Woot! America's Navy #1 !

[Provost Harrison]

Mmmm, floating carparks

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Sava
of course, why spend money educating our youth, giving health care to our people, or god forbid helping the poor when we can build tons of floating useless rust buckets manned by rednecks

They do give an education to people who sign up, don't they?

Jobs for poor people, red neck or not, are a bad thing?

They don't have dental in the Navy?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Mmmm, floating carparks

These would by flying cars?

[Sava]

Originally posted by notyoueither


They do give an education to people who sign up, don't they?

those who don't die in iraq

Jobs for poor people, red neck or not, are a bad thing?

education and healthcare should be free, whether you go die in iraq or not

oh no, but the government has to have the carrot to dangle to get people to join... without this system of recruitment (which is basically slavery), the armed forces would consist of approximately 100 people... all those testosterone morons like Pat Tillman who join special forces because they like challenges

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Sava
those who don't die in iraq

How many sailors on aircraft carriers have died in either of the Iraq wars?

[Sava]

too many

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Sava
too many

Must have been during the Battle of the Norhern Arabian Gulf when The Iraqi War Fleet did battle with us.

[GePap]

My guess is that the US has twice as many carriers as the rest of the world combined because the US spends more on its military that the next 20 states combined.

That might, just MIGHT, have something to do with it.

[Lonestar]

It might.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Lonestar


Must have been during the Battle of the Norhern Arabian Gulf when The Iraqi War Fleet did battle with us.

ahhh yes...

but somehow, Saddam was a threat to America

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Sava



ahhh yes...

but somehow, Saddam was a threat to America

He would have been eventually.

Of course, I think that of every country, which is why I support mass-production of Killbots.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Lonestar


He would have been eventually.

maybe if you get the 1.21 jigawatts you can get to 88 miles an hour and go back in time before the iran/iraq war when Saddam MIGHT have been a threat...

but somehow

after the iran iraq war

after getting pwned in the gulf war

12 years of sanctions and bombing

saddam... at the weakest Iraq was been in 20+ years... was somehow a threat...

btw, we don't need killbots

lots of neutron bombs will do nicely.

[Richelieu]

Originally posted by Lonestar
He would have been eventually.

Yes. Yes of course.

[Mr. Harley]

Carriers are inherently offensive in nature. They are for projecting power. Power means the ability to compel individual(s) to do what you want, in this case the argument is the threat or use of destruction and death.

Having a strong offensive capabilty during the Cold War still ended up with the US engaging in Imperial activity - look at all of our interventions in Central America. Having it at this point, to the degree we do, is primarily imperial. Being the world's policeman means using force to compel the behavior of those whose behavior you disapprove of.

Police use force to do this, thus the necessities of the Aircraft Carriers. Now one can argue over whether the use of force to compel the greater good is an excellent idea, or an oxymoron that is doomed to failure. The Euros tend toward the latter view, the US the former. However, you'll note in all that arguing, nobody prevented Rwanda or Darfour, and bluntly much of the world minimized the non-Serbian actions in the Balkans, which got us imported Muslim death squads in Bosnia, Croat atrocities, and Albanian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, to name a few examples.

However, just like the Brits during it's Empire days, the US is paying a heavy economic price for it's meddling. If you look at the cost of creating the ability to project power, and compare it to the other countries in the world starting to surpass us, it is going to have the same effect on the US. The Wall Street Journal just ran an article on published Scientific Papers, the US has been static for about half a decade, the Euros overtook us around the Millenium, and I cannot remember is Asia had or was just about to overtake us.

So we have more Carriers. The Soviets had the largest Surface Fleet in the world. After their economy fell apart, much of it rusted due to lack of maintenance. I doubt the US will have a catastrophic failure like that, it will be more like a whimper. For example, we cannot afford to re-equip our Air Units with the new Stealth Aircraft. The harbringer of the future.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Carriers are inherently offensive in nature. They are for projecting power. Power means the ability to compel individual(s) to do what you want, in this case the argument is the threat or use of destruction and death.

Having a strong offensive capabilty during the Cold War still ended up with the US engaging in Imperial activity - look at all of our interventions in Central America. Having it at this point, to the degree we do, is primarily imperial. Being the world's policeman means using force to compel the behavior of those whose behavior you disapprove of.

Police use force to do this, thus the necessities of the Aircraft Carriers. Now one can argue over whether the use of force to compel the greater good is an excellent idea, or an oxymoron that is doomed to failure. The Euros tend toward the latter view, the US the former. However, you'll note in all that arguing, nobody prevented Rwanda or Darfour, and bluntly much of the world minimized the non-Serbian actions in the Balkans, which got us imported Muslim death squads in Bosnia, Croat atrocities, and Albanian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, to name a few examples.

However, just like the Brits during it's Empire days, the US is paying a heavy economic price for it's meddling. If you look at the cost of creating the ability to project power, and compare it to the other countries in the world starting to surpass us, it is going to have the same effect on the US. The Wall Street Journal just ran an article on published Scientific Papers, the US has been static for about half a decade, the Euros overtook us around the Millenium, and I cannot remember is Asia had or was just about to overtake us.

So we have more Carriers. The Soviets had the largest Surface Fleet in the world. After their economy fell apart, much of it rusted due to lack of maintenance. I doubt the US will have a catastrophic failure like that, it will be more like a whimper. For example, we cannot afford to re-equip our Air Units with the new Stealth Aircraft. The harbringer of the future.

So very true. Scientific grant money and military spending are the types of spending that tend to compete directly against each other for tax dollars. I nearly weep to think of what might have been had any large fraction of military spending been instead diverted to keeping more research alive or speeding it up. Most research efforts are easily greatly accelerated with more money.

Every dollar spent on research consistently returns on average 3 dollars in economic impact. Military spending barely breaks even. And any military research can take a long time to trickle it's benefits to the general economy due to classified information red tape constraints. Often a technical breakthrough in a military research effort can take so long to become widely available that by the time it does other non classified solutions have been independently derived that make the would be military research contribution zero for the wider economy.

Our military is only good for winning wars overseas and what the hell use has that been to us lately?