61–70 of 243 posts
Interestingly at one point, the US Navy wanted to go all nuclear. That would have helped carbon emissions. https://www.wearethemighty.com/gear-tech/navy-nuclear-power-...
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I think you have to balance that against not preventing instability around the world. What would it look like if China, Russia, Iran and many others were unchecked and we let them do whatever they wanted... Now, the current admin is cutting back on involvement. Some candidates call for more interventionism. That we’re retreating from “our duty” to be international police, essentially. So what is it?
Much of the world's instability has been caused by the US being unchecked and doing whatever it wanted
Now you can argue that nuclear weapons are the root cause for current stability, and ask if a world with nuclear weapons but less aggressive US would be better off.
Bottom line, the first world's prosperity is based on an efficiency in terms of work done per person, which stems from energy mostly coming from fossil fuels. The US just happened to get first dibs on the resources, but I doubt it would be any different with others. The societies have a tendency to grow and the only real backpressure is resource exhaustion (manifesting as cost).
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Dirty rivers suck, but humanity's big problem right now is global warming.
No. Humanity's big problem is not global warming. It is uncontrolled demographic explosion in Africa and Asia. More mouths to feed only will make ecologic problems worse.
Surprise, surprise, the military-industrial complex is destroying our planet. How people can still support this is beyond me.
Because it prevents foreign troops from attempting to land on U.S. soil and attack us, it also gives us means to take most air and ocean-based attacks out long before they get near the continental United States. With the exception of 9/11 (which wasn't actually military but does seem to have been state-sponsored to some degree), we've gone the better part of 2 centuries without hostile military action on the continental United States.
Because it has provided jobs for many of us and our families. My mother retired from DoD, I have no less than 2-dozen friends that served in Afghanistan and/or Iraq and many more that are/were guard/reserve, my aunt's husband retired from the USAF and then went to work as a contractor for them, one of my half-brothers was in the Navy and even served on a sub, one of my aunts was USCG reserve, from my grandfathers (Army Air Corp, Navy) back we've fought in every single war since the War of Independence, my godfather was Navy UDT, the guy I owe my sobriety to is a purple heart carrying 18D. Several members of my Lodge are veterans, several members of my Ward are members, several people in my office are veterans or are married to them, the founder of my company that employs 425k people is a Vietnam-vet Marine and a lot of our pilots are former military. Several of my friends were able to get college educations thanks to the military, my mother's father had multiple heart surgeries over the years thanks to the VA, etc etc.
Because space exploration, GPS and literally every other type of satellite our civilization relies upon, effectively all nuclear technologies (power, medicine), advanced prosthetics, handheld radios, RADAR, airliners, digital photography, the internet, etc etc so on and so forth are all direct results of technologies developed by various branches of the U.S., and foreign, military branches?
I mean, without the U.S. military, you wouldn't even have safe and reliable ocean shipping. The United States Navy and United States Coast Guard patrol international shipping lanes and are the largest deterrent to piracy (which is a multi-billion dollar economic loss annually)
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I'm pretty sure countries' citizen as Lybia, Afghanistan, Syria, Irak would be way better without the US.
Let's not forget what has been done in South America.
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I think you have to balance that against not preventing instability around the world. What would it look like if China, Russia, Iran and many others were unchecked and we let them do whatever they wanted... Now, the current admin is cutting back on involvement. Some candidates call for more interventionism. That we’re retreating from “our duty” to be international police, essentially. So what is it?
I think you are living inside a big bubble. When was the last time China showed military aggresion outside its borders, especialy on the other side of the world? US doing the “checking” around the world left countless people dead for nothing, and a lot of countries ruined. Not to mention trillions od dollars spent on financing that. US complain about Russia meddling with US elections (through 150k worth of Facebook a…
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And you can’t think of what would happen if we just let things happen out there? Yes we’re made monumental mistakes like Arab spring and gulf war II. But those would pale compared to what would happen if we just let things go. All those repressed military desires by dictators everywhere suddenly given a green light.
Being on the side "kept in check", believe me, we were better off on ourselves. Dictators fall one way or another, 3rd party military intervention is rarely selective and not a bit subtle with the collaterals.
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No. Humanity's big problem is not global warming. It is uncontrolled demographic explosion in Africa and Asia. More mouths to feed only will make ecologic problems worse.
US mouths eat more than asian and african. Source : https://ourworldindata.org/food-per-person
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Let's not forget what has been done in South America.
Well, hey. The current administration is pulling the US out of areas and treating your countries like sovereigns now.
It isn't the US governments fault the military industrial complex is so large, it's ours. So long as we continue to sheepishly abide by the ignorant notion that our public officials are moral actors whose ambitions and initiatives are driven and monitored by their superb ethical standards we are doomed.
We have to hold the women and men in office accountable not only for their actions but for our agenda. We have to stop living under the yoke of fear and distraction pumped out by the media machine. We have to be brave and fight back or else, when the shit hits the fan, we can only blame ourselves.