Elon Musk: Mass Murderer

[canpakes]

Oh and before I forget, Happy Juneteenth.

Thank you. I used some vacation time so I could take my son to a celebration with some friends. It was his first time eating fried catfish; I think he's a fan. It's unfortunate that Conservatives tried so hard to maintain the institution of owning human beings, even after they lost the war. Thank goodness for the freedom loving patriots in the United States military.

Unfortunately, our patriots will be serving on bases named after Confederate traitors again, because the new Secretary of Defense has decided to step away from slathering his hair with bacon grease long enough to coddle the feelings of butthurt MAGA snowflakes who can’t deal with the 2020 legislation that authorized new base names.

[Dr. Shades]

Do China's new friends and allies pose any threat to the United States whatsoever?

I doubt they do, but making expenditures that way benefited China more than wars or propping up friendly dictators.

Which is why the United States should refrain from those latter actions, too.

I sure hope you're not including me in that "MAGA bots" comment, because that's about as far from me as it is from Some Schmo.

It was quite clear from my post that I was referring to Trump's silly post about "the money pouring in" (supposedly to US coffers) when European countries increased defense expenditure. Did you not notice?

Yes, but I was hoping you weren't grouping me in with the people to whom the "money pouring in" comment appealed.

Yep. So NATO didn't work out too well for them after all. And we ended up doing the lion's share anyway, so invoking the clause wasn't necessary.

Surely you are not under the impression that NATO membership is supposed to prevent attacks by suicidal Islamic terrorists? On your second point, it would perhaps be nice if the US government could now write to the families of the UK military personnel who died in Iraq and Afghanistan because they were supporting the US effort in those countries, explaining that those deaths were unnecessary. I'm sure that gracious gesture would cheer them up no end.

The families of the U.K. military personnel who died in Iraq and Afghanistan because they were supporting the US effort in those countries are those to whom my sentence "So NATO didn't work out too well for them after all" applied.

[Chap]

The families of the U.K. military personnel who died in Iraq and Afghanistan because they were supporting the US effort in those countries are those to whom my sentence "So NATO didn't work out too well for them after all" applied.

Uh-huh. If you say so ...

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Right, that's why I said "by proxy." By us being there, they can have a much smaller military--with all the savings of their own citizens' tax dollars.
…

If we didn't maintain bases there by mutual accord, we could save $4B/year.

Subsidizing implies we're footing their bill, when in reality, each country still pays for its own defense and contributes to NATO's collective budget proportional to its means.

What we’re really doing is strategic cost-sharing, not charity. We choose to maintain forces in Europe because it serves national interests: rapid response capability, forward staging, intelligence operations, and maintaining influence in Europe and the broader region. That’s not a favor; that’s geopolitics. in my opinion, it’s important to remember that our NATO military spending is disproportionately high because we choose to maintain a global military footprint, not because we’re forced to backstop Europe.

One other quick, I agree with the general idea that we spend too much on our military. Even when I was in service I would say we needed to reduce the size of our active duty component by ~2/3 so we could square away our domestic issues, in addition to paying down our debt. But I leave this thought with you: Had we withdrawn from Europe to save, say, $100B per year, and Russia invaded so Putin could get his grand empire back, as per the Foundations of Geopolitics and his invasion of Ukraine, how much do you think we’d spend to fight a war in Europe? How many would die? What would another round of reconstruction look like? Obviously the answer is in the trillions, probably double or triple what we spent in Iraq. Or do we leave Europe to their own devices and to whatever Russia could gain - not to mention the very real possibility of a nuclear exchange given the scenario? It’s probably cheaper to be in Europe as a deterrent, in my opinion.

- Doc

[Kishkumen]

I am not a fan of empire, but I do think that not all empires are of equal value or detriment to the world. As bad as American empire can be, it is possible, if not likely, that other options would be a lot worse.

[Chap]

I am not a fan of empire....

As I am sure you agree, it's not really the job of historians to be fans of anything in particular (though they may be on a personal basis) but to understand (amongst other things) what happened, how it happened, and what the people involved intended and thought was happening.

But let's consider one advantage of empires as they have actually existed, compared with the nation-states that succeeded them. The latter, in parts of Europe and at times elsewhere, have tended to adopt the idea that there is a language, an ethnicity, and a religion that are 'ours', and if you do not happen to share those things, you don't really belong in 'our' country. Empires that consist of an assemblage of different peoples (such as, say, the Ottoman Empire) can't easily fall into that mode. Thus, the Otttomans had room for Muslims, Christians and Jews, and although the latter two groups paid a higher rate of tax, no-one thought it would be a good idea to get rid of them, because they played useful roles in the wider scheme of things. And there were other examples: one might like to consider the difference between the positions of Hindus and Muslims under the British Indian Empire, and the appalling intercultural massacres that took place once the insistence of each group on living in their own nation-states after independence led to partition, and conflicts that continue to this day.

I am not at all sure that the USA can be treated as an 'empire' in that historical sense. But whether it is or not, it is clear that some people hate and fear the way things are now, and would like to create a mono-cultural, mono-ethnic and mono-religious country on the old nation-state model. Will they succeed?

[Moksha]

It would be foolish to wage some foreign war against Iran when Trump has already declared war against Los Angeles!!!

[Dr. Shades]

The families of the U.K. military personnel who died in Iraq and Afghanistan because they were supporting the US effort in those countries are those to whom my sentence "So NATO didn't work out too well for them after all" applied.

Uh-huh. If you say so ...

You don't actually disagree, do you?

[Chap]

Uh-huh. If you say so ...

You don't actually disagree, do you?

I'm happy for other board readers to decide whether your original message actually had the meaning you later ascribed to it.

[Kishkumen]

It would be foolish to wage some foreign war against Iran when Trump has already declared war against Los Angeles!!!

He already has his hands full of mayhem and madness!