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U.S.A. - our WAR MACHINE

TheMiddleWay

TheMiddleWay

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Joined
Nov 5, 2011
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All stats for 2011: the U.S.A spent $698,000,000,000.00 on our military, to be honest, our defense, and offensive killing machine. The ENTIRE WORLD spent $1.63 trillion meaning we spent 43% if what the entire world's military expenditure. Number two, our economic rival, China with $119 Billion. We spend 4% of our GDP, one of the top five highest GDP to military expenditure ratios from the most productive economy on earth. (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures)

This is the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned of, and it is hungry.

I'd like your feedback on my opinions and your own ones.

This amount of high spending is not a terribly new trend. For homeland defense reasons, all attacks (USS Cole, 9/11,) have been carried out fairly cheaply. 9/11 and the subsequent response, the war in terror, has hurt us the most economically by draining every person's pockets and our morale. I'm not certain we are much safer, or that if we are, the civil liberties discarded could every be worth the enhanced personal safety. Ideological sacrifice for the illusion of invincibility?

If serious well funded governments wanted to hurt us with large singular attacks to shake us it is not particularly hard and cheap. Imagine a suicide-submarine laden with two tons of high explosives being deployed in international waters making it's way to a major hotel on pilings during a busy party week. Such a scenario would be feasible by a well funded group our government. Pablo Escobar built submarines with his brother and engineers (though Pablo admired the United States, and would have rather used them to make billions than hurt anyone). 100 pounds of high explosives could kill thousands. This scenario if terrifying, sadly relatively cheap and easy, and pretty hard to guard against.

What if we didn't more money on eradicating poverty here at home and education, than constant weapons programs and munitions research? If two hundred billion dollars was split 65-35 each yeast with the majority going to education and the minority going towards scientific research and infrastructure we could create more high level graduates going towards integral sciences and researching solutions which can be used to start new industries, build jobs for the increase in graduates and other laborers alike. Infrastructure spending will instantly keep jobs and make others instantly, while keeping our economic backbone (trains, highways, ports, and bridges) in working order and upgrading bottlenecks.

Research critical to continuance of our industrial and economic pace without creating such a large bubble over our heads that when it bursts, shatters us, requires solutions in energy production. We will run out of oil, and if not prepared the world will crash into war and darkness. Nuclear fusion our solar/wind collection breakthroughs could save us.

We are not the world's police. Constantly spending many times most countries entire GDPs says otherwise. Perpetually producing weapons makes you look like your constantly looking to wage a large fight.

Who wants to have good relations with a country, not because of them being fellow humans, but because being economically isolated could hurt your people, and when they tell you to do something, they assert it because the idea is if you agree we have the power to evaporate you?

Oh, and as a country you know we have replaced governments, some democracies, with dictators (Pinochet, the Shah of Iran).

We need to step up and be peaceful, stop our horrendous, cold war, killing machine with tools of prosperity, peace, and equality for us and all humans.


What would happen if we became more concerned with the humanity of others than foolish things?
 
TheMiddleWay said:
Ideological sacrifice for the illusion of invincibility?


What would happen if we became more concerned with the humanity of others than foolish things?
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Ideological sacrifice for the illusion of invincibility?

In part yes it does provide an illusion of invincibility, and the delusion that we have always been at war with "them".


What would happen if we became more concerned with the humanity of others than foolish things?

... all hell would break loose as the real illusion would then shatter.


_________
I'm sorry but it really is that simple, there is only one way and that is the Middleway ;-) but it is a small passage and that takes time. The unknown and time are probably most everyones greatest fear, that and listening honestly to their own heart.
 
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What if we didn't more money on eradicating poverty here at home and education, than constant weapons programs and munitions research? If two hundred billion dollars was split 65-35 each yeast with the majority going to education and the minority going towards scientific research and infrastructure we could create more high level graduates going towards integral sciences and researching solutions which can be used to start new industries, build jobs for the increase in graduates and other laborers alike. Infrastructure spending will instantly keep jobs and make others instantly, while keeping our economic backbone (trains, highways, ports, and bridges) in working order and upgrading bottlenecks.
Click to expand...

Officers, soldiers, and defense contractors all get paid and have a job. Ergo, the spending is going towards to creating jobs. All Officers have graduated university, and obviously so have many defense contractors and research persons. Thus creating jobs for graduates. Defense research is research, and often extremely technical and scientific, hence that money is already going towards science. (Remind me again, who funded much physics research, including the development of the reactor, and what was the driving force behind space exploration?) As above, do you think that stuff does not create jobs for highly educated people?

Who needs 15,000 foot runways and who builds and dredges out many ports to accommodate their very large fleet of ships?
 
Haha :) If i had just made these videos i probably would have.. youtube sucks now :/
 
military industrial complex. complex is a term which also connotes a pathological and sreppressed psychological illness.

just half a thought (at best) :)
 
A common enemy is one of the quickest and easiest (and dirtiest!) ways to cultivate a sense of collective purpose. This option becomes more attractive in a nation of people with a a lot less history and heritage binding them together than most other nations.
 
MyDoorsAreOpen said:
A common enemy is one of the quickest and easiest (and dirtiest!) ways to cultivate a sense of collective purpose. This option becomes more attractive in a nation of people with a a lot less history and heritage binding them together than most other nations.
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... and then there is a history to build nostalgia over.

Nostalgia is a state of trance complete with a trigger that can create a sense of apathy and depression or hysteria and crisis.
 
^ PiP, you know I used to always say that nostalgia was a useless emotion. I've been convinced otherwise, but I still feel it's an emotion worth wallowing in in great moderation.
 
Sure it is, there is much to learn from every emotion, nostalgia tho I feel is an American specialty. Nostalgia is transcendence, and haahaha wallowing :D is useful to acquire a sense of relative complacement. Yes it has been better and worse but atm I am aware of my individuality which resides in the space between either.

To control the emotions of the past is to control the emotions of the present is to be the master of my domain...
=D
 
^ Now that's the spirit, dude. If I draw strength in the present by looking fondly on the past, there's some value in it. But when people take liberties like rewriting history and aiming for a golden age of the past that never really existed, that's when things like unjustified wars happen.

The sad fact is, America has usually seen a long run of boom times immediately following every war it has participated in, with the exception of the Civil War. Whether the wars, and our participation in them, caused the subsequent economic booms is up for debate, but the important part is that the two have often gone together. Angling for a war nowadays is almost a Pavlovian response, then, to desperately wanting economic recovery.
 
Absolutely - we practically live in, "Pavlonia".

The past is an accumulation of experiences we have had, that we turn into knowledge simply as thought, but, to acquire wisdom from that knowledge is another story all together.

MyDoorsAreOpen:
But when people take liberties like rewriting history and aiming for a golden age of the past that never really existed, that's when things like unjustified wars happen.
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This is true and should not be ignored.

MyDoorsAreOpen:
Whether the wars, and our participation in them, caused the subsequent economic booms is up for debate, but the important part is that the two have often gone together.
Click to expand...

Of course war does that but we need to avoid going for that instant gratification, quite simply.


It all has been written and spelled out for us, us people demand signs we are that hung up on the material ;)

War is bonding, for it is binding.
 
Big oil is killing our country. Our entire foreign policy revolves around oil, and so much of our economy is based off oil. If gas was 1.50 dollars a gallon we wouldnt be in as nearly of a poor economy
 
^If there was no need for oil we would still be fighting over something:
the cause does not rest.

Islam, a nemesis to many, does not like the US for numerous reasons; of which plenty we instigate, but the main discrepancy is their opinion of how we 'play God', by creating our own laws, and not abiding strictly too what is perceived as Gods law and will towards mankind.
 
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