[illilmicy]

Your statement, made to look like a question is at best foolish.

[pprropeciaaa]

Looks that way to me.

good to see that you are on message tonight... considering your Lord and Master surrendered 50 years of deterrence in one morning.

When a couple on million Americans are dead and most of Manhattan is glowing, we'll see how all this hope and change worked out.

[altosburg]

Fwiw, Manhattan is kind of glowy, as is.

[eskimosik]

Fwiw, Manhattan is kind of glowy, as is.

Sorry... wrong glowy...



That Glowy

[gambleingsites]

What in the fuck are either one of you talking about??

America doesn't have an empire and Obama just said that nuclear terror is our number one threat, so what in hell are you two blathering on about now??

Don't make me stop this car

[petrarkaponye]

If this country gave up its empire, and only resorted to force to repel invasions, how much money per year would the DoD need? I would not be surprised if the figure is an order of magnitude, if not two orders of magnitude, lower than what is spent on "defense" now.

Not to interupt the pissing match to respond to the OP, but according to conservative Republicans, 70% could be cut from the defense budget without any risk to our national security.
As a Liberal I think more than that can be cut with no loss of security.

So the bipartisan answer is somewhere between 70% and 90% of the defense budget is wasted on foolishness that is of no benefit to the American people.

[RaicickKida]

If this country gave up its empire, and only resorted to force to repel invasions, how much money per year would the DoD need? I would not be surprised if the figure is an order of magnitude, if not two orders of magnitude, lower than what is spent on "defense" now.

Your question assumes the US has an empire and that the actions it takes now are not part of repeling an invasion. A strawman, in other words. But Ill bite. Were the US to remove all military forces from around the world, and only defend from its borders, the DoD would definetly require much less budget currently.

Unfortunately, when the US soon had to go stop China or Russia from taking over Eurasia, they would have to spend all the money they saved plus, getting back to superpower strength and establishing bases. They would probably also lose quite a lot of trade money and economic growth as our trade partners who they currently protect through threat of defense were threatened and overtaken. Taiwain and South Korea for example. The middle east.

And even with a dod budget 1/4 of what it is now, the US would still have a trillion dollar deficit.