Seraphical
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2006
- Messages
- 351
Zarathustra[H];1038743165 said:Nah, he is spot on. Military spending is a huge waste.
We have accomplished nothing really in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it has cost a fortune. In fact - one could argue that no military conflict we have part taken in has been necessary since World War II. People talk about honoring the men and women who serve to protect our freedoms. If you are talking about the revolutionary war, the war of 1812, the civil war, WWII and maybe a handful more during the 19th century I'd agree with you, but the people who are serving now are doing little if anything to protect our freedoms, and them putting their lives on the line is on them, not on the rest of us.
The armed forces today do nothing for me, do not represent me, if anything have done more to soil my name as an American abroad, than anything else and make me less safe by pissing people off to the point where they'd be willing to kill me. I don't feel obliged to honor or respect anyone who has served in the military since the 50s any more than I honor and respect anyone else.
If we had invested that same amount of money at home on things like healthcare and traffic safety we would have saved many more lives, and maybe - just maybe - people in these foreign countries would hate us less...
~3,000 people died in 9/11. We were willing to go to war over this. spending trillions, and resulting in the death of thousands of our soldiers and even more foreign civilians.
Over 40,000 people die in the U.S. each year in traffic accidents. Since 9/11 that's more than 450,000 deaths. Where is our several trillion dollar war for traffic safety?
Every year in the U.S. almost 600,000 people die from heart disease, and ~550,000 people die from cancer. Where are ou several trillion dollar wars on these diseases? In fact, even THE FLU kills over 50,000 people a year. We are talking 6.6 million people for heart disease, 6 million for cancer etc. etc. since 9/11.
As an engineer professionally, when we look at issues we need to solve we use the Pareto principle. In other words, we arrange our problems by size (largest on top, smallest on the bottom) as the truth is you'll do better by solving your biggest problems first.
The 3,000 people that died on 9/11 - although horrific - are a drop in the bucket. It would be so far down the list that it's not even worth spending our time on, let along going to war, getting more people killed and spending trillions of dollars.
People talk about programs that are causing our deficit. If you add up military spending from the regular budget and from emergency and supplemental spending bills to fund our wars, the military is BY FAR the biggest driver of our deficit.
The solution seems simple. Want to get rid of our deficit? Cut the military.
Our real heroes are those who spend their time developing new medicines, new treatments and those who use them to save lives.
IMHO, our military is more of a liability to us than it is an asset.
Well shit... you're taking all the fun out of it if you're going to take a logical approach to this...