3 ms·

I'm pretty pro-military, but "70 years of peace" is ridiculously inaccurate. We had the Korean War running until 1953 (which involved the following: USA, USSA,

by greedo 4y ago

I'm pretty pro-military, but "70 years of peace" is ridiculously inaccurate. We had the Korean War running until 1953 (which involved the following: USA, USSA, PRC, AU, Canada, the list goes on). Shortly after, the US begins covert assistance and operations in Vietnam (which ended up involving the USA, USSR, PRC etc etc.)This continued until 1975. The US had a brief break from overt warfare until Grenada in the 80s, followed quickly by Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Since then it's been pretty much continuous warfare by US troops to this day. Just because we don't see it on the news every night, US servicemen are fighting in Africa, in the Middle East, and obviously the Navy is present in almost all the oceans in significant levels. Sure the USN enables free trade. And I have no issue with a well-funded navy, with clear goals and objectives. But the rest of the military is bloated beyond reasonable belief, committed to tasks that are undemocratic, and as others have pointed out, when you have a large, expensive military, the temptation to use it irresponsibly is high.

hervature 4y ago
That's my laziness of not couching all my statements with more nuance. There is the famous stat of the US having a pretty small number of years of peace since inception. The "70 years of peace" was meant to be the perception bit you talk about but also more "peace at home". In all the conflicts you mention, the US was doing something it didn't need to do in order to defend itself. People were/are course afraid of nukes, but I think that's a very different sentiment. If my comments are coming across as endorsing the entirety of the US military and that it is infallible, that was not the intent. I mostly just called people elitist for claiming that academic pursuits are more worthy of funding than the equivalent defense expenditure on the sole basis of academic=good and soldier=bad. Based on my other comments, you can see that I even believe that the technological progress spurred by defense needs is greater than throwing the same amount of money at research.
- tchalla 4y ago
  Ha, benevolent US defending itself! Exhibit A - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
  - hervature 4y ago
    What I said: > the US was doing something it didn't need to do in order to defend itself Note the negation.

by greedo 4y ago

hervature 4y ago

That's my laziness of not couching all my statements with more nuance. There is the famous stat of the US having a pretty small number of years of peace since inception. The "70 years of peace" was meant to be the perception bit you talk about but also more "peace at home". In all the conflicts you mention, the US was doing something it didn't need to do in order to defend itself. People were/are course afraid of nukes, but I think that's a very different sentiment. If my comments are coming across as endorsing the entirety of the US military and that it is infallible, that was not the intent. I mostly just called people elitist for claiming that academic pursuits are more worthy of funding than the equivalent defense expenditure on the sole basis of academic=good and soldier=bad. Based on my other comments, you can see that I even believe that the technological progress spurred by defense needs is greater than throwing the same amount of money at research.

tchalla 4y ago
Ha, benevolent US defending itself! Exhibit A - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
- hervature 4y ago
  What I said: > the US was doing something it didn't need to do in order to defend itself Note the negation.