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Comment by hx833001 | Hacker News Reader

What makes you think you’d have civilization without a military to protect it? Have you ever read a history book?

There are also no civilizations in history that haven’t struggled with disease outbreaks, yet I’m comfortable claiming that a civilization could still thrive if it were able to eliminate disease outbreaks.

I think the long and full history of people organizing themselves to kill and destroy is the point.

The main job of a military is to loot and plunder other countries.

Well, yes. And the best military is so good at its job that it never needs to do it.

I'm sure there's a term for the slight problem that someone who's good at a job usually wants to do it - the Praetorian Paradox maybe?

Russian military maybe.

Name an exception to the rule in the modern era. There isn't one.

Do you want me to go alphabetically?

Albania, Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bhutan.

There's 10 countries, I'm not even out of the B's yet, and this is still skipping any country for which I think anyone might try to argue for the military's main focus to be to "loot and plunder other countries," not whether I agree with that assertion. Hell, I excluded armies whose main focus could arguably be to loot and plunder its own country rather than other countries (hi, Algeria).

And note that there a more countries on my list in this alphabet range than not on the list. Truly, there are more exceptions than examples to your proposed rule in the modern era, a very far cry from "there isn't one" indeed.

Its not a matter of having the will to do it, its a matter of having the ability.

The Austrian military orients its war plans around the plunder of Austria - i.e. to minimize the damage of other militarys' plundering the nation.

There isn't any other purpose for a military than to manage this factor, either as aggressors or as defenders. Pillage and plunder is what militaries have always done, and prepared for ...

To my knowledge, the U.S. military has not been used for looting and plundering in the modern era.

If you are going to say "but Iraq 2003!" I would ask you to consider the money we spent funding that expedition vs. the supposed financial gain. The reasons to invade weren't great, but looting and plundering were not among them.

Come on, its not so hard to peer beyond the curtain of Western supremacy and see the lie:

The Syrian oil fields are an example of plunder. 1/3rd of Syria is occupied by Western forces - specifically its oil fields.

This resource is being intentionally withheld from the Syrian people, to prevent them from using the wealth to rebuild their country.

That is plunder.

And, the invasion of Iraq? That was nothing but utter destruction of a sovereign nation that was not willing to play Western ball.

Iraq lost 5% of its population to America's heinously evil war - that is human plunder, indeed.

It's also a shame when I hear smart people say Iraq was "about the oil"(a response I'm anticipating for your post). If it was about the oil, it doesn't really make sense that America "let" Russia, China, and a whole other slew of non-US-aligned states get into Iraq to run oil operations there. If it were really about the oil, wouldn't America have locked down Iraq so only we could benefit from it, and not Russia and China?

It is about the petrodollar, a subject for which oil is merely a factor.

Anyone who has attempted to wean the world off the petrodollar has found themselves deposed, assassinated, or otherwise eradicated from Western history.

Now the military only paves the road for other companies to do the job.

If you took all the reasons the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 and had to assign assign percentages for how much each one contributed to the decision to invade, what value would you assign to "securing lucrative contracts for defense and oil companies"?

[x] Protect the Petrodollar from any potential sovereign threat.

A quick search says that's been considered a war crime since Nuremberg, so probably most in the modern era are exceptions. Not all but most, the test I would apply is: do the militaries take accusations of this seriously, or flatly deny them?

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