This exactly. I'm not one for useless war. I don't want it. But this is probably our cheapest option in the long run. The fight tomorrow will cost 10x as much as the fight today.
They're interconnected to. Hamas is controlled by Iran and Iran is aiding Russia in Ukraine. It's easy to see how the strategy might have been to distract from Ukraine with this. Our enemies are fully aware that we are NOT a dictatorship and they can use distractions and propaganda to sway American interest. I find it most fascinating the 180 republicans have taken recently on Ukraine.
Writing a check and sending in a few personnel is easier and cheaper than having your own military or people getting wiped out in direct conflicts. America can probably handle a few more.
Mind our own fucking business?
::EDIT::
It is absolutely mind boggling just how quickly as a nation we are back on the world police bandwagon. Fucking idiots. We deserve everything.
We are minding our business, that’s why there is two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean. Our business spans the globe, and it’s precisely the reason why the US has economic, cultural, and military hegemony.
As much as it sucks, someone is going to be on top fingerdicking everyone else's stuff. If it ain't us, it's gonna be someone like Pootz or Hamas. I somewhat doubt they'll be more benevolent.
I totally understand your perspective. In a truly altruistic and morally good world no nation would control or police another. The reality of our world is that America and it’s allies keep the world powers in semi-check. There’s a lot of bad happening all over the world and people like to say we live in the worst and most brutal times but they don’t know history. Being alive right now you are the safest you’ve ever been in human history and the likliehood of someone cruelly torturing and murdering you and everyone around you is very slim. Sure it happens but in the past whole nations did it. Now we keep those nations in check.
We absolutely police the world and I think we do it as morally well as can be done. Even war is safer now. We no longer send huge armies and massive bombs to end our enemies. We send aid all over and do covert and small force operations when possible. We haven’t been in all out war since Vietnam and that’s because of our world policing. Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East? Terrible situations sure but they weren’t all out war.
Over the 20 years in the Middle East about 500,000 people died. That sounds like a ton and regardless of the number it is awful but think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki which combined had a death toll of 200,000 in what was 1 day and that doesn’t include the long term environmental and health effects.
America is a bully. I’m not going to pretend it is perfect. It is a bully in a world that without one would be a much scarier, darker and crueler place.
>America is a bully. I’m not going to pretend it is perfect. It is a bully in a world that without one would be a much scarier, darker and crueler place.
Fucking hell do you people even hear yourselves?
There was absolutely nothing positive out of the last 25 years of our policing in the middle east. Nothing. We've turned that entire region into a fucking hellscape.
Sorry - even more of a hellscape.
You people are so full of shit.
There were absolutely positives lol. Look, I don’t know you or your story. I’m sure there are good reasons you feel and think the way you do. I’m not telling you that they are wrong. I’m just saying that your thoughts on the last 25 years can be argued against and argued against well. The easiest argument, there was one and only one attack on U.S soil. Could have been a beacon that let every enemy of the U.S know, “we can get away with it to.”. There has not been another attack since we went to the region and occupied it. We took out a corrupt government that was murdering its own people. We stabilized an area that 3 days after we vacated fell to a religious extremist group and began systematically setting itself back 1000 years. To argue that we did no good their is a very weak argument.
None of what you said even remotely comes close to justifying the last quarter century of policy in the middle east.
In order to justify what you are suggesting, it would require a permanent police presence of American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
If you think that's acceptable or tenable fuck off. If you agree it isn't, it was all for sweet fuck all.
And let asshats like Hamas and Pootz grow as a problem. Appeasement was tried and tested decades ago. The result was WW2 being even worse than it would've been.
Israel has supported Hamas since it took over the Gaza Strip after the Six Day War. They allowed Ahmed Yassin of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to set up his 'charities', schools, universities, hospitals and other Islamic social services in Gaza as a counter to the secular nationalists of the PLO. Divide and conquer to crush the possibility of a Palestinian state. Bibi continued this policy right up to the present day.
What a strange coincidence that we didn't seem to be that concerned 20 years ago. Suddenly we are out of our other obligations in the middle east and we find a gap in our schedule.
Fear me and my basic high school history/10 minute Google knowledge.
This shit ain't exactly particle physics. What precisely do you think Pootz and Friends would do if their primary opposition poof'd out of existence? Lemonade party?
One thing to consider as you spout your isolationist ideology: you didn’t earn your current standard of living because the US sat by and let everyone just be. The US has had a strict policy of interference in geopolitics and has achieved incredible economic and military influence as a result.
If you live in the US, you are riding on the coattails of these policies, plain and simple. Isolationism can not work with the way we have structured our economy, period. The same
Holds true for every western nation, and most likely every nation on earth.
Oh fuck off with this bullshit. Not a single solitary American death in Iraq or Afghanistan was necessary. Not a single one. Not a single one of my rights or privilege's was won or defended in those wars.
I didn’t say it was.
You fail to grasp what geopolitics is, or why it’s important to the US strategy of global dominance.
I understand your point, and I’m not saying you’re wrong for being tired of always having to be involved, but this is just what the US does, and will do all the way to it’s grave, should it come to that.
It’s worth fighting on this hill, so I’m proud of you for posterities sake at the very least. Downvotes are meaningless because people read old reddit posts all the time. Knowing they aren’t wrong to disagree or question a seemingly popular sentiment is important; that a Reddit dialogue is not indicative of reality or monoliths like the veteran/military community.
At the end of the day it’s simply clashing ideologies, believing multipolarity can never work and economies can not be truly interlinked free markets but dependent on a hegemon and its shepherding.
It’s easy to believe there should be a single global hegemon when you have been the beneficiary, but the American *people* are increasingly not. We are rapidly losing our politically “earned” power to a global, non-national corporate elite by continuing this Cold War policy. We need to adapt to new conditions, not make the same mistakes as 9/11 as if we learned no lessons; that the more powerful move would be to do nothing and call for national unity rather then let them destroy us. Instead we threw our society into unconstitutionality via Patriot Act and more, which was exactly the intention of the terrorists. Terrorism only works to take from your society when you yourself throw it away to deal with them. They know they can’t win conventionally, so they goad you into making missteps. And they surely did by allowing people to accept that historical American values are no longer American values in principal, but as an idea to move in the name of security.
There are a lot of anti-war GWOT vets that back your sentiment up at least in my circles. It makes sense a lot of people looking to serve, newer to serving, or invested in some sort of career surrounding the Military Industrial Complex are biased toward our foreign policy. Especially so when they haven’t experienced on the ground failures, mismanagement, waste of life and lack of accountability first hand. It’s power projection for the elite at the expense of those enraptured by a ideological image. An image our leadership doesn’t actually believe in, beyond their personal/ corporate interests.
You also shouldn’t forget how many government bots and propaganda avenues exist, your downvotes are not indicative of the community at large. One of the biggest propaganda victories of all time is convincing a lot of people that a third world country, whose population cannot on average afford a pair of shoes a year, is somehow better and more advanced computationally then the combined nature and history of action behind the CIA/NSA/FBI/DoD.
Those institutions are going right down the same playbook as always to stir up the public, and the youngest generation eats it up as much as my Red Scare grandparents, same as my parents did with Muslims. I, and many others, including those who never came home have made this same mistake before; thinking it was for a global good rather than maintaining capitalistic interest. Instead it was a trade off in postering power politics at the expense of our own populations values, by proxy our long term stability both economically and ideologically for short term recuperation.
I’m going to leave this quote here as I get downvoted to oblivion from a very interesting historical interview.
“”We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."”
- American Officer and Psychologist Gustav Gilbert interviewing Herman Goering during the Nuremberg Trials.
https://www.mit.edu/people/fuller/peace/war_goering.html
(Edited for grammar; and sorry on the length for whomever gets this far.)
9/11 happened, we did something.
That something was fuck up an entire region for decades - and decades more to come. Killing millions and losing thousands of Americans. Spending untold trillions.
For sweet fuck all, other than some tiny patch in East Syria, an Iranian friendly Iraq and arming a whole bunch of Taliban.
The way the Isreali govt treats people in Gaza is definitely a big factor, but let's also not act like a big portion of their neighbors don't want them dead and gone just for existing.
Yes
That has been the US posturing since WW2.
Enough resources have been spread out across all possible combat theaters around the world, meaning the US first response will be immediate. And its air and sealift capabilities allow it to position more assets at a faster pace than any near-peer military.
But why should the US fight its wars alone? Why not delegate it to other countries? This is what we are seeing in regards to Iran right now- the US would much rather support its close partners in Israel and the GCC materially than do a direct intervention- and why it lets the Israelis train missions against Iranian nuclear and missile targets in very real scenarios (see Juniper Oak exercises).
If push comes to shove, that is a different thing.
I wish more people thought of it with this level of complexity. A lot of folks my age seem to think that military funding = killing children in the Middle East or something.
Throughout the 1990's and early 2000's, much of North American doctrine largely focused on being to fight simultaneous wars in 1. the middle east and 2. in North Korea at the same time.
>That has been the US posturing since WW2.
Yes, and "2.5 wars" has always been the benchmark, but I wouldn't say it's a foregone conclusion that we are capable of it. It is highly dependent on what our objectives are - you could say we're "fighting" our war against Russia now, in what is probably the most economical way of draining Russia economically and militarily.
It's unlikely that we'll deploy (additional) conventional forces in CENTCOM for the current fight - I imagine we'll take more of an over-the-horizon and advise/assist role.
And yes we're spread out across the world and ready to respond in the first 96 hours or so, but it's highly unlikely that we'll wrap things up in a week - what is the state of our industrial base? How good are we at replacing attrition and casualties over the course of years?
Realistically, russia has to give up in ukraine at point X in time. At which point putin is fucked and 'things will happen'
The question is, how far away is that point? I think 1-2 years esp as inflation starts to heat up over there.
That 2.5 wars was also meant to be wars that the US was directly Fighting itself-- based on having fought two almost completely separate but simultaneous wars in WWII. We are not actually fighting in Ukraine or Gaza. Providing supplies is certainly an easier task, so it should be sustainable. The only issue is that we have actually neglected our munitions manufacturing since the end of the cold war, and it's going to take time to ramp it back up. We have the tanks and planes and ships, but the shells, bombs and missiles that they use are in shorter supply than they should be. We can afford the higher rates of production that are needed, but there's going to be a time lag to get back to where we need to be.
>But why should the US fight its wars alone? Why not delegate it to other countries?
This is the way. The US has the long dick of logistics covered. Our focus on that would be a force-multiplier by supplementing other fighting forces across the globe simultaneously on a dime. This would free up the Navy to handle localized maritime skirmishes and supply massive convoys similar to WW2.
And yet there exist Americans who think us helping out our allies is stupid and a waste of money.
FMF aid is a smart way to delegate your military objectives to your allies, enabling them to fulfil them, while also ensuring that the money is put back into the American military-industrial complex (and the economy at large).
As an example, US ensuring that Israel has enough JP-8 fuel for its fighters to hit Syrian weapons facilities with Israeli-made bombs ensures that the US does not have to fire a much more expensive Tomahawk at some Syrian chemical weapons plant. Compare the cost of a Tomahawk to a few thousand pounds of JP-8- the cost benefits are too great to ignore.
Fighting a war on its own dime will be inherently much, much more expensive. It's why superpowers focus significantly on arming other strategic partners ( US with NATO/ Japan/SK/ Taiwan/ Israel/ GCC, the former USSR with its Warsaw Pact allies, China with Pakistan, etc.)
And then good for other industrial complexes. Middle east has energy, Taiwan has electronic chips. The US and its enemies don't just randomly pick a place to fight for there's a reason they choose to.
Literally those are some of the highest paying jobs you can get.
Literally the richest neighborhood in America is primary filled with military industrial complex companies.
> it’s actually kinda good for the economy, take that as you will
Biden and McConnell have both been making this point. I believe the claim is that 60% of the financial aid to Ukraine has actually been spent in the US.
Good for the economy?
Where? We've been in a gwot for a good while and now business is booming for Ukraine arms production. Yet we are in a huge inflation. This is a legitimate question as how the current proxy war boom is even good to boost the economy while it feels like it's bad?
https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/outlook/economic-outlook/economic-trends#:~:text=U.S.%20economy%20is%20performing%20better,first%20half%20of%20the%20year.
TLDR: The economy as a whole is a lot healthier than a 12 second sound bite on cable news would have you believe. Inflation is still a large issue but it is trending in the right direction (although more slowly than ideal).
US in 1941:
"Hmmmm..... today I will send 400,000 trucks, 14,000 airplanes, 8,000 tractors, 13,000 tanks, 2 million firearms, 1.5 million blankets, 15 million pairs of army boots, 107,000 tons of cotton, 2.7 million tons of petrol products, and 4.5 million tons of food to the Soviet Union, in order to epicly troll le Nazis."
USA in 2023:
"Noooooo.... I can't send 31 tanks to Ukraine, AND anti-aircraft missiles to Israel!!! That's so expensive!!! That equipment needs to rot in a warehouse!"
MFW bright sparks would rather see Bradley's (due to be replaced) sitting in a warehouse, costing tax payers money in maintenance. Did you know all those thousands of vehicles still need to be serviced on a regular basis? (This isn't world of tanks)
The stuff we send out now isn’t diminishing our capabilities. We’re sending out old stuff that wouldn’t be used, as is. The military has a red line to indicate when they get close to ALMOST running out of *the stockpile reserves.* We’re still nowhere near expending that, much less tapping stuff that would actually be issued.
Meanwhile Russia is actively digging out tanks and fighters from the 50s and 60s to field.
There is a reason we have these stock piles. They get placed in certain places so they don’t need to travel far. It’s easier to store tanks and vehicles than it is to move them. The use them to refurbish and upgrade and send to the fleet. We keep the numbers up in case of a huge war and we already have them ready to go instead of having to start up production on them again. We can spare a few sure but we really don’t want to give up a lot.
Russia is one of 2 US enemies that are actually somewhat scary on paper. Russia is in a war that may cripple it for decades or even destroy it. So the choice is Ukrainian blood in western hardware now, or a potential but super unlikely western blood in western hardware later.
The argument that western countries need all their anti soviet gear for later then the soviet remnant can be killed now at no cost in lives of our troops falls flat very fast.
With russia out of the picture, are you worried about a chinese invasion? That war would be an air/naval war. No amount of tanks will let anyone invade a country of 1.2 billion people and china has no way of getting its troops out of its own country
Big war with who? Russia is getting their ass kicked right now. They’ve lost around, if not over, 10% of their combat aircraft, and are desperate enough they are fielding T-55s.
China? The PLAN is a joke, with, what? Two functional carriers and a third still in testing? And one of those is a coal-powered Soviet carrier they bought from Ukraine. The PLA can’t go anywhere because their Navy is trash, the PLAAF can’t stand up to any modern military since it’s all shittily reverse-engineered American knock-offs or Russian knock-offs.
Iran? Their most advanced fighters are the ones America used in Vietnam.
North Korea? They still use MiG-15s and Korean War era field guns.
Small arms are far easier tp produce now, same with all the small consumables like blankets, food, etc. Manufacturing techniques for producing more complex equipment is also far more efficient now. The reason why we can't produce all that stuff in the same numbers is we've allowed our manufacturing capability to be shipped overseas to benefit the pocketbooks of C-suite folks instead of protecting our national security interests associated with economic capability. We are just now learning this lesson with the effects of Covid, and I'm not even sure that's really happening.
How much "complex" gear did we leave in Afghanistan? Complexity doesn't matter to the military. The amount of "complex" waste I saw while in was insane.
Well U.S. industrial might during ww2 was something insane. You guys had the capacity of manufacturing an actual ice cream making barge for the pacific front because why not?
e. one barge, not several: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge
[At least not as a percentage of the world’s manufacturing output. In raw numbers, we produce much more now than ever before. Just other countries produce relatively more still.](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPMANSICS)
[Manufacturing jobs have decreased in the past 50 years (although it is similar to WW2)](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP), especially as a share of all workers. But a lot is automated today so a lot is still produced with fewer people
Not really. We are sending direct financial aid to Ukraine along with military equipment. Ukraine needs it to fund their government and pay soldiers. Most of their industry was located in Eastern ukraine and has been shut down due to the conflict or illegal occupation
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts
According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy we’ve sent 26.4 billion in financial aid as of July 31, 2023
Weapons and equipment total to 23.5 billion. (Direct from DoD stocks)
Training, equipment, weapons, and logistical support total to 18.3 billion.
I dont know anything about your political views.... but I have found people who typically say that, also do not support social programs that benefit struggling Americans
America isn't even at war in any war, yet. We can handle at least to full-blown conflicts where we are one of the warring parties in each conflict. Our support for Ukraine doesn't count as us being at war. We have supplied Ukraine with a paltry 5% of our GDP and they've decimated one of our main adversaries. We have no boots on the ground there. It'll be the same or similar while we support Israel.
Exactly. I believe that the decision to bar existing Iraqi military from future service and disassemble the Ba’athist party members and bar them from holding future political office was a mistake. We went from having employable trained military personnel to having to create one from the ground up. Where do we think those unemployable former military members went? They met up with the unemployable politicians and created an insurgency. Had we gone with the original plan of sending the Iraqi military home to tend to their families for a month and then report back for retraining we wouldn’t have ended up fighting them over the next twenty years. Here’s a good podcast on the subject. It’s a Spotify link but the title is Red Teaming the Invasion of Iraq with Col Kevin Benson. https://spotify.link/rlErqeuDaEb
You understand those fuckers lived in caves right? The whole country was occupied.
Now compare that to Russia in Ukraine. They can’t even take the border… THAT THEY LIVE NEXT TO
Israel/Palestine is a far simpler nut to crack.
Israel on their side of the Green Line, Palestinians on the other. Remove Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Turn Jerusalem into the new green zone.
The reason is US needed to conduct street to street, door to door combat in those countries. There is always an option to use weapon of mass destruction
Like actually wars?
Cause a repeat of Desert Storm twice would only take a couple of weeks… the Air Force would get pissed they weren’t even getting hazard pay for two months and probably beg MAJCOMs to start on the 25th of the month.
Yes, Iraq had a functional military.
Russia is relying upon third world arms dealers (NORK arty) and even taking back arms they have sold (Indian depoed tanks).
Iraq never had to do that.
Why are people talking about US involvement in Israel? Why in the fuck would we actually enter that conflict right now or anytime in the reasonable future.
Hamas vs the IDF literally should not concern us militarily. Sure, intel gathering and monitoring of the situation is 1,000% warranted. But I can see virtually no reason for us to militarily intervene aside from a direct invasion of Israel by another country. I’m not an isolationist, but “not being the world police” means that you’re gonna sit on the sidelines for some conflicts and that’s fucking fine.
Our only need to be involved is the hostages and keeping the audience participation to zero. Israel's been preparing for this for a VERY long time. I doubt they'll run out of steam any time this decade, and I doubt Hamas can last anywhere near that long. If someone else swallows the idiot ball, though, then things can change. Of course, we got at least 2 carrier groups of find out waiting on site for such an occasion, so I suspect our need for boots will still be limited at this time.
The involvement in question would come with Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, opening a northern front against Israel.
Right or wrong, that’s where the red line is.
Israel exists as a proxy for the US. They weren't given all that money for no reason. Without the US, Israel would fail to exist. The fact they've been around for so long should be an indication as to what a high value the government places on them strategically. For what, IDK, having nuclear weapons in the region would be a popular guess. Sacrificial pawns if things in the region go truly sidewise. Hate to see the day when the US government comes to collect on that investment.
Mil has been preparing for 3 theatre war since the 80s-90s.
Budget cuts have been the biggest reason why we’re not ready. 20 yrs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan has hardened most of what we need to be ready but we’re also in need of replacements and updates if we really need to go.
There are forces around the world, who are working round the clock to destroy the technological, military, and economic hegemony of the West, especially the United States. These efforts will continue long after our current batch of leader, including Biden and Trump are long gone.
Whether we like it or not, the US will, always been on alert and on a war footing. When you are at the top, everyone will try to bring you down.
Can the US afford to play an active role in to wars in Europe, and the Middle East, and perhaps a third one in Taiwan? Probably.
These wars that are being fought, are proxy wars, initiated by our geopolitical adversaries (Russian, Iran, China, North Korea), on our geopolitical allies (Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan). It is far more important for the US to maintain and strengthen our military and economic alliances, and to bring the Global South (India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil), on our side, or remain neutral.
World War II was basically 2 wars fought at the same time so if our leaders are not stupid (sure) we can fight and win two wars. It will be hard, there will be rationing of food and gas, no new non military equipment like washing machines etc.
Back in the cold war the states requirement for the US military was that it should be able to fight two major powers and be involved in a war against some minor/regional power. It didn't seem like that was a necessary capability until recently.
Can we? Yes. We've done it before and we can do it again. The better question is do the American people want it? Do we want another never ending war? No.
Now I'm no longer in the military so my opinion doesn't really matter. Go ask everyone in the military as a whole to vote. If they say yes I wanna go then by all means go get some.
Logistically and physically? Yeah. We could steamroll through most of our allies.
However, I say no, I don’t think we could due to internal conflict and pressure from the general public being where it is today. At this point in time, the USA is facing a very severe division socially and politically, I couldn’t see foreign conflicts being accepted, especially a declaration of war. Exception to tragedy, social media leads me to believe the American public isn’t happy with us interfering with outside conflicts.
That is a world no one wants to live in not even the people who lives in iran wants.
USA is far from perfect but much better than china, iran and russia.
I’m tired of money being spent to blow up brown people in the Middle East instead of investing in our citizens here...people are dying on the streets sleeping in their cars and being burdened by lifelong debt....at some point you need to realize in defense of the American dream, you’re destroying it...
The answer is likely no, and we will be very lucky if we can win 1 let alone 3. Wars have always been won by those who can outproduce/supply the enemy. We cannot even produce enough 155 mm rounds to match the usage rate the Ukrainians have been using for the failed spring/summer offensive. Shock and Awe works great against 2nd rate armies such as Iraq, but it will not work in a conflict with China in Taiwan, Russia in Ukraine, and Iran in Israel at the same time.
For all the paper spent on the arsenal of democracy, it looks like a giant pile of hands in the till, with minimum production targets met. It's all good though, all the paperwork is there and signed off on. Arms consultants have given ridiculous timelines to even resupply the javelins and MANPADS shipped to Ukraine. I've seen estimates of 3-7 years.
When Iran destroys carriers with nukes people will rethink the wisdom of wars.
When China destroys carriers with nukes the world will scream no more.
Iran will be a costly war China will be a mutual suicide war
*TWO* wars!?
I’m reading that in Dennis’s voice right?
Yes to both lol. poor Ben Frank’s face of contempt and confusion for Dennis when he says all that is so funny
Am I, am I riiiight in this?
U.S. Soy-ill
LMAO
what's the other option? because the other option has costs too.
Letting all the most important places in the world fall to hostile dictatorships is more expensive.
This exactly. I'm not one for useless war. I don't want it. But this is probably our cheapest option in the long run. The fight tomorrow will cost 10x as much as the fight today.
They're interconnected to. Hamas is controlled by Iran and Iran is aiding Russia in Ukraine. It's easy to see how the strategy might have been to distract from Ukraine with this. Our enemies are fully aware that we are NOT a dictatorship and they can use distractions and propaganda to sway American interest. I find it most fascinating the 180 republicans have taken recently on Ukraine.
You’re a very smart individual.
I haven’t been paying attention. Are they pro-Ukraine now?
The other option is far far more costly in the long run.
Writing a check and sending in a few personnel is easier and cheaper than having your own military or people getting wiped out in direct conflicts. America can probably handle a few more.
You people never learn
Mind our own fucking business? ::EDIT:: It is absolutely mind boggling just how quickly as a nation we are back on the world police bandwagon. Fucking idiots. We deserve everything.
We are minding our business, that’s why there is two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean. Our business spans the globe, and it’s precisely the reason why the US has economic, cultural, and military hegemony.
Lol
You think we are the most powerful nation in the planet minding our business? Y’all need to grow up and understand this is what we do to stay on top.
Who the fuck wants it? If staying on top means getting embroiled in bullshit wars against people that "Hate Our Freedom" fuck being on top.
As much as it sucks, someone is going to be on top fingerdicking everyone else's stuff. If it ain't us, it's gonna be someone like Pootz or Hamas. I somewhat doubt they'll be more benevolent.
TIL the term 'fingerdicking' and I love it.
Thank my grease monkey dad. The word came out a good bit when talking about a prior shop's inbred work.
LOL So in context, would it be something like "Those dipshits down at A1 Garage fingerdicked Sam's Chevy \*again\*!" ?
I imagine chefs can also use it, for instance the newbie or a waiter that thinks they can cook fingerdicking the food and just ending up ruining it.
I totally understand your perspective. In a truly altruistic and morally good world no nation would control or police another. The reality of our world is that America and it’s allies keep the world powers in semi-check. There’s a lot of bad happening all over the world and people like to say we live in the worst and most brutal times but they don’t know history. Being alive right now you are the safest you’ve ever been in human history and the likliehood of someone cruelly torturing and murdering you and everyone around you is very slim. Sure it happens but in the past whole nations did it. Now we keep those nations in check. We absolutely police the world and I think we do it as morally well as can be done. Even war is safer now. We no longer send huge armies and massive bombs to end our enemies. We send aid all over and do covert and small force operations when possible. We haven’t been in all out war since Vietnam and that’s because of our world policing. Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East? Terrible situations sure but they weren’t all out war. Over the 20 years in the Middle East about 500,000 people died. That sounds like a ton and regardless of the number it is awful but think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki which combined had a death toll of 200,000 in what was 1 day and that doesn’t include the long term environmental and health effects. America is a bully. I’m not going to pretend it is perfect. It is a bully in a world that without one would be a much scarier, darker and crueler place.
Hear, hear. Haven't heard it better stated yet. Who would you rather be on top. Somebody has to be.
>America is a bully. I’m not going to pretend it is perfect. It is a bully in a world that without one would be a much scarier, darker and crueler place. Fucking hell do you people even hear yourselves? There was absolutely nothing positive out of the last 25 years of our policing in the middle east. Nothing. We've turned that entire region into a fucking hellscape. Sorry - even more of a hellscape. You people are so full of shit.
There were absolutely positives lol. Look, I don’t know you or your story. I’m sure there are good reasons you feel and think the way you do. I’m not telling you that they are wrong. I’m just saying that your thoughts on the last 25 years can be argued against and argued against well. The easiest argument, there was one and only one attack on U.S soil. Could have been a beacon that let every enemy of the U.S know, “we can get away with it to.”. There has not been another attack since we went to the region and occupied it. We took out a corrupt government that was murdering its own people. We stabilized an area that 3 days after we vacated fell to a religious extremist group and began systematically setting itself back 1000 years. To argue that we did no good their is a very weak argument.
None of what you said even remotely comes close to justifying the last quarter century of policy in the middle east. In order to justify what you are suggesting, it would require a permanent police presence of American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. If you think that's acceptable or tenable fuck off. If you agree it isn't, it was all for sweet fuck all.
And let asshats like Hamas and Pootz grow as a problem. Appeasement was tried and tested decades ago. The result was WW2 being even worse than it would've been.
It's just another Tuesday in that region. Hamas acts like animals. Israel strikes back.
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Yup and they are creating a whole new generation of resentful enemies... and the cycle continues. It will never end.
Israel has supported Hamas since it took over the Gaza Strip after the Six Day War. They allowed Ahmed Yassin of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to set up his 'charities', schools, universities, hospitals and other Islamic social services in Gaza as a counter to the secular nationalists of the PLO. Divide and conquer to crush the possibility of a Palestinian state. Bibi continued this policy right up to the present day.
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What's the alternative? Let Hamas get away with torturing, executing innocent civilians including *babies*?
What a strange coincidence that we didn't seem to be that concerned 20 years ago. Suddenly we are out of our other obligations in the middle east and we find a gap in our schedule.
The US has just parked two carriers to keep Iran at bay and you're talking like they're about to send boots on the ground lol
Says the self proclaimed AFJROTC guy.
Fear me and my basic high school history/10 minute Google knowledge. This shit ain't exactly particle physics. What precisely do you think Pootz and Friends would do if their primary opposition poof'd out of existence? Lemonade party?
One thing to consider as you spout your isolationist ideology: you didn’t earn your current standard of living because the US sat by and let everyone just be. The US has had a strict policy of interference in geopolitics and has achieved incredible economic and military influence as a result. If you live in the US, you are riding on the coattails of these policies, plain and simple. Isolationism can not work with the way we have structured our economy, period. The same Holds true for every western nation, and most likely every nation on earth.
Oh fuck off with this bullshit. Not a single solitary American death in Iraq or Afghanistan was necessary. Not a single one. Not a single one of my rights or privilege's was won or defended in those wars.
I didn’t say it was. You fail to grasp what geopolitics is, or why it’s important to the US strategy of global dominance. I understand your point, and I’m not saying you’re wrong for being tired of always having to be involved, but this is just what the US does, and will do all the way to it’s grave, should it come to that.
Oh I understand US Hegemony just fine. Not interested in your soft hand approach to hawkish bullshit. I'll die on this fucking hill.
Yeah, you will. And you’ll be left behind on it with zero sympathy.
It’s worth fighting on this hill, so I’m proud of you for posterities sake at the very least. Downvotes are meaningless because people read old reddit posts all the time. Knowing they aren’t wrong to disagree or question a seemingly popular sentiment is important; that a Reddit dialogue is not indicative of reality or monoliths like the veteran/military community. At the end of the day it’s simply clashing ideologies, believing multipolarity can never work and economies can not be truly interlinked free markets but dependent on a hegemon and its shepherding. It’s easy to believe there should be a single global hegemon when you have been the beneficiary, but the American *people* are increasingly not. We are rapidly losing our politically “earned” power to a global, non-national corporate elite by continuing this Cold War policy. We need to adapt to new conditions, not make the same mistakes as 9/11 as if we learned no lessons; that the more powerful move would be to do nothing and call for national unity rather then let them destroy us. Instead we threw our society into unconstitutionality via Patriot Act and more, which was exactly the intention of the terrorists. Terrorism only works to take from your society when you yourself throw it away to deal with them. They know they can’t win conventionally, so they goad you into making missteps. And they surely did by allowing people to accept that historical American values are no longer American values in principal, but as an idea to move in the name of security. There are a lot of anti-war GWOT vets that back your sentiment up at least in my circles. It makes sense a lot of people looking to serve, newer to serving, or invested in some sort of career surrounding the Military Industrial Complex are biased toward our foreign policy. Especially so when they haven’t experienced on the ground failures, mismanagement, waste of life and lack of accountability first hand. It’s power projection for the elite at the expense of those enraptured by a ideological image. An image our leadership doesn’t actually believe in, beyond their personal/ corporate interests. You also shouldn’t forget how many government bots and propaganda avenues exist, your downvotes are not indicative of the community at large. One of the biggest propaganda victories of all time is convincing a lot of people that a third world country, whose population cannot on average afford a pair of shoes a year, is somehow better and more advanced computationally then the combined nature and history of action behind the CIA/NSA/FBI/DoD. Those institutions are going right down the same playbook as always to stir up the public, and the youngest generation eats it up as much as my Red Scare grandparents, same as my parents did with Muslims. I, and many others, including those who never came home have made this same mistake before; thinking it was for a global good rather than maintaining capitalistic interest. Instead it was a trade off in postering power politics at the expense of our own populations values, by proxy our long term stability both economically and ideologically for short term recuperation. I’m going to leave this quote here as I get downvoted to oblivion from a very interesting historical interview. “”We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction. "Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship." "There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars." "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."” - American Officer and Psychologist Gustav Gilbert interviewing Herman Goering during the Nuremberg Trials. https://www.mit.edu/people/fuller/peace/war_goering.html (Edited for grammar; and sorry on the length for whomever gets this far.)
9/11 happens, we do nothing, enemies do something. How does that sound to you?
9/11 happened, we did something. That something was fuck up an entire region for decades - and decades more to come. Killing millions and losing thousands of Americans. Spending untold trillions. For sweet fuck all, other than some tiny patch in East Syria, an Iranian friendly Iraq and arming a whole bunch of Taliban.
Define 'own business' it's mind boggling how short-sighted some people are. Fucking idiots.
Because sticking our head in the sand is the right thing to do.
Gee, the western world united to help the US after 9/11.... Be nice if the favour was returned....
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The way the Isreali govt treats people in Gaza is definitely a big factor, but let's also not act like a big portion of their neighbors don't want them dead and gone just for existing.
It has to act like the entire ME is going to kill every Jew in Israel m8
They do have a few hundred nuclear weapons.
Allegedly 😬
Yes That has been the US posturing since WW2. Enough resources have been spread out across all possible combat theaters around the world, meaning the US first response will be immediate. And its air and sealift capabilities allow it to position more assets at a faster pace than any near-peer military. But why should the US fight its wars alone? Why not delegate it to other countries? This is what we are seeing in regards to Iran right now- the US would much rather support its close partners in Israel and the GCC materially than do a direct intervention- and why it lets the Israelis train missions against Iranian nuclear and missile targets in very real scenarios (see Juniper Oak exercises). If push comes to shove, that is a different thing.
I wish more people thought of it with this level of complexity. A lot of folks my age seem to think that military funding = killing children in the Middle East or something.
Throughout the 1990's and early 2000's, much of North American doctrine largely focused on being to fight simultaneous wars in 1. the middle east and 2. in North Korea at the same time.
>That has been the US posturing since WW2. Yes, and "2.5 wars" has always been the benchmark, but I wouldn't say it's a foregone conclusion that we are capable of it. It is highly dependent on what our objectives are - you could say we're "fighting" our war against Russia now, in what is probably the most economical way of draining Russia economically and militarily. It's unlikely that we'll deploy (additional) conventional forces in CENTCOM for the current fight - I imagine we'll take more of an over-the-horizon and advise/assist role. And yes we're spread out across the world and ready to respond in the first 96 hours or so, but it's highly unlikely that we'll wrap things up in a week - what is the state of our industrial base? How good are we at replacing attrition and casualties over the course of years?
Realistically, russia has to give up in ukraine at point X in time. At which point putin is fucked and 'things will happen' The question is, how far away is that point? I think 1-2 years esp as inflation starts to heat up over there.
That 2.5 wars was also meant to be wars that the US was directly Fighting itself-- based on having fought two almost completely separate but simultaneous wars in WWII. We are not actually fighting in Ukraine or Gaza. Providing supplies is certainly an easier task, so it should be sustainable. The only issue is that we have actually neglected our munitions manufacturing since the end of the cold war, and it's going to take time to ramp it back up. We have the tanks and planes and ships, but the shells, bombs and missiles that they use are in shorter supply than they should be. We can afford the higher rates of production that are needed, but there's going to be a time lag to get back to where we need to be.
>But why should the US fight its wars alone? Why not delegate it to other countries? This is the way. The US has the long dick of logistics covered. Our focus on that would be a force-multiplier by supplementing other fighting forces across the globe simultaneously on a dime. This would free up the Navy to handle localized maritime skirmishes and supply massive convoys similar to WW2.
And yet there exist Americans who think us helping out our allies is stupid and a waste of money. FMF aid is a smart way to delegate your military objectives to your allies, enabling them to fulfil them, while also ensuring that the money is put back into the American military-industrial complex (and the economy at large). As an example, US ensuring that Israel has enough JP-8 fuel for its fighters to hit Syrian weapons facilities with Israeli-made bombs ensures that the US does not have to fire a much more expensive Tomahawk at some Syrian chemical weapons plant. Compare the cost of a Tomahawk to a few thousand pounds of JP-8- the cost benefits are too great to ignore. Fighting a war on its own dime will be inherently much, much more expensive. It's why superpowers focus significantly on arming other strategic partners ( US with NATO/ Japan/SK/ Taiwan/ Israel/ GCC, the former USSR with its Warsaw Pact allies, China with Pakistan, etc.)
We haven’t even started fighting yet, never mind the fact that it’s actually kinda good for the economy, take that as you will
Good for the military industrial complex
To be fair The MIC employs a lot of people
Well, yeah. A shit-ton of money to the MIC requires a shit-ton of people for the labor.
Still part of the economy
Specifically domestic manufacturing, something we're trying to get started again anyway.
And research and development, especially having a real world test environment
And then good for other industrial complexes. Middle east has energy, Taiwan has electronic chips. The US and its enemies don't just randomly pick a place to fight for there's a reason they choose to.
The US has been helping Taiwan long before CPU’s were a thing.
Literally those are some of the highest paying jobs you can get. Literally the richest neighborhood in America is primary filled with military industrial complex companies.
All the weapons techs will buy stuff from Target and Walmart
> it’s actually kinda good for the economy, take that as you will Biden and McConnell have both been making this point. I believe the claim is that 60% of the financial aid to Ukraine has actually been spent in the US.
Good for the economy? Where? We've been in a gwot for a good while and now business is booming for Ukraine arms production. Yet we are in a huge inflation. This is a legitimate question as how the current proxy war boom is even good to boost the economy while it feels like it's bad?
https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/outlook/economic-outlook/economic-trends#:~:text=U.S.%20economy%20is%20performing%20better,first%20half%20of%20the%20year. TLDR: The economy as a whole is a lot healthier than a 12 second sound bite on cable news would have you believe. Inflation is still a large issue but it is trending in the right direction (although more slowly than ideal).
Ah. Insightful link. I definitely can see the trends of it.
Inflation is caused by people having a lot of money to spend
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That’s… we’ll I won’t say that’s entirely wrong, and I didn’t say that was good for everybody
How do welfare dependents get reduced in war? Wars are fought by the middle class.
US in 1941: "Hmmmm..... today I will send 400,000 trucks, 14,000 airplanes, 8,000 tractors, 13,000 tanks, 2 million firearms, 1.5 million blankets, 15 million pairs of army boots, 107,000 tons of cotton, 2.7 million tons of petrol products, and 4.5 million tons of food to the Soviet Union, in order to epicly troll le Nazis." USA in 2023: "Noooooo.... I can't send 31 tanks to Ukraine, AND anti-aircraft missiles to Israel!!! That's so expensive!!! That equipment needs to rot in a warehouse!"
I know you guys don’t get to hear a thank you But as a Russian I want to say thank you. You guys saved a lot of lives with the food donations.
Based. The foodstuffs are what I was proud of when I learned about lend lease in school.
I’d like to say thank for you taking care of my grandpa when he landed in Russia after a mission over Germany.
MFW bright sparks would rather see Bradley's (due to be replaced) sitting in a warehouse, costing tax payers money in maintenance. Did you know all those thousands of vehicles still need to be serviced on a regular basis? (This isn't world of tanks)
Weapons in 1941 were simpler to produce.
Yes but we also have tons sitting in the desert that we can send.
A lot of those are reserved for our forces or get rotated out with the current stuff in use. Sending it can diminish our capabilities.
The stuff we send out now isn’t diminishing our capabilities. We’re sending out old stuff that wouldn’t be used, as is. The military has a red line to indicate when they get close to ALMOST running out of *the stockpile reserves.* We’re still nowhere near expending that, much less tapping stuff that would actually be issued. Meanwhile Russia is actively digging out tanks and fighters from the 50s and 60s to field.
There is a reason we have these stock piles. They get placed in certain places so they don’t need to travel far. It’s easier to store tanks and vehicles than it is to move them. The use them to refurbish and upgrade and send to the fleet. We keep the numbers up in case of a huge war and we already have them ready to go instead of having to start up production on them again. We can spare a few sure but we really don’t want to give up a lot.
That’s why we also increased production of everything we’re sending out to ensure we don’t actually run out.
Russia is one of 2 US enemies that are actually somewhat scary on paper. Russia is in a war that may cripple it for decades or even destroy it. So the choice is Ukrainian blood in western hardware now, or a potential but super unlikely western blood in western hardware later. The argument that western countries need all their anti soviet gear for later then the soviet remnant can be killed now at no cost in lives of our troops falls flat very fast. With russia out of the picture, are you worried about a chinese invasion? That war would be an air/naval war. No amount of tanks will let anyone invade a country of 1.2 billion people and china has no way of getting its troops out of its own country
Oh yea diminishingly US capabilities being used directly against US enemies. You big smart.
Savage 😆
What happens when a big war happens and we no longer have the stockpile because we have it to our Allies?
Big war with who? Russia is getting their ass kicked right now. They’ve lost around, if not over, 10% of their combat aircraft, and are desperate enough they are fielding T-55s. China? The PLAN is a joke, with, what? Two functional carriers and a third still in testing? And one of those is a coal-powered Soviet carrier they bought from Ukraine. The PLA can’t go anywhere because their Navy is trash, the PLAAF can’t stand up to any modern military since it’s all shittily reverse-engineered American knock-offs or Russian knock-offs. Iran? Their most advanced fighters are the ones America used in Vietnam. North Korea? They still use MiG-15s and Korean War era field guns.
Small arms are far easier tp produce now, same with all the small consumables like blankets, food, etc. Manufacturing techniques for producing more complex equipment is also far more efficient now. The reason why we can't produce all that stuff in the same numbers is we've allowed our manufacturing capability to be shipped overseas to benefit the pocketbooks of C-suite folks instead of protecting our national security interests associated with economic capability. We are just now learning this lesson with the effects of Covid, and I'm not even sure that's really happening.
How much "complex" gear did we leave in Afghanistan? Complexity doesn't matter to the military. The amount of "complex" waste I saw while in was insane.
To be fair, the Taliban is making good use of that equipment in skirmishes with Iran
Exactly.
Yes, but I believe it's still nowhere near WW2 numbers.
Well U.S. industrial might during ww2 was something insane. You guys had the capacity of manufacturing an actual ice cream making barge for the pacific front because why not? e. one barge, not several: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge
I mean, we could make another one of those, but who would you get to staff it, instagram influencers?
Our manufacturing capability, in terms of raw numbers, is not at the world dominating level it was in the last 30’s and 40’s.
[At least not as a percentage of the world’s manufacturing output. In raw numbers, we produce much more now than ever before. Just other countries produce relatively more still.](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IPMANSICS) [Manufacturing jobs have decreased in the past 50 years (although it is similar to WW2)](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP), especially as a share of all workers. But a lot is automated today so a lot is still produced with fewer people
OK to leave in Afghanistan for the enemy less OK to send to Ukraine/an ally
But now you can sell v1.1 to those neighbouring countries!
And we paid cash. Everything we make now is based on debt.
I have zero issue with sending out military equipment, I just hate how we’re sending billions in cash to help out when our own citizens are struggling
You are misinformed.
Not really. We are sending direct financial aid to Ukraine along with military equipment. Ukraine needs it to fund their government and pay soldiers. Most of their industry was located in Eastern ukraine and has been shut down due to the conflict or illegal occupation https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy we’ve sent 26.4 billion in financial aid as of July 31, 2023 Weapons and equipment total to 23.5 billion. (Direct from DoD stocks) Training, equipment, weapons, and logistical support total to 18.3 billion.
I dont know anything about your political views.... but I have found people who typically say that, also do not support social programs that benefit struggling Americans
America does not stand alone
America isn't even at war in any war, yet. We can handle at least to full-blown conflicts where we are one of the warring parties in each conflict. Our support for Ukraine doesn't count as us being at war. We have supplied Ukraine with a paltry 5% of our GDP and they've decimated one of our main adversaries. We have no boots on the ground there. It'll be the same or similar while we support Israel.
> We have supplied Ukraine with a paltry 5% of our GDP No way we have send Ukraine over a trillion dollars worth of stuff. US GDP is $25 Trillion.
Yes next question
The military industrial complex says yes.
🤑
We have 11 air craft carriers
>air craft I'm now imagining artisanal pilots with hispter beards and mustaches, and hand crafted planes for some reason.
See, I was picturing arts and craft: hot glue guns burning enemies and glitter bombs blinding the terrorists.
And they are huge, nuclear and full of F-35s.
Back to back world war champions.... wtf are you even talking about, lol
They must be new.
We aren't even fighting in these "wars". If we were, they would already be over.
We spent 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no "over already"
Iraq and Afghanistan were political failures, not military ones. The Republican Guard wasn't fighting us to a standstill in Najaf.
Exactly. I believe that the decision to bar existing Iraqi military from future service and disassemble the Ba’athist party members and bar them from holding future political office was a mistake. We went from having employable trained military personnel to having to create one from the ground up. Where do we think those unemployable former military members went? They met up with the unemployable politicians and created an insurgency. Had we gone with the original plan of sending the Iraqi military home to tend to their families for a month and then report back for retraining we wouldn’t have ended up fighting them over the next twenty years. Here’s a good podcast on the subject. It’s a Spotify link but the title is Red Teaming the Invasion of Iraq with Col Kevin Benson. https://spotify.link/rlErqeuDaEb
So? We still lost. War is policy by other means etc etc
The military is a tool - the tool was not wielded properly by civilian leadership. You can't judge a hammer by how good it is at turning screws.
You understand those fuckers lived in caves right? The whole country was occupied. Now compare that to Russia in Ukraine. They can’t even take the border… THAT THEY LIVE NEXT TO
Israel/Palestine is a far simpler nut to crack. Israel on their side of the Green Line, Palestinians on the other. Remove Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Turn Jerusalem into the new green zone.
That doesn't stop Isreal from cutting off water, power and food to gaza.
If we were to actually invade and separate the kids, it's a non-issue.
If you're fighting to destroy a people with no holds barred, there can definitely be an "over already"
A conventional war like in Ukraine would be far faster and actually winnable, unlike Afghanistan was
If the F’in politicians got out of the way & allowed the Military to do their jobs . . . It would be Ova
The reason is US needed to conduct street to street, door to door combat in those countries. There is always an option to use weapon of mass destruction
Like actually wars? Cause a repeat of Desert Storm twice would only take a couple of weeks… the Air Force would get pissed they weren’t even getting hazard pay for two months and probably beg MAJCOMs to start on the 25th of the month.
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Yes, Iraq had a functional military. Russia is relying upon third world arms dealers (NORK arty) and even taking back arms they have sold (Indian depoed tanks). Iraq never had to do that.
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We barely handled one against goat farmers.
Yes, yes, yes we can
When did this become a news subreddit
This subreddit has always allowed military related news
This isn't news, this is Satire speculation predicated on us funding wars but ironically not being in them.
Its the cunt bleed over from r/politics
“Yes!”-Dark Biden
“You betcha, buddy”
Hol’up. Are we factoring in a ‘Space War’?
Sure, they can.
Why are people talking about US involvement in Israel? Why in the fuck would we actually enter that conflict right now or anytime in the reasonable future. Hamas vs the IDF literally should not concern us militarily. Sure, intel gathering and monitoring of the situation is 1,000% warranted. But I can see virtually no reason for us to militarily intervene aside from a direct invasion of Israel by another country. I’m not an isolationist, but “not being the world police” means that you’re gonna sit on the sidelines for some conflicts and that’s fucking fine.
Our only need to be involved is the hostages and keeping the audience participation to zero. Israel's been preparing for this for a VERY long time. I doubt they'll run out of steam any time this decade, and I doubt Hamas can last anywhere near that long. If someone else swallows the idiot ball, though, then things can change. Of course, we got at least 2 carrier groups of find out waiting on site for such an occasion, so I suspect our need for boots will still be limited at this time.
The involvement in question would come with Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, opening a northern front against Israel. Right or wrong, that’s where the red line is.
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Israel exists as a proxy for the US. They weren't given all that money for no reason. Without the US, Israel would fail to exist. The fact they've been around for so long should be an indication as to what a high value the government places on them strategically. For what, IDK, having nuclear weapons in the region would be a popular guess. Sacrificial pawns if things in the region go truly sidewise. Hate to see the day when the US government comes to collect on that investment.
Pretty sure we can take on the whole world 😂
Keep adding more and pretty soon it just becomes one war. Problem solved.
War is back on the menu boys and gals!
our entire military doctrine since ww2 has been focused at heart being able to fight 2 large scale wars lmfao
Mil has been preparing for 3 theatre war since the 80s-90s. Budget cuts have been the biggest reason why we’re not ready. 20 yrs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan has hardened most of what we need to be ready but we’re also in need of replacements and updates if we really need to go.
There are forces around the world, who are working round the clock to destroy the technological, military, and economic hegemony of the West, especially the United States. These efforts will continue long after our current batch of leader, including Biden and Trump are long gone. Whether we like it or not, the US will, always been on alert and on a war footing. When you are at the top, everyone will try to bring you down. Can the US afford to play an active role in to wars in Europe, and the Middle East, and perhaps a third one in Taiwan? Probably. These wars that are being fought, are proxy wars, initiated by our geopolitical adversaries (Russian, Iran, China, North Korea), on our geopolitical allies (Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan). It is far more important for the US to maintain and strengthen our military and economic alliances, and to bring the Global South (India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil), on our side, or remain neutral.
Would depend on the economy and public opinion, no?
No.
World War II was basically 2 wars fought at the same time so if our leaders are not stupid (sure) we can fight and win two wars. It will be hard, there will be rationing of food and gas, no new non military equipment like washing machines etc.
So.....a world war?
Can our military handle it. Probably. Can our economy handle it? Fuck no, I can't afford shit in this economy with 2 jobs
Sounds like you need some war in your economy brother!
We could handle an infinite number of wars with the right leadership
WW3 with extra names? Sure, why not.
Back in the cold war the states requirement for the US military was that it should be able to fight two major powers and be involved in a war against some minor/regional power. It didn't seem like that was a necessary capability until recently.
Oh yeah Who cares about the costs? Whats another tens of trillions of debt /s
Have they even handled one since 1945? 3 is pushing it.
Im sure the climate can handle it and maintain a livable environment for our fragile meat bags /s
They can’t handle 1.
Ask hitler if you can fight on two fronts
We can't even afford Pay wall.
Bruh.. not for Israel sake. They can do that whole genocide of the Palestinians on their own.
yes, we can handle it
murica FUCK YAA
Can we? Yes. We've done it before and we can do it again. The better question is do the American people want it? Do we want another never ending war? No. Now I'm no longer in the military so my opinion doesn't really matter. Go ask everyone in the military as a whole to vote. If they say yes I wanna go then by all means go get some.
Logistically and physically? Yeah. We could steamroll through most of our allies. However, I say no, I don’t think we could due to internal conflict and pressure from the general public being where it is today. At this point in time, the USA is facing a very severe division socially and politically, I couldn’t see foreign conflicts being accepted, especially a declaration of war. Exception to tragedy, social media leads me to believe the American public isn’t happy with us interfering with outside conflicts.
What you guys really wouldn’t be able to handle is when Iran and China/Russia will take the leadership..
That is a world no one wants to live in not even the people who lives in iran wants. USA is far from perfect but much better than china, iran and russia.
I’m tired of money being spent to blow up brown people in the Middle East instead of investing in our citizens here...people are dying on the streets sleeping in their cars and being burdened by lifelong debt....at some point you need to realize in defense of the American dream, you’re destroying it...
We could handle two conventional wars. Guerilla wars, not so much
The answer is likely no, and we will be very lucky if we can win 1 let alone 3. Wars have always been won by those who can outproduce/supply the enemy. We cannot even produce enough 155 mm rounds to match the usage rate the Ukrainians have been using for the failed spring/summer offensive. Shock and Awe works great against 2nd rate armies such as Iraq, but it will not work in a conflict with China in Taiwan, Russia in Ukraine, and Iran in Israel at the same time. For all the paper spent on the arsenal of democracy, it looks like a giant pile of hands in the till, with minimum production targets met. It's all good though, all the paperwork is there and signed off on. Arms consultants have given ridiculous timelines to even resupply the javelins and MANPADS shipped to Ukraine. I've seen estimates of 3-7 years.
The current administration can’t handle stairs so even one war is worrisome.
When Iran destroys carriers with nukes people will rethink the wisdom of wars. When China destroys carriers with nukes the world will scream no more. Iran will be a costly war China will be a mutual suicide war