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I shoulda stayed in Job Corps What gives you the right to fuck with our lives: CXLI What gives you the right to fuck with our lives: CXL I'm not the one you wanna stunt on, pa jigsaws falling into place no peace talks What gives you the right to fuck with our lives: C... have you any idea why they're lying to you, to you... dreams don't die, they don't wave goodbye What gives you the right to fuck with our lives: C... Friday, January 12, 2007
They say I walk around like I got an S on my chest:
Chris From The Block asks:
I thought of a question that I’d like to see every presidential candidate asked: “Is it your position that that United States must have the world’s largest and most expensive military, and if so, why?”As they say, it's not the size; it's how it's used. The security threats that we face as a nation have to do primarily with our position as the predominant global superpower. The size and allocation of military assets is driven by this, and also leads to the preservation of that status. Italy and France aren't safer because they have smaller militaries -- France has the biggest military in Europe, and therefore one of the largest on the planet -- but rather because their global reach and aspirations are constrained, relative to us. If Italy decides tomorrow that it wants to take up America's global commitments, it will find that it needs a vastly larger military to avert the disasters that hegemony tempts. Now, we don't necessarily need a half-trillion-plus annual expenditure on the military. But as long as we like remaining the world's only superpower, we'd be irresponsible not to have a hugely outsized martial force relative to the rest of the world. Chris is right that even with such a massive military, we're going to remain vulnerable to asymmetric attack, but that's sort of true by definition. The issue has more to do with being the global equivalent of 50 Cent -- a mercurial, violent paranoiac possessing undeniable greatness, intensely loyal to a select few, merciless to most others and determined to remain on top of the heap by any means necessary. We get ours the ski mask way. As a result, we had better stay strapped. --Spencer Ackerman
Though it was obviously more pronounced during the Cold War, France and Italy are also safe in the knowledge that we wouldn't let anyone buck em down. |
