War! What is it good for?
Real Estate Investor · Tampa Bay, FL · Member since 2009 · 180 posts · 17 votes
First of all, I appreciate the men and women who choose to serve in the armed forces for our country. And I do not mean to offend them in any way, but instead try to gain insight in some questions that I have.
Why do you think we invade and occupy countries in the middle east? should we feel safer that we have done that? Does it make sense to do that in order to fight a never ending "war on terror"?
What have we gained from the invasions of these countries?
And why the hell are we bombing Pakistan?
I would ask if we are defending freedom, but I know that we aren't doing that. The Govt is steadily taking our freedom away, so that wouldn't make any sense.
Wow, where do I even begin? Whenever you get more than one person, you will have some kind of 'war.". Just look at marriage. Practically all sports is about one person or one team beating another. It is innate in man's nature to war. Man, at his core, is evil, greedy and selfish. As proof, for those of you who are parents, did you have to teach your young children how to throw a tantrum or how to share?
What happens if the US does not get involved? Just look at history. Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and the US did not get involved. Look at what that brought the entire planet. The complexities, reasons and motivations of modern warfare has been written about in numerous books. Money, politics, religion, power, or just to watch the world burn, the reasons are many and varied. How should the US react to terrorism? How should the US react when one country invade another country? Is there even a 'right' reaction? I don't have the answer. I know that doing nothing is not the right answer. "He that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.". So the question is, what is "good."?
war is good for the powers that want to control world events. They pit countries against each other by funding both sides with seed money/ weapons - then when all out war is declared, they reap a windfall of profits from new contracts and sales of weapons, weaponized vehicles, and limited availability to resources. The profits are used to build the very infrastructure that will be used against our own citizens , as is demonstrated time and again. For example, national security which was supposed to be for the 'war on terror' is now used by the FBI on us citizens and obaministration are using that as a basis to snoop into everyone facebook and emails now ( legally and without permission or warrants)
a free people do not concede to these things without any motivation to do so. A war provides the perfect motivation to get these agendas in place...STAT. I'm sure you can feel the fist clenching tighter every year.
ps.. as far as leaving Iraq.. good luck .. we have never left any place - we are still in N. korea ..we are still in Germany. and as for the war on terror .. if you think it will ever end .. just ask yourself, how will we know when we've won?
they have created an enemy that cannot be destroyed , and we are supposed to funnel millions of dollars into it every year to the banksters that finance the 'war' , then cry for the banks when they make faulty loans to unqualified marks that they profit from foreclosing on.
thats what war is good for silly.
True indeed Jayme. Except I would say we are funneling trillions and not millions into the never ending war on terror.
As far as Obama lying, he did a great job of telling us what we wanted to hear. And when Bush was president (hated it like most people), I fell for Obama's lies hook, line and sinker.
It was actually Obamas lies that helped me wake up to an interesting fact. It wont matter which side is in control. You are lied to by both sides, and each side has a purpose for the real owners of this nation.
We haven't even spent 1 trillion dollars on both wars for the past decade. Quit making crap up. :roll:
We haven't even spent 1 trillion dollars on both wars for the past decade. Quit making crap up. :roll:
While I appreciate being held accountable for my statements. I am not sure which one of us is making crap up.
The direct cost of the Iraq war alone from 2003 to Feb 2010 is $704 billion. Those are direct costs, and not including health care costs to wounded veterans (in my opinion the most important costs at this point)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War
It is very difficult to find numbers on the Afghanistan war expenses. But even your most trusted news source CNN (Communist News Network) reported that we have already reached 1.15 Trillion in costs with both wars combined. Some news articles have reported the Afghan war is more expensive but I cannot find a breakdown on the actual costs.
Another interesting FACT is that the cost of both wars will reach $2.4 Trillion by 2017
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/20/war.costs/index.html#fbid=FDvZWP2gmw5
So Tim, we most definitely have spent over a trillion on these 2 conflicts. And when you add in the loss of life for the men and women in our military, the costs are much greater. And for what?
Wow, where do I even begin? Whenever you get more than one person, you will have some kind of 'war.". Just look at marriage. Practically all sports is about one person or one team beating another. It is innate in man's nature to war. Man, at his core, is evil, greedy and selfish. As proof, for those of you who are parents, did you have to teach your young children how to throw a tantrum or how to share?
What happens if the US does not get involved? Just look at history. Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and the US did not get involved. Look at what that brought the entire planet. The complexities, reasons and motivations of modern warfare has been written about in numerous books. Money, politics, religion, power, or just to watch the world burn, the reasons are many and varied. How should the US react to terrorism? How should the US react when one country invade another country? Is there even a 'right' reaction? I don't have the answer. I know that doing nothing is not the right answer. "He that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.". So the question is, what is "good."?
I believe that War unites a nation against a common enemy. It brings patriotism in the lime light, and a way for people to show it. Over the last 60+ years we have constantly been at war, whether with a country or an idiology.
It started with WWII, then war against Socialism, then Korean war, then Vietnam, then war against drugs, then war against crime/criminal and now war against terror and the "axis of evil".
It should also be noted that no sitting president has been unseated during a war. Thus, is it not in the politician's interest to start/maintain an ongoing war?
War is very different from sports or athletics. Sports are competitive while war may demand the ultimate sacrifice from many. However, being at war allows majority in the nation to spectate something from afar while rooting against a common enemy.
Just some thoughts.
I had to remove a few Troll posts (and replies to them, which were all done in good taste) from the thread, because I don't think the intent here was for people to start the petty name calling, but to have an intelligent discourse about war.
Lets discuss this without all the name calling . . . thanks!
Ali
I am going to have to disagree with you. Obviously, you have never been in a locker room before a game and heard a coach talk about the upcoming "war.". And I believe it was general Schrartz, in a news conference, refer to a military move as a "hail Mary pass.". Of course the price paid by the opponents in a war are much greater, but the planning, practice, and execution of the plan are quite similar. Sports and war are very similar and my point is that mankind has a deep seated desire to fight.
Anyone remember Reagan's strategy to win the cold war against Russia? It boils down to getting the soviets to spend more money than they could afford on their military, which ultimately resulted in their going bankrupt.
Reagan had to increase U.S. military spending to do this, and his plan was to drastically cut military spending once we "won" the cold war...problem is, the subsequent Presidents never quite embraced the second part of that strategy.
So, here we are using Reagan's (very effective) strategy against ourselves...
Everyone likes to complain that this country has ridiculous debt and is on the verge of insolvency...some here have even indicated that our economic problems are the greatest threat to this nation.
Maybe I'm missing something, but if spending is the greatest threat to this nation, wouldn't common sense tell us to focus on reducing what is unarguably the largest ongoing expense this nation faces -- our military?
Of course, if we did that, companies like Haliburton might start to lose revenue, and we wouldn't want that to happen...
J Scott
I think you need to research your numbers a little better. The Federal Department of Health and Human Services has a larger budget than the Department of Defense. The highest budget, across all governments, is Education. The Number two item is Health Care. The Number three item is Pensions. The Number four item is Defense. Of course, numbers can be manipulated to say whatever you want them to say.
And of course Halliburton has to make money, they are in my Mutual Funds and 401K plan. I find it interesting that you single out Halliburton when there are literally THOUSANDS of defense contractors that make money and create jobs from the Halliburtons, Boeing, Northrops clear down to the Roach Coaches that bring lunch to the factories.
Mike -
I've never seen anything even close to what you're claiming. Can you link to your source(s)?
Here are mine (supporting data directly from the government is below):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget
Wikipedia puts this into a nice format, but, as mentioned, the data comes directly from the government (the GPO):
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/fct.html
Unless the government's own data is incorrect, Defense is BY FAR the largest budget item for the United States (only Social Security comes close).
Education and Health Services are each about 10% of the Defense budget...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending
Spending by major government function
Pensions $747.1 5.7
Health Care $783.8 6.0
Education $900.8 6.9
Defense $622.2 4.8
Welfare $411.4 3.2
Interest $312.3 2.4
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numbers/expenses.cfm
This one is very interesting. It shows that 54% of the Federal Government's spending is in the MANDATORY Category and 38% is in the DISCRETIONARY Category. The Military is in the DISCRETIONARY Category.
Jason
Your Wikipedia link SEPARATES Medicare and Medicaid, both are Health Costs.
Here is the quote I LOVE from the Wikipedia link, "The total deficit for fiscal year 2009 was $1.42 trillion, a $960 billion increase from the 2008 deficit." You go Barry, you know how to balance a budget!
Okay, thanks for those links...now I see where the discrepancy is coming from...
I'm talking about the discretionary spending -- these are things that our politicians can control without passing new laws. There's no doubt that things like SS and Medicare are huge drains on the system, but unfortunately that's not something that politicians have any control over on a year-to-year budgetary cycle.
If you look at the things that politicians DO control (the expenditures that aren't governed by law), Defense is more than 50% of the total spending...
Btw, I certainly think our politicians should be looking at the mandatory expenditures as well, but I'm not confident anyone will be successful at getting things like SS and Medicare legal dismantled. And this is also the reason why I hate the health care bill -- something that will necessarily affect our budget for decades to come needs to be something that most of our nation agrees upon (but that's a separate thread :)...
Well I still work in the defense industry and have for going on a decade now. There is certainly a lot of waste, but overall this isn't something I mind spending my tax dollars on. Protecting our citizens is arguably the MOST important function of government.
The wars abroad right now are forcing us to retool our military strategy to fight the new enemy....terrorists. We fought them with what we had a decade ago and we are slowly retooling to fight them with new technology. I work on unmanned aerial vehicles, which will directly be used to engage the enemy and keep our nation on the offensive with respect to terrorist cells.
Our strategy certainly hasn't been perfect, but what is the alternative? Would everyone prefer to let the terrorists roost overseas and sucker punch us every few years?
Protecting our citizens is arguably the ONLY function of government.
Go on with your day.
Anyone remember Star Wars during Reagan's presidency? Sure is weired that no ones gone back to the moon in the last decade especially with all this technology. Any of you studied the Bohemian Grove? I don't have any proof but I've head that our presidents are puppets and are chosen by the REAL owners of this nation. FEMA another topic. Hope this isn't so....
During the Vietnam War the American arms companies made a lot of money selling weapons to Cambodia, Laos & North Vietnam. Lawyer students went to Russia to burn the US Flag in protest and later one got to be President. War can be profitable! When politics get involved military people die from the stupid decisions made by individuals in ivory towers who have no idea what is actually going on.
I'm not posting anymore in any of the ridiculous partisan political threads here, but this seems non-partisan enough (so far) that I'll take a stab...hopefully we can keep it that way... :)
What Bryan said above is part of the problem...people think there are no alternatives other than sending in hundreds of thousands of ground troops to try to root out a few thousand "terrorists" who are hiding in plain sight. At the same time, the troops are (usually inadvertently) killing thousands of civilians, which in turns creates more "terrorists."
The longer we implement this particular strategy, the bigger the problem becomes...at least that's been the conclusion of several military strategists and empirical evidence from the past 10 years.
Personally, I think there are better strategies...and many of them happen to be a lot more cost effective as well.
I won't go into the idea of trying Diplomacy and Tolerance, as this country has already been brainwashed into believing that can't work, thanks to our politicians (on both sides of the party line) who are constantly pumping fear and propaganda into us. But, that's probably the most inexpensive and cost-effective strategy there is. But again, I won't argue that anymore, because most of us have already been deceived into believing it can't work.
Because terrorism is based on a distributed network of individuals as opposed to a centrally located group of nationals, it makes sense to focus on infiltrating and disrupting the network. That's done through technology. Unfortunately, developing and using that technology requires a pool of intellectual talent that is dwindling in this country. With all the back-lash against higher education and "elitism" (I've even seen it here on this forum), those that have the opportunity to get the type of education that is required to develop the technology to win this "war" are being discouraged from doing so.
Improve our educational system, once again encourage our citizens to become the most technically advanced in the world (instead of discouraging it), and then we'll be able to fight this "war" in more effective ways than putting ten thousand troops into a random village.
In addition, take the $100B this country is going to spend in the next 5 years on advanced aircraft that won't do us any good in this particular war, and use that money to build communications technology that WILL allow us to disrupt our enemies, as well as build technology like that which Bryan is working on, which can accomplish much more for much less cost, risk, and collateral damage.
Ask any military historian what the most instrumental part of winning WWII was, and he won't say the atom bomb or our superior aircraft -- he'll say it was our ability to break into our enemy's communications channels and then ultimately break their codes -- allowing us access to their strategies and locations. Ultimately, the key to the allied success in WWII were a couple of smart guys like Alan Turing, whose salary was pocket change compared to the billions that were spent on bombs and war-craft.
Instead of building better airplanes and bigger bombs (neither of which we need or will likely need anytime soon), we instead should focus on new and different strategies, and it's likely we'll find that those new strategies will not only be more effective, but more inexpensive as well.
Sounds like a win/win to me...
But again, most people can't get their head around using technology to fight a war...it seems too "elitist" to them...
I agree with much of what you said JScott. I think the point of disagreement is that all of this can be done with tactical strike forces. You still need to have some controlled point to launch attacks from. That has to be done with ground troops and it involves sending young men and women over to bad countries that harvest terrorists.
Diplomacy is often exhausted in many cases. I for one think we do a pretty good job of using that option. Sometimes we may err on the side of war, but I would argue that is to show some strength and make people think twice about messing with us.
There certainly is a lot of waste in the war machine, but this stuff is expensive! Without constant training and incentive to work in the defense industry instead of elsewhere engineers find a better deal and move on. I still think that the economic part of the equation is why we don't have many people getting "educated" in this country. It is more profitable to go to law school and become a securities lawyer or tax lawyer than it is to develop high technology. Until that changes there will constantly be a brain suck away from engineering and hard sciences.
It started with WWII, then war against Socialism, then Korean war, then Vietnam, then war against drugs, then war against crime/criminal and now war against terror and the "axis of evil".
It should also be noted that no sitting president has been unseated during a war. Thus, is it not in the politician's interest to start/maintain an ongoing war?
War is very different from sports or athletics. Sports are competitive while war may demand the ultimate sacrifice from many. However, being at war allows majority in the nation to spectate something from afar while rooting against a common enemy.
Just some thoughts.
Past 60 years? From 74 to 84? War on drugs wa an expression as well as with criminal elements, don't recall any declared war.
guns or butter, the economic impact!
From 74 to 84?
The Cold War...
Very much an ideological war...
J Scott
I have to admit, you make a lot of sense. But I would like to get back to the root of the problem.
My first question is this, "Is man basically 'good' or 'evil?' I believe there is overwhelming evidence that man is basically evil. Even the religions that man creates are basically evil. Every government man has created is evil. Religions and Governments are created for two reasons, to extract money/resources from man and to control man's behavior.
While modern technology is the number one key against terrorism, the US has a lot more enemies than just terrorists. North Korea and Iran have strong nuclear ambitions. Russia has started some sabre rattling again. The US does need to have the largest military in the world if we want to keep the freedom's that we have. To what degree, that is up for debate. I saw on The History Channel last night that the US Navy 'tonnage' is MORE than the next 17 largest Navies in the world, combined. And we don't have 8 year olds in Indonesia building Nuclear Submarines for us (but they may be making components for it). The part I love about the US Military Industrial Complex is that is creates LOTS of American jobs. And I would much rather see my Tax Dollar go to Halliburton than a Welfare Bum. I would also much rather see my tax dollar go to a college education than a Section 8 tenant.
To answer the original posted question, "War! What is it good for?" My answer is simple, to kill the bad guy(s). Who are the bad guys? Those who murder innocent people, ie. Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, etc... No amount of 'technology' or 'diplomacy' was going to stop them.
In Paradise, there would be no need for war. But we don't live in a Paradise.
While I don't really believe in "good" and "evil" per se, I certainly agree with the sentiment...
From my perspective, I believe that man's primary instinct is for survival -- even if that means having to kill to survive. If it weren't for this instinct, man would have been extinct long ago. And despite our ability to build relatively civilized colonies over the past ten thousand years, that instinct for survival isn't going away any time soon.
War is just the expression of this will to survive and to propagate...and like the instinct, it's not going away any time soon...
And for those who believe in "evil," I certainly see how this would support the belief that man is inherently evil...
In theory, I agree...
But when you mix in greed (and the politics that go along with greed), the lines get a bit murky. Greed drives those in power (again, on both sides of the party line) to extend the definition of "bad guy" from "those who are trying to kill us" to "those who control the resources we want" and even sometimes "those who disagree with us." And it's a slippery slope...
In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with war when it's to protect "innocent" people, but I think you have to be pretty blind to think that this country has never gone to war for less pure reasons then that. And when we do go to war for less pure reasons, it hurts us in many ways, including economically, socially, and politically. It's our job as citizens to ensure that we don't take war lightly and that we do it only when it's absolutely necessary and only when it's absolutely for the right reason (to protect innocent lives).
When we go to war for other reasons (such as greed), we become "the bad guys"...
Therein lies the conundrum, if all man is evil then all man is bad.