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On Military and Spending, It’s Trump Versus Trump written by Ron Paul

Mr Person said:
What counts as "active opposition"?

I wasn't marching in the streets, maybe I should have, but I was certainly arguing with anyone who cared to argue about it (future parents-in-law included). I believe my position was that even if Saddam had nukes and admitted it, he still wouldn't pose a national security interest to the U.S., though the Kurds would certainly have a reason to worry.
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Show me where there was any opposition. Stop weedling and going off about yourself, if you know of anyone who received ink find it, post it.

BTW., I have been asking for this since a year after the invasion.
 
Gaius46 said:
I opposed both then and still do. Don't know where you were but lots of people in the US did.
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Show me "lots of people".

I was in Hollywood Florida, flew to Chicago and then Vancouver. In Florida they were loading a Fedex plane with military hardware....as we passed the entire plane we were on started cheering. The invasion came thee days later.

I saw no demonstrations, no show of opposition, instead the odd individual questioning if it was necessary.

Iraq did not become widely unpopular until after "Mission Accomplished"
 
Fearandloathing said:
Please show me a list of Americans who actively opposed either Afghanistan or Iraq. I was in the US when the war drums of weapons of mass destruction were sounding across the land... seemed the whole ****ing country was frightened those 'AY-rabs would nuke you all. I almost got beaten up by saying invading Iraq was "idiocy"

So when Americans suddenly come up with perfect rear vision I find it both humorous and frightening, because the same thing has now happened with Muslims.
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Mr Person said:
What counts as "active opposition"?

I wasn't marching in the streets, maybe I should have, but I was certainly arguing with anyone who cared to argue about it (future parents-in-law included). I believe my position was that even if Saddam had nukes and admitted it, he still wouldn't pose a national security interest to the U.S., though the Kurds would certainly have a reason to worry.
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Fearandloathing said:
Show me where there was any opposition. Stop weedling and going off about yourself, if you know of anyone who received ink find it, post it. BTW., I have been asking for this since a year after the invasion.
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You opened by "weedling and going off about yourself", claiming that your personal experience in America was that the whole country was for the Wars and claiming you almost got beat up for opposing it, but you don't think anyone should respond to that with their own personal opinions and experiences?

Sorry I bothered to ask what you'd personally count as "active opposition"....
 
Fearandloathing said:
Show me "lots of people".

I was in Hollywood Florida, flew to Chicago and then Vancouver. In Florida they were loading a Fedex plane with military hardware....as we passed the entire plane we were on started cheering. The invasion came thee days later.

I saw no demonstrations, no show of opposition, instead the odd individual questioning if it was necessary.

Iraq did not become widely unpopular until after "Mission Accomplished"
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Well you showed me a plane's worth of people and Hollywood Florida and Chicago, which are hardly bellwethers for the mood of the entire country.

I will certainly grant that a lot of Americans, probably most, were for the war from the outset and many of those still are despite the 17 year long horror show it's been. But say no one was opposed, or that the opposition was relegated to "the odd individual" certainly understates the reality.
 
Mac77 said:
There is no such thing as "strong enough" when the lives of American soldiers hang in the balance

Dont ask American kids to die in future wars because you are too much of a tightwad to give them the best chance to win
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This is a little like Rumsfeld and Bush Jr.'s thinking that "shock and awe" was going to do something useful for vindicating 9/11. After lots of bombing of civilians (?hundreds of thousands killed in Iraq), Osama was still sending us "wish you were here" videos from Pakistan. And the whole world, including most Americans, were left wondering what invading Iraq had anything to do with it. But we did see lots of our boys coming home in body bags though. We were shocked and awed alright.

It took "no drama Obama" to finally get Osama- with two helicopters and no casualties. He also got hundreds of other top Al Qaeda leadership all around the world with surgical drone strikes- with a minimum of civilian collateral damage. No fuss, no muss. It's the difference between a highly skilled microsurgeon and a butcher. One makes small movements, often under a microscope, that are amazingly effective and get the job done. The other hacks and there is a lot of blood and mess everywhere, it is highly destructive, and in the end, there is not much to show for it.

Conservatives are easily impressed with lots of hairy chest beating and blood splashing and cool toys. It's the level of maturity of a teenager playing video games at the arcade. We need a highly experienced surgeon at the job. This is not reality TV. If you want lots of "shock and awe", watch Jean Claude van Damme movies. In the real world, you need a highly knowledgeable and experienced statesman, not a reality TV star and real estate guy like Trump pretending to play one on TV.
 
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Gaius46 said:
I'm sure there is. And I'd like to see a lot of it gone too - I won't be upset if we get rid of the Department of Education as an example - seeing as how I'm a small government, states rights kind of person. That said I don't buy the line that's Trump's selling.

I don't believe he can increase military spending that much without raising taxes.

And moreover I don't think it's necessary. We have a huge and extremely capable and professional military that's been completely misused for the last 17 years. It doesn't need to be bigger. It needs to be given missions it can achieve.
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Maybe not

But I want trump and the repubs to honestly try and see how much they can come up with
 
ataraxia said:
This is a little like Rumsfeld and Bush Jr.'s thinking that "shock and awe" was going to do something useful for vindicating 9/11. After lots of bombing of civilians (?hundreds of thousands killed in Iraq), Osama was still sending us "wish you were here" videos from Pakistan. And the whole world, including most Americans, were left wondering what invading Iraq had anything to do with it. But we did see lots of our boys coming home in body bags though. We were shocked and awed alright.

It took "no drama Obama" to finally get Osama- with two helicopters and no casualties.

He also got hundreds of other top Al Qaeda leadership all around the world with surgical drone strikes- with a minimum of civilian collateral damage. No fuss, no muss. It's the difference between a highly skilled microsurgeon and a butcher. One makes small movements, often under a microscope, that are amazingly effective and get the job done. The other hacks and there is a lot of blood and mess everywhere, it is highly destructive, and in the end, there is not much to show for it.

Conservatives are easily impressed with lots of hairy chest beating and blood splashing. It's the level of maturity of a teenager. We need a highly experienced surgeon at the job. This is not reality TV. If you want lots of "shock and awe", watch Jean Claude van Damme movies. In the real world, you need a highly knowledgeable and experienced statesman, not a reality TV star and real estate guy like Trump pretending to play one on TV.
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Obama is starting to sound like the 40 year old guy who peaked in high school as the star quarterback but is the janitor there now

We found bin laden thanks to waterboarding when bush was in office

but it is now the high point of obamas legacy such as it is

Big deal
 
DA60 said:
'It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute. Consider his speech last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). It was reported as “fiery” and “blistering,” but it was also full of contradictions.

In the speech, President Trump correctly pointed out that the last 15 years of US military action in the Middle East has been an almost incomprehensible waste of money – six trillion dollars, he said – and that after all that US war and meddling the region was actually in worse shape than before we started.

It would have been better for US Presidents to have spent the last 15 years at the beach than to have pursued its Middle East war policy, he added, stating that the US infrastructure could have been rebuilt several times over with the money wasted on such militarism.

All good points from the President.

But then minutes later in the same speech he seemed to forget what he just said about wasting money on militarism. He promised he would be “upgrading all of our military, all of our military, offensive, defensive, everything,” in what would be “one of the greatest military buildups in American history.”

This “greatest” military buildup is in addition to the trillions he plans on spending to make sure the US nuclear arsenal is at the "top of the pack" in the world, as he told the press last Thursday. And that is in addition to the trillion dollar nuclear “modernization” program that is carrying over from the Obama Administration.

Of course when it comes to nuclear weapons, the United States already is at the “top of the pack,” having nearly 7,000 nuclear warheads. How many times do we need to be able to blow up the world?

At CPAC, President Trump is worried about needlessly spending money on military misadventures, but then in the same speech he promised even more military misadventures in the Middle East.

Where is the money going to come from for all this? Is the President going to raise taxes to pay for it? Is he going to make massive cuts in domestic spending?

In the same CPAC speech, President Trump reiterated his vow to “massively lower taxes on the middle class, reduce taxes on American business, and make our tax code more simple and much more fair for everyone.” And that’s all good. So it’s not coming from there.

Will he cut domestic spending? The President has indicated that he also wants a massive infrastructure modernization program launched in the near future. The plan will likely cost far in excess of the trillion dollars the President has suggested.

That leaves only one solution: printing money out of thin air. It has been the favorite trick of his predecessors. While he correctly condemns the $20 trillion national debt passed down from previous Administrations, his policies promise to add to that number in a massive way. Printing money out of thin air destroys the currency, hastening a US economic collapse and placing a very cruel tax on the working and middle classes as well.

Following the President’s constantly changing policies can make you dizzy. That’s a shame because the solution is very simple: end the US military empire overseas, cut taxes and regulations at home, end the welfare magnet for illegal immigration, and end the drug war. And then get out of the way.'

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : On Military and Spending, It?s Trump Versus Trump


Dang...I miss him in Washington.


Thoughts?
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I don't take Ron Paul seriously. He is a drooling nut job.
 
Mac77 said:
You need to hear the moralizing of what military force is for

Being strong inhibits our enemies from testing us and that saves lives

Many liberals think that if America were weaker the world would be a safer place and that just isn't so
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Many liberals and even some republicans in congress are the problem. One example is when many of them demand unscheduled and unrequested overhauls to given air craft carriers just because the civilian facilites doing the overhauls are located in their districts.
 
Fearandloathing said:
Please show me a list of Americans who actively opposed either Afghanistan or Iraq. I was in the US when the war drums of weapons of mass destruction were sounding across the land... seemed the whole ****ing country was frightened those 'AY-rabs would nuke you all.

I almost got beaten up by saying invading Iraq was "idiocy"

So when Americans suddenly come up with perfect rear vision I find it both humorous and frightening, because the same thing has now happened with Muslims.
Click to expand...

I supported the war in Iraq. I will let history decide whether it was justified. The soldiers I know personally, one of which sacrificed a limb in Iraq still believe it was justified. As for Afghanistan, we had no choice. Not going after Al Queda and the Taliban would have been the equivalent of doing nothing when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.
 
Fearandloathing said:
Show me "lots of people".

I was in Hollywood Florida, flew to Chicago and then Vancouver. In Florida they were loading a Fedex plane with military hardware....as we passed the entire plane we were on started cheering. The invasion came thee days later.

I saw no demonstrations, no show of opposition, instead the odd individual questioning if it was necessary.

Iraq did not become widely unpopular until after "Mission Accomplished"
Click to expand...

I don't think you have even a basic understanding about American attitudes when it comes to war. For the most part, Americans trust the politicians deciding whether or not to go to war. Even Vietnam was supported at the beginning. It is when the politicians muck it up and allow a war to drag on with no end in sight that support falters.
 
ataraxia said:
This is a little like Rumsfeld and Bush Jr.'s thinking that "shock and awe" was going to do something useful for vindicating 9/11. After lots of bombing of civilians (?hundreds of thousands killed in Iraq), Osama was still sending us "wish you were here" videos from Pakistan. And the whole world, including most Americans, were left wondering what invading Iraq had anything to do with it. But we did see lots of our boys coming home in body bags though. We were shocked and awed alright.

It took "no drama Obama" to finally get Osama- with two helicopters and no casualties. He also got hundreds of other top Al Qaeda leadership all around the world with surgical drone strikes- with a minimum of civilian collateral damage. No fuss, no muss. It's the difference between a highly skilled microsurgeon and a butcher. One makes small movements, often under a microscope, that are amazingly effective and get the job done. The other hacks and there is a lot of blood and mess everywhere, it is highly destructive, and in the end, there is not much to show for it.

Conservatives are easily impressed with lots of hairy chest beating and blood splashing and cool toys. It's the level of maturity of a teenager playing video games at the arcade. We need a highly experienced surgeon at the job. This is not reality TV. If you want lots of "shock and awe", watch Jean Claude van Damme movies. In the real world, you need a highly knowledgeable and experienced statesman, not a reality TV star and real estate guy like Trump pretending to play one on TV.
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The surgeon method was just as bad as the shock and awe. Under obama osama bin laden was killed, and numerous leaders, yet al quaeda is still strong and isis rose from the power vacuum from libya and syrias civil wars, and became powerful enough to take part of iran, and are fighting al quaeda now in yemen over which faction will run the eastern territory.

Iraq is the perfect example of a power vacuum, obama is just as guilty of it. There was no al quaeda in iraq, saddam would have them executed, then after he was toppled they came out of the woodworks and started over running the country. The same with isis in libya and syria, they were formed from al quaeda in iraq, but iraq was too stable for them to form then, but civil wars backed by the us and europe to overthrow leaders left a massive power vacuum.

This power vacuum allowed aq iraq to morph into isis and become powerfull enough to take much of iraq syria and libya, infact libya is their current stronghold, as the world seemed to not care about humanitarian crisis as soon as their leader died and libya is currently like somalia.

two leaders in a row made more chaos in the middle east, and killing their leaders did squat, as soon as you kill the leader of a terrorist group, another walked over the body and took his place. The only way to defeat terrorism is to turn the public against it, not to wage war against them, but rather get the people themselves to wage war against them.
 
ObamacareFail said:
I supported the war in Iraq. I will let history decide whether it was justified. The soldiers I know personally, one of which sacrificed a limb in Iraq still believe it was justified. As for Afghanistan, we had no choice. Not going after Al Queda and the Taliban would have been the equivalent of doing nothing when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.
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I would say history HAS decided. There may be a handful of Americans who write all about heroes and "the American way" but it's pretty much been decided...there were no weapons of mass destruction
 
ObamacareFail said:
I don't think you have even a basic understanding about American attitudes when it comes to war. For the most part, Americans trust the politicians deciding whether or not to go to war. Even Vietnam was supported at the beginning. It is when the politicians muck it up and allow a war to drag on with no end in sight that support falters.
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I am well aware of that. I do understand Americans LOVE war. It's exactly what I'm talking about. It's partying in the streets when the war is announced -HooRAh, but when the inevitable babies get burned and the body bags start coming home is when Americans turn against it. That's why they've had more than any other industrialized country in the last 100 years.

OH, they support ANY war until it gets ugly. That was my point, thanks for making it.

The only one you've actuall 'won" was Reagan's invasion of Grenada
It's when the body bags star coming home
 
ObamacareFail said:
I supported the war in Iraq. I will let history decide whether it was justified. The soldiers I know personally, one of which sacrificed a limb in Iraq still believe it was justified. As for Afghanistan, we had no choice. Not going after Al Queda and the Taliban would have been the equivalent of doing nothing when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.
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That's funny, most soldiers whom I know who were there say it was not worth it.

'On December, 11-14 (2008), an ABC News/Washington Post Poll of 1,003 adults nationwide, found 64% felt the Iraq War was not worth fighting, with 34% saying it was worth fighting, with 2% undecided. The margin of error was 3%.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popul..._States_on_the_invasion_of_Iraq#December_2008

And I highly doubt Americans are more in love with Iraqi Freedom now than they were then.


Iraqi Freedom was a galactic mistake. It cost America over 4,000 brave soldiers and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. Iraq is today a mess with women and gays having far less rights than they did before Iraqi Freedom. The average standard of living is FAR inferior today than before the war. And Iran has FAR more influence in Iraq than they did before Iraqi Freedom.
And that is not even mentioning the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's who would undoubtedly still be alive had Iraqi Freedom never happened.

You want to support it - fine.

Most of the world - and America - does NOT agree with you.


I will not debate this with you as you mind is clearly closed on the issue.

Good day.
 
ObamacareFail said:
I don't take Ron Paul seriously. He is a drooling nut job.
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Yes...he believes in freedom of speech and a balanced budget (Americans living within their means) and freedom to own guns and freedom from tyranny and freedom from corrupt governments and free enterprise and freedom of choice for ALL Americans and does not like to see Americans die in pointless wars.

Oh yeah...what a nut job.

:roll:

Most people that call him that are Neocons or Keynesians/Krugmanites. The former hate how he tries to stop them throwing American lives and dollars away trying to police/rule the world. And the latter hate how he tries to stop them spending any amount of money they wish on anything they wish.

I do not agree with everything Ron Paul says. But I will take him over Neocons/Keynesians/Krugmanites ANY DAY (especially Neocons).


Have a nice day.
 
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DA60 said:
Yes...he believes in freedom of speech and a balanced budget (Americans living within their means) and freedom to own guns and freedom from tyranny and freedom from corrupt governments and free enterprise and freedom of choice for ALL Americans and does not like to see Americans die in pointless wars.

Oh yeah...what a nut job.

:roll:

Most people that call him that are Neocons or Keynesians/Krugmanites. The former hate how he tries to stop them throwing American lives and dollars away trying to police/rule the world. And the latter hate how he tries to stop them spending any amount of money they wish on anything they wish.

I do not agree with everything Ron Paul says. But I will take him over Neocons/Keynesians/Krugmanites ANY DAY (especially Neocons).


Have a nice day.
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I dont agree with everything ron paul says but he's not a drooling nut job
 
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