Why are my posts useless? You scream “What’s our role?!?” assuming we have to have a role at all. Do we? If so why? Why can’t we just mind our own business and take care of our own house?
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They are a lot less active military today, than what came back after WW2 those people did what the rest of us do get jobs.
WW2 16,000,000 active
Today 1,200,000 active
Of course there would still be active military maybe just a big cutback.
forever war? which is that? I know we haven’t ended the forgotten war…
I am not sure who coined the term originally, but in this context it refers to the US presence in the Middle East.
Do you think that a lot of the jobs that were present in the late 1940s and 1950s still exist today or do you think they have been automated?
War is the oldest occupation of mankind. Humans have been waging war since we first made clubs and spears.
Peace is honestly an illusion. The question is where and when the war happens and who suffers for it.
To think that we can just “end” wars is naive thinking. If it’s not there, it’ll be somewhere else. There is literally no time period in the history of this country where US troops weren’t fighting somewhere. Same goes for every other militarily significant power.
They were very worried that the men would come home to no jobs back then. Think of the population difference as well back then. They were 139 million total U.S. population in 1945 compared to today’s 330 million.
Lot more scary of a prospect back then coming home from a war getting a job then now. We have troops in 130 countries and 900 bases. Half time we hear of an American soldier dying it’s like “What the ■■■■ I didn’t know we had troops in ‘x’ country”.
As a young lad the reason I got into politics was because of Ron Paul a non interventionist libertarian congressman. Let someone else pay in blood and money to police the globe 
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I would suggest that there were many unskilled or semi-skilled jobs that existed in the 1940s/1950s that don’t exist now.
Like the Chinese and the Russians?
Great power politics are anything but easy. And we play a significant role. Our allies depend on us. Everyone has potential enemies.
I’m not saying we need to keep destroying our GDP over it. But we can’t just exit the great game, either.
We are so far from exiting the game that even if we pulled 75% of the troops from other countries and decreased military spending by half we would still be outspending the next most powerful nation (China) by over 100 billion a year.
I’m a conservative but have zero problem with cutting wasteful military spending and getting out of endless wars.
Costs are going to increase across every service branch in the US military. The US has a lot of legacy Cold War assets that are in dire need of replacing. At the same time, we have to defend our interests.
Extensive cost cutting isn’t happening anytime soon.
Depends on who is in power, and if they appreciate what needs to be done in regard to defending our interests.
As long as the economies of the industrialized powers remain so intertwined and interdependent there’s no possibility at all that any president is going to pull all our forces back to the CONUS.
Occupying any land mass in such a location is critical to supplies and troop movement to other countries.
What?
Carry on.
No seriously. What?
