Aircraft Carriers - What is their future?

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(07-24-2017, 01:31 PM)Dill Wrote: There was fighting every day when I was in Afghanistan in 2011. People dying. I'm pretty sure it was a war.

No harm in reducing the US "footprint" in Europe, but I wouldn't want to go much further. 35,000 in Germany sounds sustainable to me.

If the US wants two effective air bases in Germany, that will require more than a couple hundred on the ground. Ramstein is a very large base. And right by it is the US hospital at Landstuhl, which was very important during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

And the US needs at least two, in case there is some future crisis in Eastern Europe or North Africa requiring UN/NATO intervention, as did Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya.

People's views on this tend to turn on whether they think a power vaccum in Europe makes much difference to the world, and to the US.

I was being a smartass on the not-war bit, as some people like to point out that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan were declared wars or whatever BS technicalities because congress.

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There is no reason we need 35,000 people in Germany. I am talking we put skeleton crews on two air bases, and pull out of the rest of the bases. You don't need 35,000 people to make sure runways are maintained and housing is mothballed, while keeping out squatters or anything. 1,000 or 2,000 people tops.

If there's another crisis in Eastern Europe or North Africa, then Europe or Africa can handle it. We don't need to be the world's police. It is time for other people to step up. Once we remove the majority of our fources from protecting other people's nations, then they will be forced to start spending enough to defend themselves, thus having the capability of solving a crisis on their own in the future.

We're giving people fish. They need to be left to learn how to fish themselves.

$20t in debt says and old infrastructure says we have our own problems to solve right here in our country.