Bankrupt Country Or Big Military?

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New member
bhbcu64 has asserted that the "The defense budget is bloated."

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Bassman replied "So you'd rather we have NO military??"

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Aside from the ridiculous false dilemma that bassman created, which would you rather have:

A Bankrupt Country and a big military or a Solvent Country and a sustainable military?
 
I don't want a bankrupt country OR a weak military. However, I believe that Defense is MUCH more of a mandate for the federal government than wealth redistribution is in line with what the founding fathers had in mind...
 
Well,

How I'd go about doing things is have a big, gigantic military that's modeled after Viking raiders.
We'd use that to loot everything we can to keep it running and to bring home insane wealth for the citizens to luxuriate in.
Amd, we'd all hide behind a nuclear missile and ABM shield.

And it's what I'll enact if you elect me for president in 2012.

Come on!
You know they're predicting the end of the world around then.
So, it's like a sure thing that I'll be elected.

Either that, or Hillary gets elected and pushes the big red button thinking it's for Staples(tm).
 
The question is flawed. If you've bankrupted the country, you won't have a military come payday. The question should be what do we want the govt's job to be and how much are we willing to sacrifice for it to get the job done.
 
What is wrong with a big military and a solvent country? Seems to me that we had it before, we could certainly have it now. Besides, when you are engaged in a war, probably not the best time to go shrinking the military. And why is it that as soon as the economy goes down the pooper, people start trying to shave down the military? Aren't there plenty of other wasteful and corrupt sectors of the government that we can do without? Aren't there plenty of redundant and obsolete programs and agencies that we could eliminate?
 
No...we really didnt have it before.

Until after WWII, we never had much of a standing army in this country. After WWII, and as the years wore on, we ignored the warnings of previous generations and kept up WWII level military spending because people foolishly assumed that spending a bunch of money on your military was the same as defense. The pathetic thing is that in pursuit of maintaining spending on our massive military we have de-prioritized things that actually DO make for a strong country. If we had to re-fight WWII today, we would lose, and lose horribly. If we had to fight CHINA today, we would lose, and lose horribly because we no longer have the industrial capacity to produce the equipment and supplies needed. That is one thing that the Iraq war should have taught us. The military has depleted so much equipment in Iraq, and replacement has been so slow, that only half our combat units are now combat ready. It took us the same amount of time for us to produce armor kits for 40,000 hummers that it took us to design, build, and deploy 95,000 Sherman tanks...and we were not even at war yet when we did that. It took so long because it turned out there were no US manufacturers CAPABLE of producing the materials needed, so we had to wait for overseas manufacturers to produce the raw materials before we could even start. Then there were only 2 facilities in the country CAPABLE of producing the armor from the raw materials.

NO, you cannot substitute shaving down other programs for cutting the military because the VAST majority of discretionary spending goes to the military. When you factor in debt service costs, we spend more on military than any other 2 discretionary programs. It is absolutely impossible for a country to keep up this level of military spending. It cannot be done and WILL lead to the collapse of the country. THERE IS NO OTHER POSSIBLE OUTCOME.

We are very literally opting to destroy our nation in the name of defending it. This is a particularly heinous crime given the fact that the last time the US actually had to fight a defensive war, the year was 1812 and the British were coming.
 
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