Hey, whatever happened to the riots? ... And foreign policy discussion
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, June 12, 2025 16:53
VIEWED: 4361
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Quote:It is about money. Military Spending Has Been Remarkably Flat Over the Past 50 Years. It goes up and down during wars and peacetime, but ever since we came down from the Vietnam peak it’s remarkable how steady it’s been. The American populace seems willing to spend about $2000 each for defense, and that changes only modestly and temporarily over time.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
WISHY, hon, WHAT are we doing in Moldova ... Iraq ... Afghanistan ... Syria... Straits of Taiwan ... Venezuela ... Afghanistan ... Yemen ... Libya ... Sudan ... ?
They're not exactly our country .
So who, or what, are we "defending"?
BTW, I really don't expect a straight answer from you. But I hope you surprise me.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/12/military-spending-has-b
een-remarkably-flat-over-the-past-50-years/
Now that I think of it, military spending would decrease year after year if there were not new places to justify spending steadily: Moldova ... Iraq ... Afghanistan ... Syria... Straits of Taiwan ... Venezuela ... Afghanistan ... Yemen ... Libya ... Sudan ... ? Congressmen in the 50 states do NOT want military spending to decrease in their particular state. They all work together for the good of each state's economy, in partnership with the strategists in the Dept. of Defense and State, to keep the spending nice and steady. It is a jobs program. It supports your local defense contractor. It keeps stock prices up for investors in the defense industries.
Typical story for one state. Multiply by 50 states and the total means the military must pick fights all over the world to keep spending steady back in the US: "Here’s What The Defense Spending Bill Means For Hawaii And The Pacific"
The defense funding bill for next year puts a heavy emphasis on military operations in the Pacific amid growing tensions between the United States and China, calling for a review of U.S. missile defense systems and restoring funding for a new missile defense radar facility in Hawaii.
The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed by an overwhelming majority in the U.S. Senate on Friday, also included $301 million for construction projects on Hawaii bases, including two new child development centers for military families, a new aircraft maintenance hangar and wharf improvement projects.
https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/12/heres-what-the-defense-spending-bill
-means-for-hawaii-and-the-pacific/
One more story from Stars and Stripes: "Congress has agreed on a $740.5B defense bill; here's how it impacts pay, ACFT, Space Force and more"
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/congress-has-agreed-on-a-740-5b-defens
e-bill-here-s-how-it-impacts-pay-acft-space-force-and-more-1.654245
“Just as Congress has done for the last 59 years in a row, we have reached a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021,” Sens. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said Thursday in a joint statement.
Senators do not know what war and where the Pentagon will be fighting in 2021, but Senators know precisely how much money will be spent in their state.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol Whatever you say Capn' Cuckklefuck.
Let us know when you're DM'ed by SIGNUTS, "6, sweetie, you're soooo smart... I have a favor to ask. It has to do with your dream of reducing the population...can you gas up the RV?"
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGWANK:
Well, do you live in America??? The police are mostly controlled by mayors and county supervisors.
Trump ... not much to do with that.
Yes he did.
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGWANK:
AFA "people seeking a freer world" ... let's see how "free" you are under Joe Biden*. Bet the media and corporate social media oligopolies continue to censor and defame as they have every right to (they'll never get broken up or lose 230 protections), hospital corps and big pharma and insurances continue to suck money out of the USA economy without consequence (so long as the senate is held by the uber rich and utterly corrupt GOP), the MIC gets a crap-ton of money (THAT'LL never change!),
fify
??? MIC ???
Men In Coats? Congress?
MIC
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lemme know
Then you just made a bunch of negative wild ass guesses because you love Trump, and then, the worst:
"Yep, no more Trump murdering Americans sounds like a win for the American people and the world!!"
fify
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Quote:So, we defend THE PLANET? This is the first thing I have issue with. Even IF we REALLY were "defending the plant" against bad guy (and I have issue with that too) I don't think it's our responsibility to fight everyone, everywhere. And it's not in our best interest, even in the long run. It's bad for us to be spending blood and money on foreign soil when we are neglecting our own nation.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So who, or what, are we "defending"?
WISHY: WE ARE DEFENDING THE PLANET FROM MILTANT TAKEOVERS, USUALLY WITH THE HELP OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS,
Yanno, if we wanted to engage in "nation building" maybe we should start here, and upgrade our infrastructure and health care.
Quote:Well, this is where we have a strong disagreement.
WHO HAVE THIS REALLY SILLY IDEA THAT MILITANTS ARE BAAAAAD.
If that's the case, then why do WE use militants and terrorists as proxies?
We did in Afghanistan under Carter (INCUDING OSAMA BIN LADEN, DIRECTLY) to drive out the Soviet-backed government ... destroyed roads, hospitals, schools, airports. Drove out a government that backed RIGHTS AND EDUCATION FOR WOMEN and shoved women back into the home and under the niqab and under the control of fundamentalist Islamicists and warlords. So many recently educated women ... doctors, engineers, teachers ... were so distraught at the sudden LOSS OF FREEDOM that they suicided. We created such DESTABILIZATION that the entire Afghanistan collapsed, back to the stone age. We even joked, in our SECOND war on Afghanistan under GWB, that we would bomb them BACK INTO THE STONE AGE from which they had just recently emerged. Why were we bombing the very people we had put in power??
So, who were we "defending"? Did our wars on Afghanistan make things better, or worse, for the people there (especially women)?
Ok, let's look at Niacaragua. In much the same way that we entered on the side of oppression in Afghanistan, we entered on the side of the elite in Nicaragua under Reagan. In a complex deal, our semi-black ops military (Oliver North) made money by selling arms to fundamentalists in IRAN (yep) and used that money to fund ANTI-GOVERNMENT RIGHT WING DEATH SQUADS in Nicaragua. Now, the government's aims at the times were pretty modest: education for everyone, health care for everyone, and land reform that would take some land away from plantation owners and give it to people to farm so they could at least support themselves at a level above starvation. Most people supported the reforms, but the Nicaraguan elites ... well, not so much. Se WE CAME IN ON THE SIDE OF THE ELITES.
Syria. What started out as a political reform movement ended up as a magnet for every flavor of jihadist and terrorst fighting against the government. WE armed, trained, and funded jihadists directly in Jordan, and we protected them by providing air cover for their takeover of the Syrian oil fields, and their sale of illegal oil to Turkey. OUR BUDDIES, the Saudis, funded ISIS DIRECTLY. For a while, when Raqqa was the capital of the "ISIS caliphate", the Saudi dinar was the official currency. The Saudis also supplied them with amphetamines. In ISIS war on Syria, we saw them behead their enemies, BURN WOMEN ALIVE IN CAGES, and take girls and women as slaves. Once again, we were ON THE SIDE OFOPPRESSION.
Libya: Under Qaddafi, Libya had the highest living standard of any nation in Africa. He used Libya's oil money to invest in the country. Everyone was well-fed, women were educated to the same level as men, newlyweds even got a free home or apartment. Then we bombed the snot out of Libya, and USING JIHADISTS AS PROXIES drove Qadaffi from power. Libya is now an OPEN AIR SLAVE MARKET.
I could point to example after example where we came in on the WRONG SIDE, making life a hell for the people living there.
So I dispute that we are "defending" from oppression. If you look at the ACTUAL RESULTS of our "interventions" we usuall
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SECOND: It war was merely a case of "making money" then you might think that we would come in on the side of angels, at least once in a while, by sheer random chance.
But we come in on the side of the elites and terrorists, leaving nations much worse than when we found them, and it happens so often that there's got to be more than random chance at work.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol Whatever you say Capn' Cuckklefuck.
Let us know when you're DM'ed by SIGNUTS, "6, sweetie, you're soooo smart... I have a favor to ask. It has to do with your dream of reducing the population...can you gas up the RV?"
It's funny because it thinks that flattery can get money out of me.
What have you done today to earn your place in this crowded world? :)
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Quote:The Best and Brightest Americans have given it some thought. What was the result of all that thinking? I'll give a long quote from the book "The Best and Brightest" in a foreword by Sen. John McCain about Vietnam and the politicians/bureaucrats in charge:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Give it some thought: How can people best be freed?
No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone. In the end, the men whose characters, motivation, and reasoning Halberstam reveals so convincingly lacked the necessary resolve to succeed because they misjudged the enemy’s resolve. They misjudged American power. They misjudged our South Vietnamese allies. They misjudged the Soviets and the Chinese. They misjudged the world. And, most of all, they misjudged themselves. Or so it seems to many who lost good years or their health or happiness as a consequence of their monumental misjudgments, to say nothing of those who lost their lives.
I have often seen this book’s title described as ironic. I don’t think it is. The men who sent Americans to war in Vietnam were, by many standards, the best and the brightest. They were extraordinarily intelligent, well-educated, informed, experienced, patriotic, and capable leaders. They were elegant and persuasive. They seemed born to govern, and America once had as much confidence in them as they so abundantly had in themselves. But, in the end, they had more confidence than vision, and that failing bred in them a fateful hubris. No irony here, but a classic tragedy.
I very much doubt that Americans will ever again believe that our country has a native governing class. That’s one of the lessons of our war in Vietnam, and of the book that best explains how we got there.
You can download the entire book for free at https://libgen.unblockit.dev/search.php?req=Halberstam+best+and+bright
est
In my opinion, the governing class of America in 2020 cannot do better than governing class of the 1960's. Any thinking that class does now is worthless on the Signym's question "How can people best be freed?"
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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War is a poor tool for generating freedom. It's not impossible, but you MUST have a clear enemy who is an oppressor, and that oppressor must not have the general support of the population.
The Vietnamese originally were trying to free themselves from French colonial power.
Naturally, we came in on the side of the French.
From there, it all went downhill because we did not define our goals.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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We don't actually have any goals, Sigs.
That's exactly the way the Establishment wants us.
They've got goals. And the details are above any of our pay-grade.
What have you done today to earn your place in this crowded world? :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
We don't actually have any goals, Sigs.
That's exactly the way the Establishment wants us.
They've got goals. And the details are above any of our pay-grade.
What have you done today to earn your place in this crowded world? :)
Well, yes, THEY have goals: to steal as much money and power as possible from across the globe, and pit people against each other.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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