Originally Posted by Rochard

The United States is one of the largest countries in the world, and size is proportionate to everything. This is why the US had a much larger Coast Guard than the UK - We have much more coastline, and a lot more people in boats off our coasts.

The United States also has more interests in other areas than most countries. For example, the United States has concerns in Asia with China, North Korea, South Korea, and Japan. France does not.



You can look at the EU, Japan, and China all you want - This is not where the current problem is. Imagine if Iraq took over Kuwait and then invaded Saudi Arabia. Suddenly the vast majority of oil coming out of the middle east is supplied by one man who has a twenty year history of starting wars. You fuckers bitch when the price of gas goes up forty cents; Imagine it tripling over night and the effect that would have on the US economy.

How much stronger would the US economy be if we didn't waste time on our military? It would be a lot worse off. Don't look at the military as a "waste" but instead look at the benefits.

A large portion of the US population benefits from the US military. You can start with military personal and their dependents, then civilian contractors. (When I say "civilian contractors" I mean both civilians who work on base, civilian contractors who supply the bases, as well as contractors who build the ships, planes, tanks, weapons, etc etc.) Then factor in the cities and counties that get nearly all of their business from military bases - grocery stores and apartments.

Then factor in the technological aspects. With the US military you can argue we would not have computers, GPS, the Internet - even cell phones.

Then we can argue about education and how the US military has affected education over all in the US. How many people have graduated from a military college, or gone to school on the GI bill? The boom we saw in the 1950s was because of American servicemen returning from Europe, going to college, and then re-entering the workforce as college graduates.

Setting aside all of the advantages of having a large military, the primary reason we have a large military is because of Korea and to a lesser extent, Vietnam. At the close of WWII, just like every other war the US was involved in, we reduced our military to the smallest amount possible under peacetime conditions. We had interests in Europe (The cold war and the constant fear of communism) and we also had interests in Asia (Hawaii, Guam, Japan, Hong Kong, and the constant fear of China) and when war broke out in Korea the US was woefully unprepared. It was impossible to protect our interests in Europe and Asia while trying to fight a war in Korea. We cannot just snap our fingers and increase the size of our military. Thus, to protect our interests we have to have a large and modern military.