Military spending vs societal benefits

[T.G.G. Moogly]

FFS, my entire fucking family is military, my husband was fucking deployed! I don't approve of atrocities, and the fact that you can't seem to envision an approach of highly directed aggression that doesn't involve war crimes says a fuck-ton of a lot more about you and your fucked up brain than anything at all about me.

Have you ever thought about how your family would be without the need for military, how their lives would have been different, no doubt better? I would think you would prefer that. My family is four generations military but I sure would have preferred we all had different lives. I think we'd all prefer to have not waged WW2 or any conflict and spent those resources differently, not to mention the loss of life. I think that's what the OP is getting at. Will humans ever get there?

 

[Elixir]

That UCMJ requires soldiers to disregard any orders that violate the constitution

Trump pounds chest:
“I am the Constitution, and if you don’t follow my orders you will be court martialed and sent to Guantanamo! Your choice.”

The military would legitimately be forced to perform a coup and depose the fucker, or let him run roughshod.

 

[Politesse]

Then you should know better. Brutality does not lead to success over the long term, and there is no evidence to suggest that it would. Not even as a pure hypothetical that you did not at all mean to endorse. I'm sure you really do believe that you only want to engage in nice, friendly military escalations, not mean ones.

You know YOU are the one who decided on brutality, right? Not me. That leap is 100% on you.

Perhaps you could clarify your own point, then.

 

[bilby]

I don't think any sane, rational person would argue that we would get more mileage out of our resources if we didn't spend those resources on armaments.

I think any sane, rational speaker of British or Commonwealth variants of English would do exactly that.

Why Anericans feel the need to use a grammar that exactly reverses their meaning, I have no idea.

Perhaps every American is not guilty of this...

I’m sorry for whatever it is that compels you to insult any American who makes an error in language or grammar or simply a typo.

I hope you feel better soon.

I didn't insult anyone; Nor did I say that anyone had made an error.

I made a wry observation on an amusing difference in grammar between traditional English and American English.

Except what you actually did was to observe a mistyped sentence, and then somehow generalize a typo to the entirety of americans so you could get a jab in.

Can you parse what Moogly said? Because I can - and the formation of the sentence is NOT "how americans do it", it's blatantly obvious that he just typed it wrong. But instead of gorking what he was saying, and engaging in good faith, you somehow felt it was a great time to drop in a snide comment about how americans are backwards.

This isn't a difference in grammar - this is you using an error and generalizing that to "what americans be like" and thinking you're funny about it.

That explanation would hold far more water if I hadn't heard a large number of instances of Americans using "argue" to mean "argue against", in a variety of contexts. It's difficult to make a typo while speaking

It's certainly a difference in grammar; And those who do it are, in my experience, invariably Americans. Whether it's a widespread dialect in the US, or an uncommon one, it's certainly not always an unintentional error.

And it's in keeping with the "everybody is not guilty" construction that I juxtaposed with it; That's not a typo either.

 

[bilby]

Well, you might start by remembering that the military is obligated to ignore unconstitutional orders. Trump was not "sole decider" while he was in office, nor would he be if re-elected. And the US military DOES pledge to uphold the constitution first and foremost

No shit, Sherlock.

Repeating what I just said, while advising me to "remember" it is a waste of my time and yours.

 

[bilby]

That UCMJ requires soldiers to disregard any orders that violate the constitution

Trump pounds chest:
“I am the Constitution, and if you don’t follow my orders you will be court martialed and sent to Guantanamo! Your choice.”

The military would legitimately be forced to perform a coup and depose the fucker, or let him run roughshod.

The Constitution has been under increasing attack for some time. The whole business of insisting that POTUS be described as Commander in Chief (even to the extent of not using "CiC" to describe the top military brass) is an example of this.

And of course, there's the fact that the interpretation of the constitution is the prerogative of the Supreme Court - a body mainly hand-picked by Trump.

How should a Marine respond to an order that he feels might be unconstitutional, but that SCOTUS has ruled not to be, and that originates from the CiC in the Oval Office?

At best, a really ugly order might lead to a split in the military, and a civil war. At worst, the military would just arrest any individual soldiers, sailors, airmen or marines who refuse to obey, and then the rest would carry out the orders of the President.

 

[robnisch]

That UCMJ requires soldiers to disregard any orders that violate the constitution

Trump pounds chest:
“I am the Constitution, and if you don’t follow my orders you will be court martialed and sent to Guantanamo! Your choice.”

The military would legitimately be forced to perform a coup and depose the fucker, or let him run roughshod.

I asked a vet once about this, he said yes you should disobey an illegal order, but you will be court martialed.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I asked a vet once about this, he said yes you should disobey an illegal order, but you will be court martialed.

I've never heard it put like that. We were schooled to not carry out such orders and were never informed that we would be court martialed as a result. Of course you quickly learned that in the military shit flows downhill despite understandings to the contrary. There is a lot of CYA in the military so if someone can pin the blame elsewhere and get away with it that's what they will do. Conspiring to assign blame is not uncommon.

One of the first things you learn is that you are expendable. So if you are told to do something that you perceive as suicidal you are still bound to obey. The Prez is your commander and you have to be careful about criticizing his orders. I've never been part of an actual court martial but have been assigned as counsel to defend soldiers deemed unfit for service and facing discharge "for the good of the service." Quite the enlightening experience.

 

[Toni]

I don't think any sane, rational person would argue that we would get more mileage out of our resources if we didn't spend those resources on armaments.

I think any sane, rational speaker of British or Commonwealth variants of English would do exactly that.

Why Anericans feel the need to use a grammar that exactly reverses their meaning, I have no idea.

Perhaps every American is not guilty of this...

I’m sorry for whatever it is that compels you to insult any American who makes an error in language or grammar or simply a typo.

I hope you feel better soon.

I didn't insult anyone; Nor did I say that anyone had made an error.

I made a wry observation on an amusing difference in grammar between traditional English and American English.

Except what you actually did was to observe a mistyped sentence, and then somehow generalize a typo to the entirety of americans so you could get a jab in.

Can you parse what Moogly said? Because I can - and the formation of the sentence is NOT "how americans do it", it's blatantly obvious that he just typed it wrong. But instead of gorking what he was saying, and engaging in good faith, you somehow felt it was a great time to drop in a snide comment about how americans are backwards.

This isn't a difference in grammar - this is you using an error and generalizing that to "what americans be like" and thinking you're funny about it.

That explanation would hold far more water if I hadn't heard a large number of instances of Americans using "argue" to mean "argue against", in a variety of contexts. It's difficult to make a typo while speaking

It's certainly a difference in grammar; And those who do it are, in my experience, invariably Americans. Whether it's a widespread dialect in the US, or an uncommon one, it's certainly not always an unintentional error.

And it's in keeping with the "everybody is not guilty" construction that I juxtaposed with it; That's not a typo either.

It's not an error. It's a difference in grammar / usage which may or may not be peculiar to the US, just as there are differences in grammar usage and word choices between England and Australia and Ireland and Wales and Scotland and India and other nations where English is the or one of the major languages spoken as well as regional differences within each of those nations.

Your explanation does not obviate your seeming fixation of 'correcting' or otherwise finding fault with Americans. This is your prerogative, of course. Just as it is the prerogative of others to push back against this personal quirk of yours.

I realize that we are all individuals but speaking for myself, I tend to type on this board the same way I talk to people standing in front of me (albeit no typos when I speak). I do not write as I would a professional letter or an English composition or a novel (despite the length of some of my posts) or a position paper or drafts for a debate. Reading others' posts I think that many other people posting here are the same or similar.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

A friend and coworker even when he was composing business documents would say "return back" such as return the tool back to its proper storage. After a couple corrections I just let it go. Figured that's how he talks and it still gets the message across.

/derail

 

[Swammerdami]

That explanation would hold far more water if I hadn't heard a large number of instances of Americans using "argue" to mean "argue against", in a variety of contexts. It's difficult to make a typo while speaking

It's certainly a difference in grammar; And those who do it are, in my experience, invariably Americans. Whether it's a widespread dialect in the US, or an uncommon one, it's certainly not always an unintentional error.

FWIW, I was unaware of the phenomenon shown in red, and didn't know what this conversation was about until I saw bilby's post. Then again, my contact with SPOKEN English is minimal, and I suppose this irregularity is much less common in the written language.

Or could it be a regional variation? Most of the American English I've heard was in Northern California^*.

(* - "Northern California" is itself a weird name: in my dialect it refers to what looks on a map to be West Central California, the Greater Bay Area.)

 

[Emily Lake]

FFS, my entire fucking family is military, my husband was fucking deployed! I don't approve of atrocities, and the fact that you can't seem to envision an approach of highly directed aggression that doesn't involve war crimes says a fuck-ton of a lot more about you and your fucked up brain than anything at all about me.

Have you ever thought about how your family would be without the need for military, how their lives would have been different, no doubt better? I would think you would prefer that. My family is four generations military but I sure would have preferred we all had different lives. I think we'd all prefer to have not waged WW2 or any conflict and spent those resources differently, not to mention the loss of life. I think that's what the OP is getting at. Will humans ever get there?

They wouldn't have been better. Without the military, the vast majority of my family wouldn't have been able to get any post secondary education, and would still be abysmally poor stuck in a small town. My family also, by the way, would have been significantly less diverse. It was military service that presented exposure to different ethnicities, different beliefs, different cultures. The military is pretty much directly responsible for the majority of my cousins being a lovely shade of ambiguity brown, as well as having respect for people from different cultures and care for people from different economic and social backgrounds.

 

[Elixir]

(* - "Northern California" is itself a weird name: in my dialect it refers to what looks on a map to be West Central California, the Greater Bay Area.)

Anything North of SLO is “Northern California”.
SLO is San Luis Obispo.
I hope this helps.

 

[Emily Lake]

That UCMJ requires soldiers to disregard any orders that violate the constitution

Trump pounds chest:
“I am the Constitution, and if you don’t follow my orders you will be court martialed and sent to Guantanamo! Your choice.”

The military would legitimately be forced to perform a coup and depose the fucker, or let him run roughshod.

Trump is an idiot. And no matter how much he thumps his chest, he doesn't have the authority to court martial anyone for following the UCMJ. The military isn't as helpless in the face of a president as you seem to think. They wouldn't need to "perform a coup", they just ignore his orders and there's not a fucking thing he can do about it. Seriously - who do you think is going to enforce his unconstitutional orders?

 

[Elixir]

Trump is an idiot.

I certainly hope you’re not waiting for me to disagree with that!

And no matter how much he thumps his chest, he doesn't have the authority to court martial anyone for following the UCMJ.

Emily, I have to say that sounds terribly naive to me. The point in this hypothetical interaction is not that Trump actually CAN have anyone court martialed, it’s that he can and will threaten it, and Trump’s threats have historically influenced people to bend to his will.

 

[Emily Lake]

Then you should know better. Brutality does not lead to success over the long term, and there is no evidence to suggest that it would. Not even as a pure hypothetical that you did not at all mean to endorse. I'm sure you really do believe that you only want to engage in nice, friendly military escalations, not mean ones.

You know YOU are the one who decided on brutality, right? Not me. That leap is 100% on you.

Perhaps you could clarify your own point, then.

Perhaps you could ask before you jump to the assumption that I want to brutally scalp people with no morals to speak of

Our actions in Afghanistan were actually very mild-mannered. We took a largely defensive position with the objective of preventing terrorist infiltration in strategic areas. With some exceptions, our direct actions were implemented only after the enemy engaged in clearly aggressive undertakings.

But we have the technology and the skill to be much more directly aggressive. That doesn't mean "more brutal" which seems to be the only thing you're capable of imagining. We definitely could have taken the initiative in pursuing terrorist cells and locations, and taking the fight to them. We could have been significantly more direct in hunting down and eradicating terrorist activities.

But we didn't. There are reasons for it, and one of those reasons is that we, as a country, don't want to be perceived as the aggressor. It's a political and a PR position, wherein we placed more emphasis on defensive actions, including infrastructure and support for the local citizens of the areas in which we acted.

Another of the reasons is very likely to be that we don't want to show our hand. The terrorists we were fighting were pretty low-tech, at least in comparison to our capabilities. We only used the level of technology needed to keep them at bay - ultimately they're not the biggest threat to either the US or to our allies. It's in our strategic interests to not expose the extent of our technological capabilities in action against what is ultimately a lesser opponent.

 

[Emily Lake]

Well, you might start by remembering that the military is obligated to ignore unconstitutional orders. Trump was not "sole decider" while he was in office, nor would he be if re-elected. And the US military DOES pledge to uphold the constitution first and foremost

No shit, Sherlock.

Repeating what I just said, while advising me to "remember" it is a waste of my time and yours.

Uh huh. And yet you still presented Trump as "sole decider" and portrayed that as being a massive threat to the entire world, with the implication that somehow that idiot could obligate the US military to completely betray their oaths and their duty.

 

[Emily Lake]

How should a Marine respond to an order that he feels might be unconstitutional, but that SCOTUS has ruled not to be, and that originates from the CiC in the Oval Office?

Are you envisioning a weird scenario where the President goes to SCOTUS first, and gets them to pre-emptively declare that his future order is constitutional? Or is there time travel involved?

I'm not seeing how you think a Marine refusing to violate their oath to the constitution gets superseded by SCOTUS in a way that meaningfully results in a problem, given the amount of time it takes to get anything to the SCOTUS in the first place. I mean, maybe they will court martial the guy ten years after the fact... but it seems extraordinarily unlikely to me.

 

[Emily Lake]

Trump is an idiot.

I certainly hope you’re not waiting for me to disagree with that!

I would be floored if you did. I would also likely ask if you had perchance ingested something with mind-altering attributes.

And no matter how much he thumps his chest, he doesn't have the authority to court martial anyone for following the UCMJ.

Emily, I have to say that sounds terribly naive to me. The point in this hypothetical interaction is not that Trump actually CAN have anyone court martialed, it’s that he can and will threaten it, and Trump’s threats have historically influenced people to bend to his will.

Not sure I agree. I don't think he managed to influence and bend people to his will very well at all while he was in office. He didn't really get much done. He's a good orator, and he definitely knows how to capitalize on political division - particularly resonating with people who the Democrats have let down. He's definitely good at tapping into people's worries and concerns. That's all great for getting a crowd excited... but that doesn't translate into execution of goals. Plus, realistically I don't think the majority of people flying a banner for Trump actually truly like the guy - there are some, definitely. But the biggest thing he's got going for him right now is that he's not Biden and isn't a Democrat. Consequently, the biggest thing Biden has going for him is that he's not Trump and he's not a Republican.

I'm something like 80% convinced that if either part had the sense to drop the old fogey that they're platforming and put forward almost anyone else with an inkling of common sense, they'd win in a landslide.

 

[Elixir]

. I don't think he managed to influence and bend people to his will very well at all while he was in office.

He went into the Whitehouse with his eyes closed, and unwittingly hired/appointed people, some of whom were not entirely devoid of moral character.
He won’t make THAT mistake again.

By the end of his term he was able to threaten thousands of people into committing crimes on his behalf. I don’t see that military personnel have radically different proclivities from the public at large, and I believe he could threaten many or most into committing heinous acts.

It’s true that anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities, and there is no doubt that he has convinced 70m+ people to believe the absurdity that he’s a very stable genius with a very big brain from whom an election was stolen without leaving a trace. We got a small taste of the atrocities he can get them to commit on 1/6/21. If elected or allowed to steal the next election, the ensuing atrocities will make everyone forget all about the little tourist influx of 1/6.

I'm something like 80% convinced that if either part had the sense to drop the old fogey that they're platforming and put forward almost anyone else with an inkling of common sense, they'd win in a landslide.

Put me down at 98%. I think I’ve said as much in the past. Just today, 2 polls showed Biden comfortably ahead of Trump and losing by 5pts to Haley. And Mr/Ms Unnamed Generic Partisan beats any named opponent by double digits.