Don't fret guys, it's all too easy to point out that if you stop all military spending, there soon won't be nearly the number of people around needing healthcare, and those that are alive are probably in Triage centers with "not worth the expenditure" toe-tags on, waiting to die.
It's also the only way to counter the largest standing armies in the world... of which we're ranked 6th, behind China, India, North Korea, South Korea, and even... Pock-Eee-Stan.
Bet'cha didn't know that...99 out of 100 Americans if asked wouldn't know that Pock-Eee-Stan's army is bigger than ours.
You underestimate how upset the Israelis will be if it's ever proven that Iran has the Bomb. Upset enough to do something irrational to the rest of us, and completely rational to them, they'd attack and destroy it as soon as they heard of it being in existence. We're their ally so I doubt we're going to be "groveling" any time soon.
Hell, we covered for them for decades when they willfully attacked one of our own ships offshore to keep us from seeing their military committing genocide. Partially because she was a spy vessel, and partly because we could say we never saw anything, we were too busy getting shot at.
Please describe a "productive tech" that doesn't also destroy something.
Fear is stupid. We've already heard a famous speech in 1933 that explains that, but it didn't sink in.
In fact, "His inauguration on March 4, 1933 occurred in the middle of a bank panic, hence the backdrop for his famous words: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Sounds familiar doesn't it?
Even better...
"In a controversial move, Roosevelt gave Executive Order 6102 which made all privately held gold of American citizens property of the US Treasury. This gold confiscation by executive order was argued to be unconstitutional, but Roosevelt's executive order asserts authority to do so based on the "War Time Powers Act" of 1917. Gold bullion remained illegal for Americans to own until President Ford rescinded the order in 1974."
Sounds an awful lot like the anti-banker rhetoric from a certain President lately, doesn't it?
Be as afraid or not afraid as you want. History repeats.
Hell, just the studies of protocol and procedures from the guys at NASA setting up Mission Control and applying their lessons learned about accountability and steadfastness, could turn even the most retarded company in business 180 degrees.
And that's not even talking about the technology such aerospace endeavors create. All of them. Nothing like people's lives on the line, either in the public or military budget, to bring out the best Engineers, the best managers, the best planners. They may be buried under 1000's of bureaucrats and BS, but they're in there. Or these things wouldn't even fly.
Find leaders like Gene Kranz and hire them. Give them the authority and budget and set them some very high goals, and see if I'm wrong.
Read the Kranz Dictum and wonder at how much better your company would be if your boss were as skilled a leader or even handled the creating and thinking about company policy half as well as Kranz did.
Hell, imagine your Senator or Congressman showing that much leadership skill. That'd be impressive.
Kranz set policy that still stands both in reality and in culture at NASA, and they KNOW it when they've strayed from it, as it usually kills people. There's value in funding places and activities that attract such people as Kranz.
The fringe spin-offs of TONS of projects have become the worthy pieces. Your assertion could be extended into even such banal things today as Automobiles when viewed in the horse-drawn-carriage days. The argument was "those things KILL people!" even back then.
Some NASA Velcro for your cable ties, anyone?
TECHNOLOGY is NEVER to blame for what's being DONE with it. I've NEVER heard ANYONE say we built a nuclear weapon (after WWII) with the specific purpose in mind of blowing someone up with it. We build them as deterrents to other's insanity.
"I don't want to use this gun, but you persist and come any closer, I will."
The guy whittling a stick to make a spear was probably the first guy to figure out that rubbing two sticks together made a fire, ya know? Pretty sure nuclear reactors weren't on anyone's "to-do" list before the Manhattan Project. Etc.
And ours are expensive because we try to make them ACCURATE. Look at the fear and manipulation of people's will caused by SCUD's during Iraq-1. Same thing with the buzz-bombs from Germany in WW2 until people had time to "get used to" them, if there is such a thing. Shellshock is real.
Or MUCH more likely... 2nd in command builds military commanders he trusts WILL follow his orders, orders a launch, and blames it on Dictator who is shot in the head on TV as a way to "prove" it was his plan and he's been punished. Everyone gets a promotion.
Meanwhile [U.S. City Name Here] is a smoking hole in the ground because we were too stupid to build a missile defense system. New Dictator gets to claim that while the actions of the last guy were terrible, it's sure nice to see a U.S. City gone.
Or, scenario #2... MDS works, we keep a leery eye on the idiots fighting over who runs [insert non-Democratic Country Here] and try to find out who really ordered the launch through spies after splashing their nuclear playtoy.
Wrinkly old guys didn't get to be wrinkly old guys by rolling over and playing dead for the world. Many of them were even as young and naieve as you once. Wait until a few of the young guys who've seen Iraq and Afghanistan action come home and grow old, and the next generation says their plans for never having to do that again makes them sound like "wrinkly old guys". History repeats.
Not to mention wrinkly old guys didn't get to be wrinkly old guys by rolling over and playing dead for the world. Wait until a few of the young guys who've seen Iraq and Afghanistan action come home and grow old, and the next generation says their plans for never having to do that again makes them sound like "wrinkly old guys". History repeats.
You do make a good point though... the TRANSPORTATION Security Administration hasn't required strip searches to rent panel vans yet. Toss 'em a note and let 'em know you're interested in renting a van to move some crap and you're volunteering to go first.
p.s. Think stealth technology. If a full-sized aircraft looks like a bird on conventional RADAR systems, the counter-measure to stealth is a much much more powerful and sensitive RADAR. 44,000 feedhorns, 8 million pounds, and a megawatt of power to drive it. It wasn't built to hunt big game.
Great point. But everyone here so far assumes that the thing was built to protect against ICBMs. Something that can see objects as far away and as small as that floating RADAR can, wasn't built to look for ICBMs. It was built to look for things smaller than MIRVs. The problem is, you have to test it, so you need a cover story. That thing ain't hunting *just* ICBMs. Think about it.
Hints from world history: If you get rid of all your rich industrialists you become the USSR, which broke up into individual nation-states who now promote rich industrialists to come back and make them some new ones.
Not such a great plan, eh? You also don't rid the world of their rich industrialists who now own your ass, econo-slave.
Whatever you love, decide if it's worth defending. If you love consumer debt-driven products, you'd probably give those up when the chips are down, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. If you love your family and friends... a completely different story there.
What would you propose we replace rich industrialists with? What would you find you were willing to defend?
And there you've just made the whole point. Leaders can't predict how other leaders will act any more than they can predict the behavior of their own people.
Thus, when the drunk smashes through your front door at 2AM lookin' for trouble, you can have a nice big fat shotgun leveled at his ass. Or you can just stand there and look surprised while he trashes your house.
I see no one wanting it both ways in the conversation so far. All I see is you being idealistic and these guys explaining real human history to your ass.
Yes, there HAVE been madmen promoted to power over whole countries. Yes, they HAVE made decisions that caused millions of people to die.
Nukes are nukes, and there's no putting that Genie back in the frakkin' bottle. You can have madmen aim them at you and NOT have a response, or you can have a strong military made up of volunteers who have a plan, however flawed, to at least attempt to fight back (or hit first) -- if not succeed with outright -- when they do.
The only positive thing about your viewpoint, which isn't even historically accurate, is that the propaganda machine (run by the same folks you think are the evil military-state heads) keeps the idea that "millions of innocents" were lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which also keeps people thinking that nuclear weapons are so deadly that they shouldn't be used.
"I'm afraid you have bought the hyped up bullshit from the military industrial complex lock, stock and barrel." Yes you have.
Trust me when I say that the military leadership of this country knows the exact kill predictions for every nuclear weapon in their arsenal, and it's not as high as most people think. They also know that not everyone is vaporized in a flash, and that mass casualties of "walking wounded" are the real threat to an area attacked by such a weapon today.
A major city, just one, nuked... would be chaos unimaginable today, because the vast majority of people have no idea how to take care of themselves in such a situation. Hell, judging from the debt load they're carrying because they can't curtail their frakkin' spending, in which most U.S. households spend 12%(!) of their income servicing their debt obligations (that means paying INTEREST), they can't take care of themselves even in peacetime. Most cities are full of idiots. No city is at a loss for finding a village idiot. Throw a rock, I guarantee you'll hit one.
So... real leaders know that you eat up all of your resources dealing with that, and have nothing left to fight with. That... is the real danger of limited nuclear war.
(I think we can all agree that the same propaganda machine cranked up in a different way, made us all think that Mutually Assured Destruction was on the minds of Soviet planners in the 60s-80s. Again, puff it up so that no one dares push the launch button. And yet, there are numerous documented cases where both sides almost did.)
War and war planning are brutally honest endeavors that have no time for people who don't pay attention to detail -- like yourself, or who like to "believe" things without knowing.
A wise old guy once asked me, "Are you a thinkin' man, or are you a knowin' man?" Meaning... do you THINK that's correct, or do you KNOW?
The military's job, and a soldiers, is to defend the Country. If you're looking for compassion, join the Peace Corps.
Three thuths will cover it. 1. People die in wars. 2. Wars will continue to happen. 3. It can either be you or them.
It doesn't take seeing too many friends blown up by the other side to harden you up a bit to whiners who think the guys running the show in other countries are always sane. What looks "insane" to you from our military is just a very measured response to much larger insanity on the part of others.
OMG, I have to press a button to open my trunk because I don't know how to frakkin' grab a shopping cart or set something down for a second. The humanity!!!
GM vehicles with automatic on auto-sensing day/night-time headlights switching off the ignition will kill the headlights. On my 2004 Yukon, you also have the option to set five settings - instant off, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 40 seconds and 60 seconds (meant for lighting your garage). But then again, if you're not a complete moron, you can just reach over and slap the headlights to the on position via the rotary switch on the left dash panel at any time, key in or key out, to remedy the situation.
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Inaccurate ICBMs are.
You got modded "Insightful" and didn't even RTFA. The failure mode was in it.
You underestimate the "defeatist" Soviet personality and culture vs. the American "can do" attitude by a very large margin.
Don't fret guys, it's all too easy to point out that if you stop all military spending, there soon won't be nearly the number of people around needing healthcare, and those that are alive are probably in Triage centers with "not worth the expenditure" toe-tags on, waiting to die.
It's also the only way to counter the largest standing armies in the world... of which we're ranked 6th, behind China, India, North Korea, South Korea, and even... Pock-Eee-Stan.
Bet'cha didn't know that...99 out of 100 Americans if asked wouldn't know that Pock-Eee-Stan's army is bigger than ours.
You underestimate how upset the Israelis will be if it's ever proven that Iran has the Bomb. Upset enough to do something irrational to the rest of us, and completely rational to them, they'd attack and destroy it as soon as they heard of it being in existence. We're their ally so I doubt we're going to be "groveling" any time soon.
Hell, we covered for them for decades when they willfully attacked one of our own ships offshore to keep us from seeing their military committing genocide. Partially because she was a spy vessel, and partly because we could say we never saw anything, we were too busy getting shot at.
Ironically, the vessel's name was "USS Liberty".
Please describe a "productive tech" that doesn't also destroy something.
Fear is stupid. We've already heard a famous speech in 1933 that explains that, but it didn't sink in.
In fact, "His inauguration on March 4, 1933 occurred in the middle of a bank panic, hence the backdrop for his famous words: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Sounds familiar doesn't it?
Even better...
"In a controversial move, Roosevelt gave Executive Order 6102 which made all privately held gold of American citizens property of the US Treasury. This gold confiscation by executive order was argued to be unconstitutional, but Roosevelt's executive order asserts authority to do so based on the "War Time Powers Act" of 1917. Gold bullion remained illegal for Americans to own until President Ford rescinded the order in 1974."
Sounds an awful lot like the anti-banker rhetoric from a certain President lately, doesn't it?
Be as afraid or not afraid as you want. History repeats.
Hell, just the studies of protocol and procedures from the guys at NASA setting up Mission Control and applying their lessons learned about accountability and steadfastness, could turn even the most retarded company in business 180 degrees.
And that's not even talking about the technology such aerospace endeavors create. All of them. Nothing like people's lives on the line, either in the public or military budget, to bring out the best Engineers, the best managers, the best planners. They may be buried under 1000's of bureaucrats and BS, but they're in there. Or these things wouldn't even fly.
Find leaders like Gene Kranz and hire them. Give them the authority and budget and set them some very high goals, and see if I'm wrong.
Read the Kranz Dictum and wonder at how much better your company would be if your boss were as skilled a leader or even handled the creating and thinking about company policy half as well as Kranz did.
Hell, imagine your Senator or Congressman showing that much leadership skill. That'd be impressive.
Kranz set policy that still stands both in reality and in culture at NASA, and they KNOW it when they've strayed from it, as it usually kills people. There's value in funding places and activities that attract such people as Kranz.
The fringe spin-offs of TONS of projects have become the worthy pieces. Your assertion could be extended into even such banal things today as Automobiles when viewed in the horse-drawn-carriage days. The argument was "those things KILL people!" even back then.
Some NASA Velcro for your cable ties, anyone?
TECHNOLOGY is NEVER to blame for what's being DONE with it. I've NEVER heard ANYONE say we built a nuclear weapon (after WWII) with the specific purpose in mind of blowing someone up with it. We build them as deterrents to other's insanity.
"I don't want to use this gun, but you persist and come any closer, I will."
The guy whittling a stick to make a spear was probably the first guy to figure out that rubbing two sticks together made a fire, ya know? Pretty sure nuclear reactors weren't on anyone's "to-do" list before the Manhattan Project. Etc.
And ours are expensive because we try to make them ACCURATE. Look at the fear and manipulation of people's will caused by SCUD's during Iraq-1. Same thing with the buzz-bombs from Germany in WW2 until people had time to "get used to" them, if there is such a thing. Shellshock is real.
Or MUCH more likely... 2nd in command builds military commanders he trusts WILL follow his orders, orders a launch, and blames it on Dictator who is shot in the head on TV as a way to "prove" it was his plan and he's been punished. Everyone gets a promotion.
Meanwhile [U.S. City Name Here] is a smoking hole in the ground because we were too stupid to build a missile defense system. New Dictator gets to claim that while the actions of the last guy were terrible, it's sure nice to see a U.S. City gone.
Or, scenario #2... MDS works, we keep a leery eye on the idiots fighting over who runs [insert non-Democratic Country Here] and try to find out who really ordered the launch through spies after splashing their nuclear playtoy.
Wrinkly old guys didn't get to be wrinkly old guys by rolling over and playing dead for the world. Many of them were even as young and naieve as you once. Wait until a few of the young guys who've seen Iraq and Afghanistan action come home and grow old, and the next generation says their plans for never having to do that again makes them sound like "wrinkly old guys". History repeats.
Not to mention wrinkly old guys didn't get to be wrinkly old guys by rolling over and playing dead for the world. Wait until a few of the young guys who've seen Iraq and Afghanistan action come home and grow old, and the next generation says their plans for never having to do that again makes them sound like "wrinkly old guys". History repeats.
You do make a good point though... the TRANSPORTATION Security Administration hasn't required strip searches to rent panel vans yet. Toss 'em a note and let 'em know you're interested in renting a van to move some crap and you're volunteering to go first.
Right now they (think they) own the U.S. on paper. Wait until we default on the loans and tell them, "Try and come collect."
p.s. Think stealth technology. If a full-sized aircraft looks like a bird on conventional RADAR systems, the counter-measure to stealth is a much much more powerful and sensitive RADAR. 44,000 feedhorns, 8 million pounds, and a megawatt of power to drive it. It wasn't built to hunt big game.
Great point. But everyone here so far assumes that the thing was built to protect against ICBMs. Something that can see objects as far away and as small as that floating RADAR can, wasn't built to look for ICBMs. It was built to look for things smaller than MIRVs. The problem is, you have to test it, so you need a cover story. That thing ain't hunting *just* ICBMs. Think about it.
And this assumes that there really was a failure and it's not a ploy to see who sabre-rattles next. Or again.
It's planning for a problem the U.S. can easily see coming. North Korea. And if history repeats, in a few decades, China.
Hints from world history: If you get rid of all your rich industrialists you become the USSR, which broke up into individual nation-states who now promote rich industrialists to come back and make them some new ones.
Not such a great plan, eh? You also don't rid the world of their rich industrialists who now own your ass, econo-slave.
Whatever you love, decide if it's worth defending. If you love consumer debt-driven products, you'd probably give those up when the chips are down, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. If you love your family and friends... a completely different story there.
What would you propose we replace rich industrialists with? What would you find you were willing to defend?
And there you've just made the whole point. Leaders can't predict how other leaders will act any more than they can predict the behavior of their own people.
Thus, when the drunk smashes through your front door at 2AM lookin' for trouble, you can have a nice big fat shotgun leveled at his ass. Or you can just stand there and look surprised while he trashes your house.
I'd offer you the number for the suicide hotline, but you've apparently already made up your mind.
Thanks for sharing.
I see no one wanting it both ways in the conversation so far. All I see is you being idealistic and these guys explaining real human history to your ass.
Yes, there HAVE been madmen promoted to power over whole countries. Yes, they HAVE made decisions that caused millions of people to die.
Nukes are nukes, and there's no putting that Genie back in the frakkin' bottle. You can have madmen aim them at you and NOT have a response, or you can have a strong military made up of volunteers who have a plan, however flawed, to at least attempt to fight back (or hit first) -- if not succeed with outright -- when they do.
The only positive thing about your viewpoint, which isn't even historically accurate, is that the propaganda machine (run by the same folks you think are the evil military-state heads) keeps the idea that "millions of innocents" were lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which also keeps people thinking that nuclear weapons are so deadly that they shouldn't be used.
"I'm afraid you have bought the hyped up bullshit from the military industrial complex lock, stock and barrel." Yes you have.
Trust me when I say that the military leadership of this country knows the exact kill predictions for every nuclear weapon in their arsenal, and it's not as high as most people think. They also know that not everyone is vaporized in a flash, and that mass casualties of "walking wounded" are the real threat to an area attacked by such a weapon today.
A major city, just one, nuked... would be chaos unimaginable today, because the vast majority of people have no idea how to take care of themselves in such a situation. Hell, judging from the debt load they're carrying because they can't curtail their frakkin' spending, in which most U.S. households spend 12%(!) of their income servicing their debt obligations (that means paying INTEREST), they can't take care of themselves even in peacetime. Most cities are full of idiots. No city is at a loss for finding a village idiot. Throw a rock, I guarantee you'll hit one.
So... real leaders know that you eat up all of your resources dealing with that, and have nothing left to fight with. That... is the real danger of limited nuclear war.
(I think we can all agree that the same propaganda machine cranked up in a different way, made us all think that Mutually Assured Destruction was on the minds of Soviet planners in the 60s-80s. Again, puff it up so that no one dares push the launch button. And yet, there are numerous documented cases where both sides almost did.)
War and war planning are brutally honest endeavors that have no time for people who don't pay attention to detail -- like yourself, or who like to "believe" things without knowing.
A wise old guy once asked me, "Are you a thinkin' man, or are you a knowin' man?" Meaning... do you THINK that's correct, or do you KNOW?
The military's job, and a soldiers, is to defend the Country. If you're looking for compassion, join the Peace Corps.
Three thuths will cover it.
1. People die in wars.
2. Wars will continue to happen.
3. It can either be you or them.
It doesn't take seeing too many friends blown up by the other side to harden you up a bit to whiners who think the guys running the show in other countries are always sane. What looks "insane" to you from our military is just a very measured response to much larger insanity on the part of others.
OMG, I have to press a button to open my trunk because I don't know how to frakkin' grab a shopping cart or set something down for a second. The humanity!!!
GM vehicles with automatic on auto-sensing day/night-time headlights switching off the ignition will kill the headlights. On my 2004 Yukon, you also have the option to set five settings - instant off, 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 40 seconds and 60 seconds (meant for lighting your garage). But then again, if you're not a complete moron, you can just reach over and slap the headlights to the on position via the rotary switch on the left dash panel at any time, key in or key out, to remedy the situation.