The (primarily) American 'need' for a huge military.

IanExMachina

The size of the American military and it's spending is obscene and seemingly overkill.

The people defending the huge size to me come off as hugely paranoid, especially when they justify the military in case people start shit.

Nuclear weapons have pretty much made it entirely suicidal to attack a nuclear nation, that nuclear nation doesn't really need so many aircraft carrier fleets for defence.

The only argument for having such a huge military that holds water is for 'control' and strong-arming other countries.

(I say primarily as I tend to see this position mainly coming from Americans, the only other people are some crazy Brits who want the empire back.)

Malkavian

My favorite are the people who defend it but think that we need to slash education and social services to balance our budget. 

IanExMachina

Haha.

As the thing America needs most is cuts to Education and Welfare.

RedEyedAbyss

But you see, it keeps Big Government away so that corporations can assert their dominance do the job so much better.

IanExMachina

^

*laughter*

Gelzo

Yeah, our country is as a whole governed poorly. Dunno what there is to do about it. Too many stupid people.

I think the U.S. might have more fundies than any other sufficiently developed nation. It's certainly more conservative among that group of countries, anyway.

Malkavian

I'm not sure if we have more, but ours certainly are louder.

All Nines

I'd still like to know how/why we have so many morons running for President.

Gelzo

It's because the Republican party doesn't have an incumbent.

Malkavian

or a solid platform of solutions.

IanExMachina

Yeah America is definitely more conservative, your left wing is roughly Europe's centre/centre right.

CommandoDude

^^^^ Republicans lack ethics and will dump their principles at the drop of a hat if it means they can win. Expect every single dirty trick in the book.

Frankly, it reflects worse on the voting base.

Chagen

"^^^^ Republicans lack ethics and will dump their principles at the drop of a hat if it means they can win. Expect every single dirty trick in the book."

And then they project their flaws onto the democrats.

As for the OP, America doesn't really need a fuckhuge military given how basically no one would try invading us.

However, remember, many modern-day inventions we know of today--including the internet itself--came from military applications. It certainly spurs technology, if nothing else.

Wicked223

Nuclear weapons are a failsafe against war, certainly, but the prevalence of national missile defense systems by the U.S. and others might change this.

captainbrass

The Chinese and the Russians also spend stupid amounts on their military. Admittedly, one's not a democracy and the other barely qualifies, and neither of them are in any way run with the welfare of their population as the main goal. They've also not been as badly affected by the world recession as the US.

The same is true of most other countries that go in for heavy military spending e.g. Saudi Arabia or Cuba.

FrodoGoofballCoTV

Interestingly, I sometimes hear americans complain about other countries having small militaries, "because if our allies had more, we wouldn't have to fight their wars for them."  Interestingly, in Libya, the U.S. for the first time in quite a while, took a secondary role in a fight.

I think a big part of it is that the U.S. is currently pretty much dependent on foreign imports - not only oil, but manufactured goods from China, etc., and we have allies like Israel who are either not well liked or their other "friends" are not necessarily friendly to the U.S.  As a result there's a sense that the U.S. military must remain the best in the world or the rest of the world will completely disrespect us.

PrincessApricot

IJBM: America.

*slams head into desk repeatedly and cries*

Aaaaanyhow

Dat money