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 i

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.