3 ms·
If you are arguing that Western Europeans were powerless to do anything about it, yes, that is an argument in favor of having a sizable military -- but not nece
by mmagin 10y ago
If you are arguing that Western Europeans were powerless to do anything about it, yes, that is an argument in favor of having a sizable military -- but not necessarily an argument in favor of taking action with it.
If you are arguing that they just chose not to do anything, and the US intervention was virtuous -- that does not necessarily show that other US military actions in the past 30 years are similarly valuable.
- Retric 10y ago> but not necessarily an argument in favor of taking action with it. Stopping genocide is the clearest justification for "taking action" with a large military. IMO, the issue is not that the US has a large military. Scale is hard to judge, but the US has a ridiculously huge military. The US military is designed to fight 3 wars at the same time which seems to be vast overkill. The #1 Air Force in the world in term of military strength is US Air Force, #2 Air Force in the world is the US Navy. That's vastly beyond what it takes to deal with local genocide. PS: Consider the F-15 Eagle introduced in 1976 currently has a world wide 100:0 kill loss ratio in Aerial Combat, that took an insane amount of R&D and training. In fact the production is scheduled to in in 2019. While impressive it's hard to call that anything but overkill.