Bill O'Reilly vs. Glenn Beck

[Ritterin Sophia]

Literally anything would be more productive than the military. The hardware is expensive and it doesn't add any value to the civilian economy. You could claim that the research is a benefit, but you can have the government just fund it anyway without building hugely expensive gear of the results.

No I'm asking what can you replace it with?

So you favor splitting the army into two parts with one optomized from one job and another for the other?

No, I advocate a conventional military since a 2 military method requires two different logistics trains and not getting the US involved in pointless wars like Iraq or squander our victories and let the enemy recoup because we're too busy elsewhere like we did in A-Stan.

[Illuminatus Primus]

To add to this some police departments have put peace activist groups on the Terrorist No Fly List.

SOurce? I'd love this as rhetoric.

[Ritterin Sophia]

To add to this some police departments have put peace activist groups on the Terrorist No Fly List.

SOurce? I'd love this as rhetoric.

It's old news at this point, but it's not actually the 'No Fly List' and I apologize for misremembering, it was another supplemental secret 'No Fly List' which could be seen as worse. Here's an ACLU Article, the Washington Post, and Progressive.org (a High Schooler was even on the list).

[Samuel]

No I'm asking what can you replace it with?

I just pointed out that if you need to replace the military bases with other jobs, anything is more productive to society than soldiers. They don't produce anything. This is working off the assumption that we have a surplus of military power though- otherwise it isn't valid.

No, I advocate a conventional military since a 2 military method requires two different logistics trains and not getting the US involved in pointless wars like Iraq or squander our victories and let the enemy recoup because we're too busy elsewhere like we did in A-Stan.

So how would we provide troops for blue helmet use? And what if we do an unconvential war again? Should we ignore the possibility and hope politicians don't declare war?

[Ritterin Sophia]

I just pointed out that if you need to replace the military bases with other jobs, anything is more productive to society than soldiers. They don't produce anything. This is working off the assumption that we have a surplus of military power though- otherwise it isn't valid.

And I just asked you like what? Most positive industries don't just spring up overnight.

So how would we provide troops for blue helmet use?

The same way we have been doing or not at all, the UN is a completely useless forum where smaller nations are made to believe by the larger ones that their opinions actually matter and their peacekeeping forces have an atrocious track record.

And what if we do an unconvential war again?

Then actually plan on a method of getting the toppled government from anarchy to democracy without improvising, thousands of SF roaming the country side is not going to help establish a stable democracy, which is the problem the US has.

Should we ignore the possibility and hope politicians don't declare war?

American hasn't declared war for over seventy years, what we have seen is numerous military actions authorized by Congress. A number of those were authorized without a workable plan in place.

Here's what I think I need to clarify, I'm not opposed to splitting the US Armed Forces, but COIN and Conventional or all COIN is not the way to do it. For COIN ops you need SF hunting down insurgents, the US Armed Forces have no issues with killing people. It's maintaining an established presence and rebuilding the nation when they're done. You need older disciplined and more laid back NCOs acting as up-gunned beat cops and SOCOM trigger pullers are not those kind of people. Also sending enough troops to actually secure the armories to keep sectarian militias from looting them after you killed the guards on your race to the capital and arming themselves against you is also a good idea.

[General Mung Beans]

.

So how would we provide troops for blue helmet use?

The same way we have been doing or not at all, the UN is a completely useless forum where smaller nations are made to believe by the larger ones that their opinions actually matter and their peacekeeping forces have an atrocious track record.

Oftentimes the "best" UN ended up with was some sort of a ceasefire and in many cases they failed to respond to genocide and ethnic cleansing like Rwanda, the Balkans, and Darfur. In the Balkans the Serbians only went to the negotiating table because NATO bombed them.

[Samuel]

And I just asked you like what? Most positive industries don't just spring up overnight.

When I say "anything would be more productive", I'm not kidding. We could simply quarter the soldiers at the base and pay them their wages without requiring anything from them and it still would be more productive than bases- we wouldn't have to pay for maintainance, gear, etc.

Of course, a more reasonable course of action would be to subsidize their attedance to college or trade schools. It might screw over the small towns... as would removing farm subsidies to corporate farming and other pork to their beneficiaries. But it is never pork when it applies to something you value. Unless you are suggesting that it is the governments job to subsidize people's desire to live in rural areas (it isn't). All the government has a reasonability to do is to insure the change is mostly painless so that the community doesn't have to deal with a massive and sudden depression. The best way would be to gradually dial down the numbers working at the base.