraft is 800 miles. Look at a map. One carrier cannot defend the East, West, or the Gulf Coast of the United States.

I'll just disagree on "we need to stop waging war". It is one of the things that governments do best.