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Is the price of Imperialism worth it?

Is the US Military budget morally reasonable and sane?

  • The budget is reasonable.

    Votes: 7 35.0%

  • The budget is unreasonable.

    Votes: 6 30.0%

  • The military budget is insane.

    Votes: 6 30.0%

  • The military budget is immoral and insane.

    Votes: 8 40.0%

  • War is good business and that is big military.

    Votes: 1 5.0%

  • Imperialism and Empire are expensive, military required.

    Votes: 2 10.0%
  • Total voters
    20
  • Poll closed .
Peter Grimm said:
I'm glad that power vacuum isn't being filled by the Chinese or the Russians.
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This is the essence of the most salient argument for American military superiority. If not us, then who? American "imperialism" might be bad, but envision a Soviet or ChiCom imperialism...

Europeans. They spend nothing on a military, and get all the benefits of peace and stability on America's dime. Personally, I think we should charge for our services.
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...and get to indulge in the fantasy that their hands are clean. As does anyone else who tut-tut's the U.S. for its military.

A reasonable person can disagree with various policies, expenditures, etc. But to question the U.S.A.'s status as world hegemon is foolishness, unless you are a person with an eye for gaining that power themselves.
 
i can't vote in the poll because of the wording, but i will say that i think our best strategy going forward would be to maintain a reasonable military for a country our size, honor and even increase our commitments to veterans, concentrate on cybersecurity, and to vastly reduce our presence on the world stage. this could be accomplished while significantly cutting the military budget.

put simply, we spend more than everyone else combined, and we are providing a police service for the world while not getting paid to do it. i don't think that should be our role or our national mission. eventually, we're going to have to take care of some things at home, and i think that time should be now.
 
DaveFagan said:
Are we the World's most Imperialistic Nation?
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Currently, yes.

DaveFagan said:
Don't people realize what is happening?
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For the most part they’re tuned out. An apathetic people is a necessity to the establishment of a fascist state. People want their daily lives to go along uninterrupted from its daily monotony and so long as that is true, damn anything else.

DaveFagan said:
Is this news in the Major Media?
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Not really. There are news stories, they don’t really spend a lot of time talking about it or going over policy or showing how long and how much money we’ve spent, etc. The media is not looking to educate people; just give enough info so that the person doesn’t feel compelled to go look up more information on their own. That’s the line our current media walks.

DaveFagan said:
Are we over-militarized?
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Splugh! Yes we are over militarized, we spend way too much money on our military and we use it way too often (re always)

DaveFagan said:
Who gets the profit from all this?
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Government’s corporate friends and the new aristocracy. The same group of folk and businesses which always profit from government as government uses its force to ensure that these same entities/people win time and time again.

DaveFagan said:
Why isn't this a campaign issue?
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Both sides are doing it and neither side wants to stop. This is not something they want brought to the People’s attention, they do not want people thinking about it. They want their finger pointing issues like abortion and gay marriage (were nothing will change), but not something to make people think. Thinking people are bad to the status quo.
 
Ikari said:
Currently, yes.



For the most part they’re tuned out. An apathetic people is a necessity to the establishment of a fascist state. People want their daily lives to go along uninterrupted from its daily monotony and so long as that is true, damn anything else.



Not really. There are news stories, they don’t really spend a lot of time talking about it or going over policy or showing how long and how much money we’ve spent, etc. The media is not looking to educate people; just give enough info so that the person doesn’t feel compelled to go look up more information on their own. That’s the line our current media walks.



Splugh! Yes we are over militarized, we spend way too much money on our military and we use it way too often (re always)



Government’s corporate friends and the new aristocracy. The same group of folk and businesses which always profit from government as government uses its force to ensure that these same entities/people win time and time again.




Both sides are doing it and neither side wants to stop. This is not something they want brought to the People’s attention, they do not want people thinking about it. They want their finger pointing issues like abortion and gay marriage (were nothing will change), but not something to make people think. Thinking people are bad to the status quo.
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The worst part of all of this is that we have become a Nation dependent upon the labor created by the Military/Industrial/Energy/Corporate complex. Even the CIA is chartered to assist USA CORPORATIONS overseas, not Mr. and Mrs. John Doe overseas. Why is that? Were Corporations powerful enough to get their own militant arm operating outside the USA on the taxpayers dollar? It would appear so. That might go a long way in explaining why Nations with OIL are in our crosshairs. Wars run on ENERGY. As long as OIL is traded in USDollars, then there is a demand for dollars worldwide and these dollars are never repatriated. We are 5% of the World's population and have created 25-30 percent of the World's pollution. That puts the onus on us for the lion's share of Global Warming responsibility. As regards the USDollar, the Federal Reserve Dollar, backed by "full faith and credit" and the fact that it has no real backing, except our strong military. It's money because the guys with the big sticks say it is! That's reality!
 
Agree to disagree then. I am not a big fan, but I do think if you're going to admire an American President, you could certainly do worse than President Eisenhower.

Like I said, I think he was well-meaning, but he could have handled a lot of things better.

Jetboogieman said:
He may have ended a nuclear war.

And as a Brit stopped us from making a terrible mistake, we went into the Suez to recover our investments as a nation under the false pretense of peacekeeping.

Eisenhower did the right thing.



Eisenhower threatened Nuclear War against China and the threats worked.

Eisenhower showed great judgement in not getting involved in a ground war with the Chinese in North Korea or Chinese Soil.

The continuation of North Korea is unfortunate but it was alot better than the alternative.



Macarthur had his day during WW2.

Macarthur overeached during Korea and his dismissal by Truman was one of the most important in the United States history in maintaining civilian control over the military.



At the end of the day the point stands.

The space race provided no tactical advantage for either party.

We can get into an argument over how the moon landings or Sputnik effected the worlds view of the respective powers but at the end of the day that doesn't mean jack within the confines of who would have won a military conflict.

Nations who aligned themselves with either side did not do so on the basis of who had the fanciest space toys.

They did so in who offered them the most, whether that be financial, military or other aid.



Again... unfortunate.

But intervening may have meant an armed conflict between the USSR and the USA and it's allies.

Not an option.

Once again Eisenhower saw the bigger picture.

He was a great president.
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Peter Grimm said:
Agree to disagree then. I am not a big fan, but I do think if you're going to admire an American President, you could certainly do worse than President Eisenhower.

Like I said, I think he was well-meaning, but he could have handled a lot of things better.
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Hey fair enough, always great to debate history.

Perhaps he could have handled things better but that's always easy to say in hindsight.

Cheers!
 
ChuckBerry said:
This is the essence of the most salient argument for American military superiority. If not us, then who? American "imperialism" might be bad, but envision a Soviet or ChiCom imperialism...
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Exactly. A lot of people don't realize that. They believe that if the USA becomes less powerful, then the world will be exactly the same minus a powerful America. Actually, someone ALWAYS comes in to fill the power vacuum.
 
People are led to being in denial over it, but the Arabs' overcharging us dozens of times the production cost of oil has been the main cause of our economic decline. We are just proving the disaster of abandoning the kind of imperialism believed in during the 19th Century (including the American takeover of Indian land). The idea was that the backward tribes were incapable of developing their own non-primitive resources, therefore forfeiting ownership of them, and that they were natural thieves, incapable of doing business in a socially acceptable manner, such as charging a fair price in relation to cost.
 
I thought the title of this thread was a comment made by Vader to Palpatine in a rare moment of weakness after the destruction of the first Death Star.
 
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I think the next candidate must go farther than reduce the Pentagon by half but also prmonise to shut down the CIA. The criminal CIA represents a government within a government
 
Kane said:
I think the next candidate must go farther than reduce the Pentagon by half but also prmonise to shut down the CIA. The criminal CIA represents a government within a government
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The CIA doesn't need a watchdog, it needs a seeing-eye dog. Without any excuse except the lame one of "we can't talk about our successes," they've guessed wrong time and time again. The treatment of one of their few brilliant operatives that was portrayed in Charlie Wilson's War reveals their true incompetence and uselessness to prevent foreign-policy disasters. They are a fun house of frat boys and abstract academics. Instead of recruiting these clowns, they should hire High IQs untainted by academentia or at least hire successful police detectives. Such proven talent should be trained fresh about secret and relevant foreign undercurrents.
 
PrometheusBound said:
The CIA doesn't need a watchdog, it needs a seeing-eye dog. Without any excuse except the lame one of "we can't talk about our successes," they've guessed wrong time and time again. The treatment of one of their few brilliant operatives that was portrayed in Charlie Wilson's War reveals their true incompetence and uselessness to prevent foreign-policy disasters. They are a fun house of frat boys and abstract academics. Instead of recruiting these clowns, they should hire High IQs untainted by academentia or at least hire successful police detectives. Such proven talent should be trained fresh about secret and relevant foreign undercurrents.
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The promiise to shut down the CIA, the criminal CIA represents a government within a government, is non-negotiable. Wimpy liberals like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton have been making deals and looking the other way at CIA criminality for far too long, SHUT IT DOWN.:peace


Afghanistan vs. the Soviets was masterminded and carried out by CIA Director William Casey. Read the book THE LAST DAYS OF THE CIA by Mark Perry. Its a good map of how the CIAs policies really created the war on terror by funding villians the world over.

Charlie Wilsons War w/ Tom Hanks, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is pure BS
 
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Kane said:
the CIAs policies really created the war on terror by funding villians the world over.
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Wait, created the 'war on terror' or created terrorism.
 
Kane said:
Charlie Wilsons War w/ Tom Hanks, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is pure BS
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I believe random Hollywood movies not even pretending to be based on reality more than I believe CT. Tom Hanks and whoever that other guy is win.
 
It takes a lot of cash to be top dog. Imagine how quickly the world would spiral if we weren't smacking greedy little hands.
 
DaveFagan said:
The US is the World's Biggest War-Monger | This Can't Be Happening

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”(Dwight D. Eisenhower)

Are we the World's most Imperialistic Nation?
Don't people realize what is happening?
Is this news in the Major Media?
Are we over-militarized?
Who gets the profit from all this?
Why isn't this a campaign issue?
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I don't see us an empire but rather an hegemony. We fought a revolution against this kind of thing. But if other people do it, they're called insurgents.
 
Kane said:
The promiise to shut down the CIA, the criminal CIA represents a government within a government, is non-negotiable. Wimpy liberals like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton have been making deals and looking the other way at CIA criminality for far too long, SHUT IT DOWN.:peace


Afghanistan vs. the Soviets was masterminded and carried out by CIA Director William Casey. Read the book THE LAST DAYS OF THE CIA by Mark Perry. Its a good map of how the CIAs policies really created the war on terror by funding villians the world over.

Charlie Wilsons War w/ Tom Hanks, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is pure BS
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You are just covering up for their hiring policies, where the same ambitious imbeciles run things that run businesses and the government, or wherever your own gurus are in charge. If you would admit how misleading the credentials are of all these no-talent brown-noses, then you would feel safe that any conspiracy run by such bunglers would be bound to fail.

And what about the Conspiracy Conspiracy? Sacred Cows such as the blindly accepted way incompetent people get ahead in these Last Days of the USA cause most of our problems, so these leaders fund conspiracy cults to trick people into attacking non-existent plotters instead of the open perpetrators whose competence is never questioned, only their morals.
 
ecofarm said:
I believe random Hollywood movies not even pretending to be based on reality more than I believe CT. Tom Hanks and whoever that other guy is win.
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Another thing believable about it is that Wilson proved how even a backbencher Congressman could get things done if he was experienced, persistent, flexible, opportunistic, and creative enough. I don't believe this negativist excuse that the people in power are stuck by red tape and conflicting interests and so powerless to change anything. They broke it; they better fix it.
 
The way this question is worded makes me laugh.

Doesn't an "imperialist" have colonies, by nature? I must have missed all those wars of conquest America has embarked on in the last 50 years.

Just an FYI.... calling the United States "the imperialists" began with the Soviet Union during the height of the civil war. It was part of their anti-western propaganda. Fidel Castro started using the term in the 60's, and Latin American left-wingers have used it ever since. So you're in good company, OP.
 
Peter Grimm said:
The way this question is worded makes me laugh.

Doesn't an "imperialist" have colonies, by nature? I must have missed all those wars of conquest America has embarked on in the last 50 years.

Just an FYI.... calling the United States "the imperialists" began with the Soviet Union during the height of the civil war. It was part of their anti-western propaganda. Fidel Castro started using the term in the 60's, and Latin American left-wingers have used it ever since. So you're in good company, OP.
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I would presume that if one controlled a gov't sufficiently well, its industry, agriculture, etc. would also be under that control. Good examples would be Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc. "Banana Republics" then and now. In those Nations, we, the USA control bountiful agricultural production by management (gov't) and labor (citizens). We control the management like the recent management change in Honduras. Zelaya is out by artful coup orchestrated by the CIA to strengthen the management position and laborers, reporters, protesters, etc. are just collateral damage. Just one example among many. The fruits of Iraq are about OIL and USA multinationals. Libya is the same. If you get the fruits, the need to colonize locally is minimized. Grenada and cobalt. Who would have guessed that there is a lot of OIL in Iran. Syria is OIL, port, and pipelines. Afghanistan is pipeline and huge natural resources. To the victor go the spoils and it does not require occupation by the victors, but by their Corporations. Don't try to over-simplify the nature of imperialism to mean occupation.
 
We don't control the "banana republics" and never have.

The United Fruit Company (if I remember their name correctly) had massive land and railroad holdings in a number of central american countries. This is a private American company. For example, in Guatemala, there was a socialist takeover and they sought to nationalize the assets held by the United Fruit Company.

The leaders of The United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Bananas) had friends in high places (the CIA) and convinced them to give weapons and training to the resistance forces.

We don't run any central american country. We don't run Iraq. We don't run Afghanistan. We DO assert an influence over these countries, and we DO protect our interests as in the example I gave. That is NOT the same thing as simply taking over.

The Romans were imperialists. The British were imperialists. What they would do is take over a country, and put one of their own citizens in charge of running the whole country. They would make ALL the laws, they would do all the policing, everything. The closest the United States has ever come to imperialism is the way we ran Japan for a few years after WW2. That's it.

DaveFagan said:
I would presume that if one controlled a gov't sufficiently well, its industry, agriculture, etc. would also be under that control. Good examples would be Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc. "Banana Republics" then and now. In those Nations, we, the USA control bountiful agricultural production by management (gov't) and labor (citizens). We control the management like the recent management change in Honduras. Zelaya is out by artful coup orchestrated by the CIA to strengthen the management position and laborers, reporters, protesters, etc. are just collateral damage. Just one example among many. The fruits of Iraq are about OIL and USA multinationals. Libya is the same. If you get the fruits, the need to colonize locally is minimized. Grenada and cobalt. Who would have guessed that there is a lot of OIL in Iran. Syria is OIL, port, and pipelines. Afghanistan is pipeline and huge natural resources. To the victor go the spoils and it does not require occupation by the victors, but by their Corporations. Don't try to over-simplify the nature of imperialism to mean occupation.
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In general yes he was. Unfortunately he also backed a coup to install a very repressive dictatorship in Guatemala which earned him the nickname "the butcher of Guatemala".
 
Peter Grimm said:
We don't control the "banana republics" and never have.

The United Fruit Company (if I remember their name correctly) had massive land and railroad holdings in a number of central american countries. This is a private American company. For example, in Guatemala, there was a socialist takeover and they sought to nationalize the assets held by the United Fruit Company.

The leaders of The United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Bananas) had friends in high places (the CIA) and convinced them to give weapons and training to the resistance forces.

We don't run any central american country. We don't run Iraq. We don't run Afghanistan. We DO assert an influence over these countries, and we DO protect our interests as in the example I gave. That is NOT the same thing as simply taking over.

The Romans were imperialists. The British were imperialists. What they would do is take over a country, and put one of their own citizens in charge of running the whole country. They would make ALL the laws, they would do all the policing, everything. The closest the United States has ever come to imperialism is the way we ran Japan for a few years after WW2. That's it.
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We, the USA, have military bases in approximately 140 Nations. Do that release that plug in the ol' cranium? Ex-lax won't do it. Wrong end. Same consistency and volume. You know, full.
 
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