King Arts
Well-known member
I mean it’s all of it. Before Bush’s wars we were not trillions of dollars in debt. Our military budget is extremely extremely expensive like it’s ridiculously large compared to other nations.
The War in Afghanistan
- Thread starter Husky_Khan
- Start date
Perhaps, if compared to countries without any major military commitments, threats or ambitions.
Compared to Russia, Iran, or Pakistan (unsurprisingly a lot of countries at the top military spending list tend to be on US shitlist), not so unusual, some of them go to 4+% GDP territory, while USA is "just" at 3.7%.
Last real numbers were for 2018/19 and was around 730 BILLION Dollars...yup, sure as shit is a lot of money, and we all now there's a lot of bloat in there. I'm perfectly happy with smart changes to the spending system to bring the expense down.
Course, that's only 10% of the 7 TRILLION Dollars it looks like we're spending SO FAR this year. We need to aim at the largest chunk right now.
ShieldWife
Marchioness
It’s both, there are obviously plenty of outrageous examples of domestic spending gone mad. Though few single domestic projects that can compare to the costs of so called “defense” and foreign wars. Some of our greatest domestic expenditures are just inefficiently shuffling money around within the nation: like Social Security. Some actually do help people make ends meet even if it causes harm to our economy, like stimulus spending. Domestic programs at least keep money circulating within our own economy for debatably desirable goals.
What have our trillions of dollars spent on foreign wars bought us: death, crippling injuries, hatred, terrorism, chaos, ruin, desolation, suffering, radicalized refugees, widespread instability, and corruption. Our money has gone up in smoke and the world is a more dangerous place because of it and the USA is a less free and prosperous place because it.
As the US turns it’s guns more and more towards their own citizens, they will be using the infrastructure, policies, laws, and even the psychological conditioning that our warhawks told us would protect us against terrorism.
If we can benefit at all from this senseless expenditure of blood and money, it could be for us to learn the evil and futility of war and to avoid it in the future before we destroy ourselves.
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What we need to do decide is if we are:
A) A Republic that utilizes democracy to deal with our internal affairs, and only need a military large enough to control our own shores, without needing to be the world's policeman, and accept a multipolar world where we are Great Nation among other Great Nations.
B) An oligarchical empire in all but name, where our democracy is as hollow as many third world nations, and the US gov goes where it wants, and does what it wants to who it wants, internationally and domestically, because it can, and fuck the morality of it.
C) A conglomeration of smaller nations who have less and less in common, outside of a shared nuclear umbrella, and that maybe a 'peaceful divorce', as Tim Poole puts it, with negotiated splits and divisions of national agencies/groups/resources among several, or many, new smaller nations that actually mesh well because 'fences make good neighbors'. Cali already has it's own 'foreign policy' separate from DC, and Texas effectively does too (plus the whole separate electrical grid thing).
Because figuring out our foreign policy goals and what they should really be, and how much funding the military needs, first depends on figuring out our domestic situation.
A) A Republic that utilizes democracy to deal with our internal affairs, and only need a military large enough to control our own shores, without needing to be the world's policeman, and accept a multipolar world where we are Great Nation among other Great Nations.
B) An oligarchical empire in all but name, where our democracy is as hollow as many third world nations, and the US gov goes where it wants, and does what it wants to who it wants, internationally and domestically, because it can, and fuck the morality of it.
C) A conglomeration of smaller nations who have less and less in common, outside of a shared nuclear umbrella, and that maybe a 'peaceful divorce', as Tim Poole puts it, with negotiated splits and divisions of national agencies/groups/resources among several, or many, new smaller nations that actually mesh well because 'fences make good neighbors'. Cali already has it's own 'foreign policy' separate from DC, and Texas effectively does too (plus the whole separate electrical grid thing).
Because figuring out our foreign policy goals and what they should really be, and how much funding the military needs, first depends on figuring out our domestic situation.
This shit is why you are getting B. This is the only option that doesn't contain wishful thinking or contradiction with most of the population's shown preferences, so by elimination, the influential and the rich default to that.
a) A lot of you Americans want a "multipolar world", but few both know and are willing to take the consequences of a multipolar world. Think major trade disruptions cutting 20-50% of your GDP, and actual large scale conflicts happening over the world. How many would be totally ok with that? 20%? 30%? Perhaps 40% if you really get sick with stupid wars. Good luck winning elections with these numbers. As things stand, the opinion makers and their target audience struggle to not DO SOMETHING about "women's rights in Afghanistan". Imagine what they would do if a proper war broke out, with millions dead in months, and somewhere more relevant.
b) Are you running for a UN post or what? Countries are not moral actors, cannot be, much like corporations. And it is unwise for them to try. Because, among other reasons, there is no universally accepted moral standard for countries to act according to. The international arena is, in the end, mostly anarchy with dozens of separate moral systems and some actors who consider murdering you for your shoes a fine deal, with some slivers of order brought in with international laws, which in turn matter only due to backing through threat of economic and military force. A lot of both provided by USA. Allow yourself to get roped into stupid moralistic games, and you will end up doing ridiculous stuff one way (Libya intervention) or another (humanitarian superpower Sweden).
c) One side of the divorce, consciously or not, downright cannot accept a peaceful divorce with all its implications. They are pretty clear about that. The much of the other side will struggle with such conditions too.
Why are so many people thinking a multipolar world would be better then a Unipolar one?
What happened the last multiple times we have had multipolarworlds? Well close enough to them? World war 2.
When the US isn't the big dog anymore, who will be there to make sure China, Russia, Iran, and any numerous country that has land claims from taking those claims? The nation holding it? No country is really able to be able to defend against any of the big enemies of ours without US support. At least not long enough to matter.
if the US does not stay the Unipolar power, it will have China be the second, perhaps even replace us. Then you have China going to war with many countries, wiping out populations. Making us reliant on them....
But obviously the fall of A-stan is just the start of a multipolar world where the US and every other country lives happily ever after. Like every time in world history before World War 2....
What happened the last multiple times we have had multipolarworlds? Well close enough to them? World war 2.
When the US isn't the big dog anymore, who will be there to make sure China, Russia, Iran, and any numerous country that has land claims from taking those claims? The nation holding it? No country is really able to be able to defend against any of the big enemies of ours without US support. At least not long enough to matter.
if the US does not stay the Unipolar power, it will have China be the second, perhaps even replace us. Then you have China going to war with many countries, wiping out populations. Making us reliant on them....
But obviously the fall of A-stan is just the start of a multipolar world where the US and every other country lives happily ever after. Like every time in world history before World War 2....
ShieldWife
Marchioness
The world is becoming multipolar and there is nothing we can do to stop it. China is already our rival and in a decade or two they will be the dominant world power. That is beyond our ability to control. What might still be within our ability to control is whether or not we remain a great power or collapse.
It really, really pains me to agree with anything Biden says--and God knows he's earned the flake he's getting now, but there was never going to be a clean pullout given the situation. That's not to say that the Biden Admin is without fault, but the cities falling less than two weeks after our forces pull back is...is astonishingly bad. And proves how bad the Afghan government really was.
From what I saw, the Biden team had several things that kept them from being as effective as possible.
- They did NOT make contingency plans if things went tits up. I think Biden and his team expected the Afghan army to hold for 3-6 months.
- I think there was a political motivation to want to believe that the cities would hold out longer, because the admin wanted to put some distance between themselves and the impending disaster. I think that's impart why they delayed trying to get out. And some retard on the team suggested a 9/11 style celebration, as if this could be spun into such a thing.
- Because of the blinders that Biden and his team had on, they ignored people on the ground who told them things they didn't want to hear. That's the kindest interpretation. The other is that Biden and his team knew it was going to happen, lied to save face, and shrugged their shoulders when the country was overran for the sake of political expedience. I'd rather not believe that though.
- Either way, when the shit hit the fan, the Biden Admin didn't respond as the people on the ground urged; get everyone out as soon as possible. I think at this point they were hoping that at least Kabul would hold out for a month or so. Or at least a week. That would give the admin time to get everyone in an orderly fashion. The admin was certainly intent on avoiding the growing comparisons to Vietnam. I think they also feared that an immediate evacuation would have caused the rest of the Afghan army and government to simply give up.
- Then the Afghan president fled, which pretty much decided things.
- Then the Biden admin had to go from an orderly retreat before hostile forces reached the city to having to actively bargain and deal with the Taliban. And by bargain, I mean beg and weakly threaten. The repeated use of the term "expectations" tells you that they really didn't have a strong hand in the talks. Both sides just wanted out, just on different terms.
- The Biden Admin, in order to address concerns of US cowardice or leaving women and children to the tender mercies of the Taliban, tried to be as open as possible in who they would take. And as you would expect, Afghans swarmed the airport. People died.
- That clogged up the withdrawal of actual Americans, which delayed the pullout. The added strain and confusion on the Taliban troops meant that ISIS-K was able to more easily move around. Biden's admin knew they were coming, but really had no way of stopping this sort of attack. Too many people near the gates, not enough security, and a time limit to boot. An attack was inevitable and the target extremely vulnerable. The best they could hope for were no Americans to be killed.
The Biden admin made a lot of mistakes. But pulling out this year was always going to be a shitshow. Especially because a lot of the Americans who remain within the country are dual Afghan-American citizens. They've got split loyalties.
What you're saying is possible, but by no means inevitable.
China is one or two good mistakes away from a nasty implosion...course, you could say that about us too. And the fun part kids, is that there are multiple powers in the world trying to make that happen to the United States.
Exactly false. Plans were in place from Trump's time in office to use Bagram Airbase in the mountains AND Kabul in order to expedite the evacuation of the civilians. This plan called for enough military personnel to make it work, and the promise of painful retribution to any actors that chose to work against it.
In this plan the civilians were to be pulled out.
Then US military equipment would be destroyed.
Then the US Military would execute a withdrawal from the much more easily defended Bagram Airbase.
This withdrawal DID NOT have to be a shit show.
ShieldWife
Marchioness
It’s not the non-interventionists who live in the happily ever after fantasy world. It’s the people who parrot the Neo-Con talking points about how our belligerence is what keeps the world safe from doom and glooM. It’s the fanatical adherents to this unacknowledged religion that sprung up in association with WWII about how plucky little America stood alone against the vast and evil Nazi Empire and literally saved the world, now every war is WWII and every nation we invade to take the resources from or to enforce our regional hegemony over will welcome us and liberators and heroes, then we just have a new Marshall Plan and the nation will be liberal democracies just like the USA. We see the world in this cartoonish way and every war since WWII has shown the folly of this myth.
The same Neo-Cons pushing that fairy tale are pushing an even more dangerous one: that we can take in unlimited dregs of the third world and show them the wonders of capitalism and freedom and in less than a generation they will be just as American as WASPs whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. The first will destroy our wealth and prosperity, the second will if not abated undermine the very foundations of our nation and salt the fields that we might be America in name only forever more.
Both claims have been shown to be wrong at best, vicious lies at worst, and yet we keep hearing them forced on us even though the American people don’t want endless wars and they don’t want endless immigration.
The same Neo-Cons pushing that fairy tale are pushing an even more dangerous one: that we can take in unlimited dregs of the third world and show them the wonders of capitalism and freedom and in less than a generation they will be just as American as WASPs whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. The first will destroy our wealth and prosperity, the second will if not abated undermine the very foundations of our nation and salt the fields that we might be America in name only forever more.
Both claims have been shown to be wrong at best, vicious lies at worst, and yet we keep hearing them forced on us even though the American people don’t want endless wars and they don’t want endless immigration.
ShieldWife
Marchioness
China could have a nasty implosion, but we’re already having one. There are people around the world who want to make America fall, this is true, but our problem is that the actual rulers of America are first among them.
I don't think a multipolar world is better, but the current unipolar world is simply not sustainable. The circumstances that allowed the US to dominate the world as a massive military power is different that exist now. Our economy was larger in comparison to the rest of the world's for one. The rest of the world's population was healthier and younger. Social cohesion within the US was the strongest it had been in our entire history. Our rival was a landlocked power who was a significant threat that required a massive alliance to keep locked down.
That's simply not the case anymore.
Economically, the US is stagnant. We've gotten the bulk of economic activity from that invention as possible. And what boom we had we did not enjoy, as our globalist politicians sold our blue collar workers down the river to China for the sake of corporate greed. We had a massive influx of foreigners, some of whom have put an even greater strain on our already strained system because of blue collar job flight. The Russians are a declining power. The Chinese are a peaking power. Our adventures in the Middle East have brought us nothing but pain and regret.
On China
China will not be the next Superpower to challenge the USA. The Chinese are powerful, the Chinese are numerous, and the Chinese are very sophisticated--but they're on borrowed time and that time is nearly up. The Chinese system was starting to stall out before Trump was elected. In the next 3 years, the constant trade wars delivered severe shocks to their system. In the past two years, the growing American aggression and COVID-19 have broken the Chinese system (which was already broken). They're running almost entirely on inertia now.
Once the US-Chinese trade relations break--and they may break over the Winter Olympics (of all things), the Chinese economy simply reverses back to pre-industrial levels in large areas of the country. The Chinese cannot absorb what they produce. Without the US trade relations, they don't have an economy. It would be as if the EU stopped trading with Germany. It would implode under the weight of its export market.
The question is, can China reach out and take Taiwan and other Asian nations before it collapses under its own weight? It's certainly trying, but it's questionable if China has the time, resources, or wealth to make it happen. Especially when they're being opposed by the USA. And contrary to what people think with Afghanistan, the US is probably NOT going to back down from Taiwan. We don't have any real strategic interest in Afghanistan anymore. We have a lot of interest in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and others.
We don't even have to take the fight directly to China. We just stop anyone from trading with them by sea, cut off their internet access to the wider world (or at least, cripple it), and then prevent any oil from reaching them by sea. China's power will collapse upon itself within a month or so. That's why Xi has grown evermore tyrannical. He's preparing for total lockdown.
On Iran
Four years ago, the Iranians would probably have plowed their way through a good portion of the Middle East. But after 4 years of Trump's full press policy and COVID-19, Iran is suffering from its own problems. That's not to say that Iran is harmless, but a lot of Iran's wealth has evaporated over the past half decade. Even Biden's new team isn't backing down like Iran hoped they would. They want concessions that are closer to what Trump wanted than what Obama had made.
It's questionable if Iran is going to be capable of sustaining a war into the rest of the Middle East in its current state, probably for the next 10 years, maybe 20 if we're lucky. That's not to say it can't happen. A larger country in crises is not above invading a neighbor to alleviate its economic (and population) concerns.
On Russia
Russia is also on a downward spiral. That doesn't mean that Russia is harmless. Whereas Iran has been crippled by sanctions and disease--and China's power is heavily reliant on other nations and contained by US military strategy, the Russians are not. They didn't break under sanctions and although they are no longer a Superpower, as the US is, they are a major power. And that carries a great deal more weight than people in living memory might recall.
Russia has both the military power, the will, and the economic means to push West. Worst of all, they are desperate to do so. Whereas China and Iran were spreading out as a means of expanding their power, Russia must expand to preserve its dying strength. It needs to close the length of their borders by anchoring in geo-strategic locations. That means pushing all the way into Poland. It means operating in areas of the Middle East and Eastern Europe. It means addressing the threat of Turkey to the south.
So Russia may expand, but it is doing so because the Russian people are dying and fundamentally broken. Their only choice--their only chance at survival is to expand and consolidate their power long enough to address their dying people. So you may have Russia expand in the next 5-20 years, only for the state to collapse upon itself in 80-100 years.
Oh no, the world is going to shit in a handbasket. The vast majority of the world is entirely reliant--nay, addicted to the US's unipolar world. But that world ended some time ago. We were shifting back to a multipolar world in the 2000s, but it was only manifesting itself on an economic, not a military level. The problem is that as interests diverge, those economic concerns shift into military concerns. Always have, always will.
That doesn't mean that the US will get weaker though. Rather, the US is overstretched economically, as judged by its domestic voters. And as they never envisioned the US as an imperial power, they see no reason to retain its current posture. So services will slim down, the military will be slimmed down. But not as far as some might fear. The US is too paranoid by terrorist attacks or sneak attacks to just disarm like it did before. Instead, what the expectation is, is that the US will only engage when and where it wants to. The US fleets become far more mobile. The US won't show up to nation build Afghanistan, but it might show up to turn Iran's oil infrastructure into a series of smoldering craters, then go home. Basically gunboat diplomacy.
Things will get better for the US. Things will get worse for most everyone else on the planet.
Oh, I'm not saying that Trump's withdrawal would have been worse or even as bad. But friction is a natural problem when engaging in this sort of operation. He would have gotten worse publicity, I imagine. It's just that Biden's team made assumptions they shouldn't have, then were completely unable to adapt to the situation. Hence one fuckup led to another.
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China will have a nasty implosion. How devastating it will be remains to be seen, but it's baked in at this point. And yes, the US is going through a nasty downturn right now, but it's been building up for decades now. I would also disagree that our "rulers" are the first to wish that the US collapses. That's a very small group of progressive who hate anything white.
Rather, our problem is that a lot of technocrats run the system that actively impedes everyday Americans. And many of those technocrats travel, have friends and family and lovers from a different country and belief system. Ie, split loyalties. So when they see the US pull out of a place like Afghanistan and they have a liberal Afghan husband or wife, with mixed children, their loyalties are split. Because now half their family and many of their friends are under the thumb of the Taliban. Same for Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. Now expand it to other nationalities.
On top of which, they're liberals, so they're overly compassionate toward our rivals and enemies, while at the same time looking down upon many of the common mid-west, southern, and western parts of the country as inbred bumpkins who shouldn't be allowed to vote because they're either racists or "vote against their interests". But their power in the US is weakening. The first sign was Trump's election in 2016. They managed to oust him in 2020, but their replacement...well, he's not exactly their best friend and he's not exactly the brightest one to step forward. And after this disaster, one wonders if the Democrats will hold in 2022.
The military doesn't need to be slimmed down, especially with growing concern for what you are saying Russia and CHina to perhaps do next.
The military needs to be readyfor either trheat in every aspect of war.
I am just tired and exhausted of the constant downtrodden people seem to be putting on the military and just the outright thought that all is lost, and that the only way forward Is to take it internally with weapons.
I am just glad we are out of A-stan, let China have it and screw it up. Maybe them taking A-stan will let them get cocky thinking us leaving there means we wont defend Taiwan. Let them go ahead and try for the thing that would make them have damn near unrestricted access to the south china sea.
I just want something to be positive about in the military aspect, after the amount of shit we are catching forthings we have no control over, because we decided not to go against orders.
Arch Dornan
Oh, lovely. They've sent me a mo-ron.
ShieldWife
Marchioness
I’m glad that we left too. Any withdraw from Afghanistan would have resulted in chaos and likely Taliban rule as the aftermath, that is correct. Though Biden’s method of withdraw does seem to my civilian eyes to be particularly incompetent. I don’t think you need to be Grand Admiral Thrawn to know that you make sure the civilians get out before the fighting men do.
Just imagine the hysteria from the media if that had happened under Trump’s watch. Even if he had handled the withdraw perfectly, the Democrats would be drawing up new impeachment charges against him and the media would be painting him and ultimate evil and incompetence combined.
Just imagine the hysteria from the media if that had happened under Trump’s watch. Even if he had handled the withdraw perfectly, the Democrats would be drawing up new impeachment charges against him and the media would be painting him and ultimate evil and incompetence combined.