The Milatary

Hello, as you all know i am a patriot of my countries military but i want to know why some groups {leftist and occupation}
not like them and want to cut them down. I am not for any kind of conflict but i have seen many veterans use their benefits after their tours {and during if your in the AF} to go get college degree's and become skilled workers. So why do we hate them is it because we don't like their uniforms or what?

*Military

Generally it has to do with wanting to cut our massive military spending by removing unnecessary overseas bases and cutting some of the more costly development programs.

Half a trillion over ten years is dangerous at best. Iraq and Afghanistan should be very nearly completely excised from the budget once we wrap up in Afghanistan, and we could stand to close a few bases. Cutting R&D, benefits, salaries, operational costs, or recruitment is just too far, however.

Some believe that military spending might be better spent on basic education.

All agreeable, but where I think we could stand to make some major cuts is in the less successful development and modernization programs. Quite frankly the effort could be better spent on things more beneficial to the civilian sector.

I have heard cutting milatary spending will create more jobs but really i don't know how that's even possible.
anyone with details on that or on how it helps basic educations? Also byzantine isn't education done and supervised by individual state's?

Patriots = People that can't spell Military.

I don't hate the military, I just think that it is too big to defend us, and is geared more towards invasion. Which is all it has been used for. It needs to be cut down immensely and reformed to a strictly defensive force.

Big guns=Bad?
No offense, I think that being able to kill the entire human race is enough of a deterrent, but hey, to each his own. Lol

Lol what? I support having nuclear weapons as a deterrent, which is why I think our Military should be scaled down immensely, we don't need it anymore. What the hell are you talking about?

I kinda was going for a US military overcompensation thing. I guess it got lost in translation.

I agree with most of this. My big problem comes with the assetion that cutting R&D is 'too far'. I'll leave at the door the argument that that U.S. is already one of the most technologically advanced nations and point out that R&D costs a ridiculous amount of money that could be proportioned elsewhere.
But cutting the military is tricky. From what I understand, the U.S. military recieves money from the government, but it gets to deside where in its branches [be it R&D, Marines, Army, etc.] the money actually goes. This means that if you cut their funding back, they will probably start by cutting out of the individual soldiers' paychecks first, which I have a BIG problem with, U.S. military or no.

The problem is that america just gives them money just to give them money, look at GB, france, and germany they are able have a strong military without out of control spending why can't america do the same

You are a rat. That is awesome.

I know it's amazing

Using France and strong military in the same sentence, HE MUST BE NAPOLEON!
But on a more serious note, the US will never do the same, and wether that is unfortunate or not, I don't know. The US seems pretty happy to just spend.

I believe I read once that the US spends something like 40% of the combined world defense budget. Basically, you have enough money in your defense budget to conquer the world. You physically don't need that sort of defense budget. Half, or a third of it would more than be enough to defend your country from any possible invasion force.

In a time of economic crisis, it is impractical. That sort of money could do a hell of a lot of good, possibly saving millions of jobs, or even used directly to pay back some of your 14+ trillion dollars of debt.

Good job Penultimo, you tell them!

i agree for the most part but for one part. the U.S. military's R&D needs to be scaled back or reformed, to many projects that just cost to much in the long run. hell the AirForce is going to start the largest Military spending project in US history in a few year for pretty much no reason at all. i support our troops but the R&D is another story.

Being 2 steps ahead isn't enough, we ought to be 5 or 6.

But the primary reason to fund military R&D is because it's the largest source of government-sponsored practical research. Most keystone technologies developed in America over the last century came about because of military research and design. The discretion and sheer spending power behind that research is in large part responsible for America's technological edge. Certainly at a military level, but also on an economic one.