Don't want too much drift in the topic, (I know, I should place and period after "but" and and leave out the rest; just can't help myself) but outside of a very few nations, (Britain, France, maybe Italy) few nations have a military force capable of holding out for very long against military of the size that N. Korea, the US, China, Iran, the old Iraq, and even the present Russia is capable of fending. The vast majority of Europe, and for that matter N. America essentially enjoy the umbrella of protection that the US and few others provide.Ananda wrote:Right, I got that it is your priority. I asked why. You say because the us must have a 'true' military and are unable to 'scale back' because other countries are what? freeloading?SoulBiter wrote:It is priorities. Ours just happen to be different than yours. I think its ridiculous that there are countries that don't have what I would call a 'true' military that is strong enough to deal with situations on a global scale. Matter of fact if more countries had that, the US could possibly scale back. I would say many countries are getting the 'peace time benefit' because the US has a larger military.
I suggest to you that there is not a possibility that you will ever scale back as long as it makes so much money to spend on military so you outspend the rest of the world. What is it? Double the next several largest militaries combined? It's about money. Good luck trying to stop them from spending it. I predict that the powers making all the money will do everything possible to keep spending on that stuff going and rising if possible.
That's funny, SB. I am surprised they didn't try to give you a pill to help with the side effects of the other pill. Not sure how it is other places as I only live here, but pills are not overly prescribed here. There is an emphasis on prevention, cures and so, not on handing out pills to treat every symptom. The problem is that handing out pills to treat symptoms is so much more profitable than preventing the symptoms in the first place. I guess drug companies love things like you described.SoulBiter wrote:Here is another and I bet some of you take it. Prilosec for heart burn. My doctor prescribed it for me because I have GERD due to a hiatal hernia. He said, no longer term worries. Wellllllll thats not true... you actually need stomach acid in high doses to process certain vitamins. So at some point I find that I'm Vitamin B and D deficient. Go figure. I also found out that when you take prilosec and stop, you get something called acid relapse... basically the acid production goes crazy... making you think.. hey time for more prilosec. But once you stop taking it for a few months, the relapse goes away, the vitamin deficiency corrects, and if you watch your diet properly you can limit the normal acid production without drugs. But no doctor told me that, I had to find out on my own.
Frankly, in many ways, I'm with SB on this, we could stand to get out of the world policing business, or conversely, if we are going to go around wielding the "Big Stick", we need to get a lot better at applying it.