you're ****ing old

The best way to defend the defense budget would be to start a new Department of Defense of Defense. This department will, of course, require a sizable budget.

This thread has focused on whether the defense budget is worth it to Americans, but another consideration is the millions of deaths we have inflicted.

The following deeply moving article has a lot of information about the human impact of the American empire, couched in the reminiscing of an old friend about Noam Chomsky.

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/17/when_chomsky_wept/

I smell a lavish kick-off conference with mind-readers and ice sculptures!

Free i pods too.

I have been on record saying I would like the US military shrunk to meet current needs, but I take issue with some of the things in your post:

Where is this America Empire of which you speak?

We have returned Germany, Japan, S Korea, France, The Philippines, France, Belgium and even the bloody Panama Canal zone to their rightful owners. We've essentially left Iraq with a much more democratic government then when we arrived and are trying to do the same in Afghanistan. Where is this empire?

As to the linked article, I don't see how America cause 5 million deaths or displaced persons. Most of that came from the internecine religious dick swinging between religious groups.

You don't really want to argue the place was better off under Saddam as he kept the religious strife to a minimum by gassing a few thousand Kurds every once and a while or starting a war with Iran and killing a couple of million Shia.

Cres getting owned so hard in this thread.

We lived in comunism and we were against Soviet Union and they had no influence on us. Infact we were kind of enemies.

The party, which was led by Josip Broz Tito from 1937 to 1980, was the first communist party in power in the history of the Eastern Bloc that openly opposed the common policy as directed by the Soviet Union and thus was expelled from the Cominform in 1948 after Joseph Stalin accused Tito of nationalism and moving to the right. After internal purges, the party renamed itself the League of Communists and adopted politics of workers' self-management and independent communism, known as Titoism.

military industrial complex /thread

ps: lol cres man, u got SERVED so bad that if i was you, i would seriously consider self banishing myself

love the ownage spew, all from patriotic flourish gobblers.

how will I ever live with such opinions from the wilfully ignorant.

Good question. Certainly the US is not a formal empire like Britain where our foreign service takes direct control of governments.

But that's not the only form of empire. Ankor Wat was an empire based on control of a vast irrigation system. Chinese and many other empires were based on tribute. Americans proudly referred to themselves as an empire during continental expansion (Empire State building), which was also not like Britain because it was full absorption of conquered territories.

I and many others use the word "empire" to mean great power that is spatially grand.

Now it is easy to see a vast military empire. The US dominates the petroleum regions of the Mideast and much of Central Asia. Washington is steadily building new bases and/or relationships in oil areas of Africa and Latin America. The U.S. military budget is close to half the entire world put together. We have more than 900 foreign military bases of ten acres or more. Veterans will describe for you a vast parallel nation of bases, with shopping centers, bus systems, golf courses and ski resorts.

The empire is a vast network of military dominance, trade and defense agreements, and diplomatic muscle which the entire world must recognize and accommodate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_...mpire_State%22

No, I would defer to Iraqi opinion on that. They go both ways, I really don't know how it breaks down.

But the American invasion was not a humanitarian gesture, it was to extend geostrategic control of the world's oil. Japan gets 90% of its oil from the ME, Europe is similar. This is of great advantage to the American imperium.

Re: Suzzer on Empire State. Other quotes from the Wiki article:
The phrase "empire of liberty" was used a great deal. Americans of 18th, 19th, centuries clearly compared themselves to other empires and considered themselves one, albeit different and better.

I wonder if the term fell out of fashion after the Spanish-American War of 1898 -- just when the U.S. really did become an international empire but there was this ugly business in the Philippines.

Less butter. Butter's bad for your health.

Then who fights the aliens ? Who evacuates the next Katrina people who are too dumb to leave their house ???

Seriously Who fights the freaking aliens I think the following movies have prooven what branchs of militray are needed

Independence day - Air Force

Battle: Los Angeles - Marines

Battleship - Navy

Transformers - Army

Born In East L.A. - Border Patrol...

Escape to Witch Mountain CIA/FBI

LOL what amount of money do you seriously put on the Defense of the Whole Human Race...

Idiots would destroy humanity to save a few trillion