Stagflation? - No, We're Actually Moving BACKWARDS!

[Gob]

Oh fuck off and die retard.

[dales]

Smiles are great!

[rubato]

Oh fuck off and die retard.

Can you quantitate your defense spending relative to ours?

If you could, you would have something intelligent to say rather than your usual moronic shit.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... penditures

The US spends 4.4% of GDP vs your paltry 2.5%.

Parasite. Grow up an pull your weight.


yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

What a moron

The amount the USA chooses to spend on "defense" is not influenced in any way by the amount the UK chooses to spend.

But hang about, weren't you one of those democrats who was calling for the US to be less war mongering?

Get your own house in order first boy.

Oh and fuck off and die.

[rubato]

At least we have the French, allies with some balls and proven leadership.


yrs,
rubato

[dales]

[Gob]

At least we have the French, allies with some balls and proven leadership.


yrs,
rubato

ROTFLMFFAO!!!!
So the French, unlike the UK, have not, and I quote;

Actually, you have parasitized US defense spending for 80 years. You contribute very little.
yrs,
rubato

God, I wonder if one day you'll wake up and realise what a shitty little joke you actually present as.

[Andrew D]

I have not proposed that the U.S. "become an isolationist nation."

Are you not suggesting that the US withdraw from the international efforts to keep, ( for instance) the straights of Hormuz free?

I think that the U.S. should continue to trade with other nations and to enter into trade agreements with other nations. So much for my alleged isolationism.

You continue to mistake my position. In my judgment, if the U.S. were to insist that other nations defray the costs incurred by the U.S. in protecting those other nations' shipping, the result would not be that the U.S. would discontinue protecting those other nations' shipping. On the contrary, those other nations would agree to defray those costs, because their alternative would be far worse than the entirely fair option of paying for the service which they receive.

It is, of course, possible that some of those other nations would foolishly decide to do without the service which the U.S. provides rather than pay for it. In that unlikely event, the U.S.'s discontinuing that service would be merely a mechanism by which to show those other nations the error of their ways. And in short order, those nations would conclude that paying for the service which they receive from the U.S. is a whole lot better than is doing without it.

[Scooter]

And we're back to the Mafia protection money model of international relations.

[Andrew D]

That's just silly. The Mafia charges "protection" money to keep the Mafia itself from perpetrating the harm. I have not suggested that the U.S. should harm other nations' shipping.

What I have suggested is the police force model. The police protect you, and you pay a tax for that service.

[Gob]

Other countries pay the US whatever the US is pleased to command them to pay, and the US allows them passage in international waters. They decline to pay, and their ships end up at the bottom of the ocean.

The "Hitler" bullshit?

We do not care how many synagogues you have. Or how many mosques. Or how many temples. We are not Hitler. You can go ahead and live however you want. Just pay the freight.

We are not interested in your religions or your cultures or anything else about you. We are interested in just one thing: Pay us, or suffer the consequences.

We may have to enter into special agreements with the few nuclear powers -- recognizing, of course, that if they want to fuck with us on the nuclear level, they will all die -- but as for the rest of you: Pay up.

You do not like the deal? Tough shit.

What are you going to do about it? What can you do about it? Nothing.

So when y'all get your rocks off dissing the US, remember a simple fact: We run the world, and y'all prosper because we magnanimously permit you to prosper.

You don't like that fact, and there might well be a lot of contrary squealing. But it's a fact.

[Lord Jim]

Oh good Lord, is he on about that "pay us tribute or we'll sink your ships" nonsense again?

Must be time for the summer re-runs...

[Andrew D]

Yet another snidely vacuous remark from the trollingest, most arrogant poster this board has ever seen.

Yawn.

[Andrew D]

Gob: You have selected a quotation from a thread which is explicitly not about my proposal that the U.S. tax other nations for the protection which they receive from the U.S.

Taxation is the "police force model" to which I just referred.

(Notice "Forget the tax" in the title of the alternative thread. It should be an indication that that thread is not about my proposal that the U.S. tax other nations for the protection which they receive from the U.S.)

Maybe that is because you have run out of reasons to oppose my proposal that the U.S. tax other nations for the protection which they receive from the U.S. Maybe not.

But if you are going to oppose that proposal, please oppose that proposal.

If you are going to oppose an alternative which I suggested, rather less than seriously, only because of the non-seriousness of most responses to my serious proposal, have at it.

But that non-serious proposal exists solely to highlight the benignity of my serious proposal. And the only reason which I have seen for any other nation to pay a modest tax for the protection which it receives from the U.S. on the high seas is "We don't want to pay for what we have been getting for free."

[Gob]

Andrew, you suggested this US tax/tribute, above you were claiming not to have.

[Gob]

You also claim;

Maybe the U.S.A. should just tax the rest of the world.

After all, the U.S.A. holds together the entire international economy. Maybe it's about time that we get something -- or something more -- for our efforts.

International shipping, the lifeblood of the international economy, is, by historical standards, astonishingly safe. And it is astonishingly safe for one principal reason: The U.S.A. spends boatloads (ha, ha) of money keeping it that way.

On the high seas, the U.S.A. is God. Nominally, the high seas belong to everyone. In reality, we own them. The combined navies of the rest of the world wouldn't last a week against the U.S. navy in high-seas combat.

Without the U.S. navy, international shipping would be about as safe today as it was in the eighteenth century. Why should the U.S. keep paying everyone else's bills?

[Lord Jim]

Andrew, you suggested this US tax/tribute, above you were claiming not to have.

So now he's claiming never to have said that?

Gee whiz, you'd think a fella with an unmeasurable IQ would have a better memory than that....

[Gob]

....No naval actions since 1945 have required combat fleets to protect sea lanes—the very reason navies exist. Instead, light forces have proved most useful, escorting tankers in the Persian Gulf and currently combating pirates off Africa. Meanwhile, only isolated engagements have occurred in odd places at random intervals. In 1967 the Egyptian Navy inaugurated the missile age in war at sea by sinking an Israeli destroyer, but there have been no naval surface-to-surface missile engagements since. In the 1971 Indo-Pakistani clash, the Indians sank a French-built Paki submarine, and one of her sisters torpedoed a British-built Indian destroyer.

More than ten years later off the Falklands, HMS Conqueror torpedoed the 44-year-old cruiser General Belgrano, which had survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as the USS Phoenix (CL-46). It was the second and last time since World War II that a submarine had sunk an enemy ship.

In 1988, U.S. Navy ships and aircraft conducted Operation Praying Mantis, sinking an Iranian frigate, a gunboat, and three speedboats. The captain of the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) termed it "the largest American sea battle since World War II." Though a grandiose description, it was nonetheless accurate—and remains so today.

Pundits might counter the notion of the post-naval era by noting that amphibious operations have occurred since World War II. But they are rare: the most notable subsequent cross-beach operations were Inchon (United States, 1950), Suez (Anglo-French, 1956), and the Falklands (British, 1982), and none was seriously opposed on the beach. A forced entry such as Tarawa or Iwo Jima has not occurred in 64 years and does not appear likely in the immediate future. Consequently, some critics question the need for the Marine Corps' new expeditionary fighting vehicle (EFV). Indeed, the Marines emphasize aerial lift to avoid the fight at the high tide mark, hence the tiltrotor MV-22 Osprey.....

....In an interdependent global economy, world trade flourishes with largely unrestricted access to the oceans. Seafaring nations have enjoyed such benefits for generations now - so much so that the world's population takes maritime trade entirely for granted.

And yet Americans might take note of a private British Web site, savetheroyalnavy.org. The avowed purpose is "to provide a major increase in funding to redress decades of cuts and neglect." In part, the orgainization's site says, "We think Britain can avoid future conflict by maintaining peace and stability through armed deterrence. We reject the arguments . . . advocating unilateral disarmament as dangerous and unrealistic. Unless we attain the utopian fantasy of worldwide multilateral disarmament we must retain forces to protect ourselves."

Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, First Sea Lord, recently referred to "sea blindness" being endemic in the UK and across the western world. He notes that 95 percent of global trade passes through nine vulnerable chokepoints. That geopolitical fact goes hand in glove with the Save the Royal Navy site, "Aiming to educate the public about Britain's need for strong naval forces and to raise awareness of the dangers of allowing the navy to decline."

Unfortunately, it's a hard sell. After all, what are the dangers? Loss of sea control? To whom? By what naval power or alliance of powers? Interdiction of seaborne commerce? By whom? To what naval power or alliance? Deterrence? Against whom? What naval power or alliance?

While the U.S. Navy's current status is nowhere as grim as the Royal Navy's, the likelihood of serious cutbacks exists in the current and future political atmosphere.

Whatever the details, whatever the numbers, the service's future rests with those of us who support the idea as well as the institution of the U.S. Navy. We need to be able to answer the question: "Why do we still have such a big navy when we hardly ever use it?"

We ignore that query at our peril. So let the discussion begin.



http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedin ... -naval-era

[rubato]

One thing not mentioned in the article is that naval forces also exist as a mobile method of projecting force against land-based units.




yrs,
rubato

[Andrew D]

Gob: Why are you so afraid of Australia's having to pay a modest fee for the protection which the U.S. navy provides?

I pay for the police who protect me (to the extent to which they are willing and able) from harm when I am out and about. Why should Australia not pay a modest fee for the police (the U.S. navy) who protect Australian shipping on the high seas?

For a change, no more bullshit. No more blathering about anything other than a simple question.

Just a direct answer to a simple question: Why should Australia not pay a modest fee for the protection which the U.S. navy provides?