Adieu Accord de Paris

[Dill]

(06-04-2017, 03:29 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: I'm not saying Republicans WILL do it. I don't expect it from either of the main parties. That was just my personal opinion, not what I said would be likely.
You can lower debt, rebuild infrastructure, and cut taxes all at once. How much money do you think it costs for some of the things they do?

US Troops around the world...
Germany: ~35,000
Italy: ~12,000
UK: ~8,500
Spain: ~3,000
Japan: ~40,000
Korea: ~23,000
Kuwait: ~6,300
Iraq: ~5,500
Bahrain: ~5,500
Qatar: ~3,000
Turkey: ~2,200
Jordan: ~1,800
UAE: ~1,000
Afghanistan: ~9,300
Djibouti: ~1,900

Plus a couple ten thousand more spread about here and there, plus people deployed out on the water.
Then you figure in that a lot of those places allows for you to bring your dependents with you, and ALL of those places have thousands of more civilian contractors on it.

We're talking well over 120,000 people, plus dependents, plus contractors.. all being housed, fed, and armed (with helicopters, jets, tanks, etc). That is a LOT of money... and that's not even counting the massive cost of actively fighting in multiple warzones. Those 59 tomahawk missles alone were like a $60m attack. The US are installing like $1b-a-pop missile defense systems for other countries. Add in the F-35 project, and some of the other ridiculous waste and you could easily afford to make the US a whole lot nicer for everyone here.

Leonard, I have been in most of those countries. In fact I could correct some of your figures. E.g. the airbase in Qatar alone has about 11,000 US service personnel, plus contingents of our NATO allies.

I agree with you that we are in too many places and should cut military waste. Where we differ, perhaps, is in what we think the US gets in return for this spending on bases around the world.

One return on this spending is the kind of world leadership which privileges US markets and currency. This return is direct and indirect. When the US acts responsibly, the world has more stability than it would otherwise. That is good for US jobs and profits. There has not been a world war since 1945. No reason to suppose this would continue without the ability to project military/economic power.

I am puzzled that so many people think the US economy will be just fine if another world currency arises to compete with the dollar, and/or if China, Russia, and India begin establishing bases in the Mediterranean, South America, the Caribbean or even Canada.

When the US was attacked on 9/11, it had the power to respond in Afghanistan, asking no one's permission. And it had the backing of 28+ allies. Imagine we suffer another 9/11 10 years from now and we have to get permission to respond, and we don't have such an array of allies behind us?

Clearly, when the US uses bad judgment, the results are costly to us. The Iraq War is a fine example of that. I believe it is one reason why so many people now are wary of the foreign entanglements Washington warned us about. But many people knew that war was a mistake. The question is why candidates with good judgment don't prevail in elections any more. If the US could elect better leaders, that would save a lot more money and lives than looking for "government waste" in military budgets. But to get better leaders, we have to vote better. That means supporting people with good judgment who know what they are doing. But voters cannot tell who has good judgment without themselves becoming more informed about the world, and without paying attention to their own history.