4804 soldiers and


Soldiers are not directly responsible for the majority of deaths that happened since the invasion, but was it worth the cost of human life or could the 800 billion have been spend on a more peaceful solution to promote change in Iraq.

I hope things will go better in Iraq from now on, but with almost everyone having lost relatives to the violence this war caused it will be a long time before all the wounds have healed.

It's not thaaaaaat old.

And yeah, that's precisely why I checked this thread out. While I think a lot of what people say about our military is true, they miss an enormous amount of other information as well. For instance, China's military is significantly larger than ours. Combining that with the fact that they also have nuclear weapons and do their own military research, and I guarantee you that they're not reporting anywhere near their total military expenditures.

But even so, they don't pay their military a reasonable wage like we do. Our military gets by with comparable income to a civilian job - something few countries do at all for their militaries - which accounts for a decent amount of our military expenditures.

We also do more military research than any other country. Yes, the majority of that is weapons research, but we also do a lot of research into new flight technology, vehicle technology, medical technology, etc. It's funny that our military develops so many different technologies (or rather, pays civilian companies TO develop technologies, nowadays), yet we actually USE mostly really old tech. But anyways, we sell a large amount of that technology to other countries, so while we SPEND the vast majority, what those reports don't account for is that we also EARN the vast majority.

And we all know Russia also spends a lot of money researching pretty fancy weaponry and aircraft, not to mention they have mandatory military service for all males 18-27. Since it's mandatory, they don't have to pay their troops well, so that cuts drastically back on their military costs. But they report a ridiculously small amount for their military expenditures when they hold such a massive military presence in the world (their total military size is only a little bit smaller than ours and their technology is usually on par with ours).

I'm not saying it's right that we spend so much, but at the same time, we don't spend anywhere NEAR the 40-45% that news reports claim we do.

Not to mention, if we cut back, our research & development is NOT the part of the military expenditures that's going to suffer. They're first and foremost going to (1) stop enlisting as many (that's fine, but...) and (2) cut troops pay (which is NOT okay - while we get pay COMPARABLE to civilians, we still don't get GOOD pay. Yes, the military provides us with housing, but other than that, about 85% of the military (top of my head conservative estimate... it's very likely higher) lives under the poverty line. And they want to cut our pay?).

As for our action in Iraq, yes, there have been hundreds thousands of deaths, but Saddam Hussein was a known genocidist and there's no arguing that he needed to be stopped. I agree that there should've been a more peaceful way to bring it about (I feel that Iraq in and of itself just needs to be dissolved as a country in the first place and split into its individual divisions it already has. Would've meant all sorts of more peace to just develop new countries or else dissolve them into neighboring nations). And many of those "deaths due to the US invasion" were deaths that were "allowed" to happen with the new government (but not really) and were Iraqi on Iraqi deaths. Also, the Iraqi population was 22 million in 2000, but in 2012, now, it's 33 million.

Anyways, all I'm saying is things are a lot more complicated than people like to think and develop opinions about. Being in the military itself, I'm motivated to know more than most people, but still. People shouldn't be so quick to judge.

theonestarr-

You've missed out the fact the US has a worldwide military presence which also costs a lot to maintain. I know the costs are shared with her allies but still it's a significant expense.

I agree with you that China and Russia aren't upfront with their military expenditures. Russia must be third behind China but according to official budgets they spend less than Japan, France and the UK!

I missed out on nothing. I freely admit that we spend a ton for our worldwide presence (which I also fully believe we should not have). I was just addressing a couple points that struck me.

Oh, I know all too well that's exactly what goes down. Thing is, though, while they go wasting money on certain unnecessary things to ensure they're allotted enough the next year, other places where we DO need the money are ignored and underfunded. The fund appropriations system is extremely flawed.

I am in no way fully behind our military or the decisions we make. I DO, however, think things are much more complicated than most would like to admit - for both sides.

Which is funny since we originally switched to contractors for the purpose of DECREASING costs.

It'd probably be cheaper for us to do a lot of our work in-house again, though.



On more military-related topics, are you aware of the changing grooming standards? No, it's not changing in our favor - they're becoming stricter! Right now, the Army is changing the policy so males must remain clean-shaven at all times - on or off-duty, even on leave. And the other branches are evidently considering following suit.