1) Wars cost money... we're fighting two at the same time.
2) Having a large active military takes lots of money.
3) Your quote is false:
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It is a fact that the US military and intelligence services have involved themselves in many (by that I mean a lot of) foriegn conflicts on the pretense that it was looking after American interests.
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No, your elected politicians have involved the military and intelligence services into these countries. The military doesnt do any active involvement in anything not ordered by your elected civilian forces.
4) Your quote:
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Sure there are other nations who cause and perpetrate conflicts but we are only talking about the US and its military spending here.
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Any Military leader is well aware of this discussion, it comes up after ever major conflict since the revolutionary war. It left us with our pants down for every war from the War of 1812, all the way to the Korean War.
5) Your Amnesty site takes facts and derives crap from them. They include 80s arms poliferation yet dont look at the reason behind it. You ever think that the Afghan War helped that?
China, France, Germany, Israel, the US, Japan, etc. all hated the Soviet Union and wanted them to fail, so helped the Mujahadinn. The US werent the only country to do this.
Scipio you're correct when you said:
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So in other words, if we spent less, other countries would spend more. Our military protects not just the US, but a ton of other countries as well.
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We do need to do an overview on military bases and changing world. It's already been done and we are planning to pull out of Germany (funny thing... they hated us when we were there now they're begging us not to go in fears they'll go into a depression).
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so let's think about this for a minute. leading all others, but not alone in this regard by any means, american firms sell all kinds of weapons systems to anyone who can pay
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Can you name a single country with any halfway decent military industrial setup that doesnt? Amazingly enough France/Germany (those most opposed to the Iraq war), were found to be doing the most dealings with them. Billions in brand new surface-to-air missiles, anti-tank weaponry, and body armor have been found... with the date as soon as 2000 on them. Oh wait... what happened to the UN agreement that was *gasp* co-written by them.
My point? Every country with a military base sells their weapons, it keeps the costs down. But if you want to blame someone the US isnt *quite* as bad as most other countries. China selling their anti-ship missiles and sea-mines to Iran (who in turn used it on US ships killing our sailors. France selling to Iraq and Argentina (knowing of their planned attack on the Faulklins).