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On September 08 2012 13:33 Voltaire wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2012 13:14 stevarius wrote:
As much as we would like to reduce our military presence around the world, it's necessary for the stability of certain regions and for our current global operations from a logistical standpoint. This is a lie perpetuated by those who stand to gain from the military-industrial complex. None of the countries on that list have any problems with stability, not even Kuwait. If anything, these foreign occupations cause instability rather than mitigate it. The motivation behind 9/11 and similar terrorist attacks came from the fact that we were in their countries. Al Qaeda was first formed because Bin Laden was horrified that the Saudi government allowed the US military to be deployed in their country.
If you had excluded the conspiracy theorist bullshit in the first sentence, your post wouldn't be terrible.
If we had no presence in the middle east or had not intervened when Iraq, you can just imagine what Saddam could have done to destablize the region. The potential invasion of Saudi Arabia would have had severe consequences on the global economy and there are plenty of other historical reasons I shouldn't have to sit here and point out to understand why troops are deployed in the locations the OP described. The presence, although small, acts as a form of deterent. As much as we SHOULD be an isolationist state in regards to meddling in other affairs, we can't discount the impact it would have to not act or protect our foreign interests that will impact us at home.
Besides, we'll be out of Afghanistan in 2014(lol maybe).
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I can only say that Im jelous. my country can only afford 1 hour of war, while US can end wars even before they start
Im pretty embarassed
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On September 08 2012 13:43 xrapture wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2012 13:39 Shady Sands wrote:On September 08 2012 13:35 xrapture wrote:
Read any history book. Which nations are glorified?
Britian, Rome, Japan, Egypt. Countries with a strong military presence. We do the dirty work so the other countries can keep their thumbs up their asses.
But, we'll be remembered. ...someone please explain why spending blood and treasure to stabilize other nations is a profitable activity for the American taxpayer? Eh, sometimes you fight for the glory. People have different views on how countries should be run. Do I want to see a world with 0 wars, where everyone has a macbook and an iphone standing in line at Starbucks? Nope. I'm fine with where my tax dollars are going.
The ignorance in this post is just staggering. I don't want to pick on you, but how could you even think that wars are fought for glory. You say, you don't want a hippie hipster world, so wars are ok in some places, but you don't think of the fact, that most wars are fought in countries, where there is no starbucks, no iphone and no other luxury life-pleasers.
To respond to the actual op:
I actually think, that these amounts of troops in foreign countries are to support an agenda, that has nothing to do with the life of average citizens, wherever they may be from. Someone earlier in this thread said, that he supports even more troops around the world, for the sake of bettering the lives of average citizens, especially in africa. I can't argue against that, since there is a thought of support behind that statement. But today i would even dare to say that 100% of foreign military is in any given country for strategic, in the end imperialistic, purposes. If the US military would serve a purpose like the UNO (which is garbage, btw) I wouldn't necessarily demand to lessen their presence, but in their actual form I would say their presence is much too high and not needed, if you think from the perspective of an civilian, may he be from the US or anywhere else.
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Believe it or not there are a lot of good reasons for the US to have troops everywhere. One of the main ones that has been hinted at but not discussed to much is mobilization. The US does it as a strategical move. If anyone was ever to attack the US it would be impossible to completely stop a counter attack. God forbid someone drops a nuke on my head( Live in Wash DC ) and lets go even further and say they go call of duty status and emp the east coast shutting down the biggest naval base in the world (norfolk VA) and DC the hub of most of our government agencies. The US still has the capability to retaliate with every facet of its military. Besides the fact that the US has an insane amount of global bases there are always a minimum of 2 fully decked and armed air craft carriers out at sea escorted by destroyers and a few other war vessels. Multiple nuclear subs as well.
This actually serves a few purposes for the US. Besides the obvious firepower that it offers it also will make us strong enough to hold an alliance with even if we do get attacked on our turf by multiple countries. If we had everything here and got smashed by china and another super power why would any of our allies in europe stay with us knowing we were of no use in a global conflict anymore.
It seems dumb and the US is probably the most over disliked country in the world but at this point the US is sort of pot committed if that makes sense. If the US were to try to please everyone they would be putting us the US citizens at more risk for the coming wars/attack/terrorists that will eventually happen. In the end the governments end game is to protect the country at any and all costs and I think that goes for any country. Sure Sweden doesn't have forces everywhere but then again why would they for them they have other things of more importance there isn't and impending attack coming any day. If there was I'm sure Sweden would have a bad ass army.
If you look at the realistic military counter part to the US it is China and they have a pretty damn good amount of bases and military spread out too.
The type of war the US is in forever here on out now is stopping the 100's of dedicated terrorists groups that really have no interest in or way of crushing the military. They just want to kill as many civilians as possible. The US will do everything it can to keep it over seas if possible. In the end I don't think the US gov is trying to piss everyone off but its just an inevitable side effect of the situation the US is in. Would I like to see less military spread out through the world? Yes obviously. I grew up in a military family and I can tell you they don't like going overseas for a year plus at a time. They know most people over there don't want to see them. In the end its not their call. Sadly though there probably won't and dare I say shouldn't be any reduction in global presence.
In the end I live in the capitol of probably the most plotted against and hated country in the world overall. I really don't want a terrorists flying another plane into the pentagon right down the street so as selfish as it is if thats the game the US has to play then ya stay over there where the terrorist hot zone is and keep that shit over there. The game changed on 9/11 forever probably.
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Well at least the military presence in South America has drastically decreased since the Cold War. However, we seem very concerned about getting military bases in Africa, starting with Uganda. We sent US troops into Uganda to fight the LRA even though they were pretty much non-existent in Uganda at that point.
And looking at Okinawa, the situation is just so depressing. Residents have to live with a very loud airplanes constantly. Okay, maybe that is not so bad, however, the military bases are always expanding and residents often have to relocate due to the expansion. And to make things worse, these military bases have been used for the US to bomb nearby Asian countries. This is imperialism.
And people often ask me, what about China?
http://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-comparison-detail.asp
Yes, China is stronger in military might than Japan, but China would not dare invade Japan for economic reasons and global backlash, even if there were no military bases in Japan. And occupying Japan would be incredibly difficult. It was hard enough to occupy Iraq even though we are number 1
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On September 08 2012 14:49 stevarius wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2012 13:33 Voltaire wrote:On September 08 2012 13:14 stevarius wrote:
As much as we would like to reduce our military presence around the world, it's necessary for the stability of certain regions and for our current global operations from a logistical standpoint. This is a lie perpetuated by those who stand to gain from the military-industrial complex. None of the countries on that list have any problems with stability, not even Kuwait. If anything, these foreign occupations cause instability rather than mitigate it. The motivation behind 9/11 and similar terrorist attacks came from the fact that we were in their countries. Al Qaeda was first formed because Bin Laden was horrified that the Saudi government allowed the US military to be deployed in their country. If you had excluded the conspiracy theorist bullshit in the first sentence, your post wouldn't be terrible. If we had no presence in the middle east or had not intervened when Iraq, you can just imagine what Saddam could have done to destablize the region. The potential invasion of Saudi Arabia would have had severe consequences on the global economy and there are plenty of other historical reasons I shouldn't have to sit here and point out to understand why troops are deployed in the locations the OP described. The presence, although small, acts as a form of deterent. As much as we SHOULD be an isolationist state in regards to meddling in other affairs, we can't discount the impact it would have to not act or protect our foreign interests that will impact us at home. Besides, we'll be out of Afghanistan in 2014(lol maybe).
What conspiracy bullshit? Isn't it almost common knowledge that companies involved with the military have insane lobbying power? Not to mention all the under the table deals with contractors and foreign govt's that come with the chaos of war.
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From what I gather from my friends in Okinawa, they aren't exactly the most popular people.
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we waste so much fucking money and time with all these people policing the world when they could be doing productive things back home. This is so much manpower and resources that is wasting doing basically nothing....bring em home, send troops to places when we actually have to do something there like defend our country or help a war. 50k troops in Germany? give me a break.
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However, the many people love it when the US expands into other nations. You have to create a series of new ranks for that specific nation which causes a lot of promotions and then a lot of new weapons have to be sold. Well at least according to my great uncle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Gregg
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We don't need half the world's military budget. Even just "minor" cuts of 10-20% would still leave us DRASTICALLY above every other nation in the world.
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I think dramatically, but some places are important. Reduce overall dramtically but still majority of the number in the middle east, and South Korea. Other places, like Germany? Why is there so many there?
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On September 08 2012 15:36 LuckyFool wrote:
we waste so much fucking money and time with all these people policing the world when they could be doing productive things back home. This is so much manpower and resources that is wasting doing basically nothing....bring em home, send troops to places when we actually have to do something there like defend our country or help a war. 50k troops in Germany? give me a break.
And what would you propose this "excess military personnel" do when you brought them home? Do you know how many of those men and women you would be putting out of a job? Do you know how many cutbacks that have ALREADY happened and put many Soldiers out of a job? Did you also know that they have already cut back on recruitment as well? Do you know where these out of job soldiers tend to end up? Soldiering elsewhere, where their leashes aren't so tight and the pay is even better.
As was said before, these men and women aren't there as an "occupying force" in most cases, they are in strategic positions across the globe so the government isn't caught with all their eggs in one basket so to speak, if there ever was a strike. They can respond in kind, and swiftly.
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On September 08 2012 13:22 EtherealDeath wrote:
No, unless DoD ignores its own predictions of the tappable supply to demand for many important resources peaking in this decade. In other words, DoD believes that it will be unavoidable soon (not just expedient, but unavoidable) that to maintain western standards of living, a lot of other people are going to have to get fucked over.
That is pretty much it. I'm not pro military, but we are running out of stuff on this planet pretty quickly. I guess, more wars are unavoidable at this point, even if US pulls out its military. However even if they don't, I'm sure the living standards in US (and in the rest of the developed world) will be going down quite fast.
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Afaik the troops in Germany at least are there for training purposes etc.
It was famous in Sweden that tonnes of deserters from the US airforce slipped away from Germany and got asylum in Sweden during the Vietnam war.
The European facilities are probably mostly for lowering the time it takes to get to certain locations, but were originally located there with the cold war. It doesn't really matter where they're located, and it'd probably just be more expensive to call home the troops and rebuild a new camp in the US. Might as well keep them in Germany.
I do think that the US should chill out when it comes to wars, but that doesn't seem like the topic at hand.
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"There's no one left to send..."
-Batmobile flies by-
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Well, US can't pull out of Afghanistan. They fucked up that country in the hunt for the Taliban and they should stay until it's stabilized. Same goes for Iraq.
Other than that, I would be happy if the US decreased it's military presence around the globe where it's not needed. Of course helping your allies should still be a priority, but the european presence still seems a bit over the top. If there's anywhere they could be needed in the future it would be the korean peninsula.
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US is on a mission to conquer the world.they like to send military troops to other countries to make "peace missions" where hundreds and thousands die.it's been like this since i can remember...i wonder how do american people justify this.these are their sons and daughers losing their lives out there for blood-soaked money that the government makes.
you cant put prize on the life of a human being....
and US is trading lives for good logistical positions and oil...
its a shame.
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On September 08 2012 16:28 nkr wrote:
Well, US can't pull out of Afghanistan. They fucked up that country in the hunt for the Taliban and they should stay until it's stabilized. Same goes for Iraq.
Other than that, I would be happy if the US decreased it's military presence around the globe where it's not needed. Of course helping your allies should still be a priority, but the european presence still seems a bit over the top. If there's anywhere they could be needed in the future it would be the korean peninsula.
Do people still think the US is in Iraq?
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Do american people think US is not still in Iraq?
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EPT
