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Comment by Convolutional | Hacker News Reader

The US has spent $100 billion in the Ukraine over the past year, with more on the way, it is sending billions a year to Israel and Egypt, is involved in Iran, China, Venezuela etc. It just stopped spending a ton in Afghanistan. All the money spent there seemed to have no positive effect.

The US seems to have money to throw all over the world for this kind of bloodthirsty waste, if it cuts it can cut there. People getting back money they put into Social Security should be the last thing to go.

The US spends hundreds of billions on these wars of choice, that can be cut very easy.

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You call them wars of choice. It would be more correct to call this preventative money.

They spend this money in order to prevent having an actual war later.

Also a lot of the aid is actually jobs program where the aid recipient is required to spend the money on American made goods.

So it's not quite as simplistic as you're making it out to be.

> You call them wars of choice. It would be more correct to call this preventative money.

No, we that served don't.

> They spend this money in order to prevent having an actual war later.

Having spent a good part of my life prepping for Fulda Gap defense against the USSR I know that is incorrect.

The US has spread NATO right up to Russian doorstep, on the cusp of inside their early warning systems for missiles, having fomented revolution and armed the Western Ukrainians in their civil war against the Eastern Ethnic Russian Ukrainians.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, the Arab Spring turned Winter - more of American Adventurism than critical national security objectives.

Am all for a strong military, just not it being overutilized for incorrect purposes.

You served in the american millitary during the cold war but don't think that the countries that were beind the iron curtain should have been allowed to join nato?

That's... interesting.

I’ll ignore your lame…rhetorical method and address your point. No, they should not join NATO. When we all die in a nuclear holocaust I will have the comfort of knowing it was all Purim’s fault.

For what its worth I don't intend it as a rhetorical method, it really does seem like a disconnect from what I'm familliar with. My experience living in europe is that when I do meet folks from romania/poland/lithuania/estonia etc are viruently anti-russia, and pro eu/nato - almost disconcertingly so. Especially because they see their own governments as corrupt (I can't say whether they are right) and seem to look to these other organisations to save them from that.

I don't know what point that serves, but I do find it difficult to see membership as something imposed on them. If they weren't allowed to join, I don't really know where that would go?

> You served in the american millitary during the cold war

To this day, Fulda Gap Defense is a part of US military practice in Europe. Most people that work for a NATO flagged unit practice this also.

> but don't think that the countries that were beind the iron curtain should have been allowed to join nato?

First of all, US leaders from the past have made numerous promises not to extend NATO that far East.

When you take what was intended to be a defensive alliance and extend it right up to a potential enemy's doorstep, inside their missile defense early warning shield, when you foment a number of color revolutions in another country's sphere of influence (Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, etc), and threaten their sphere of control, you are not just on the path to war, you are provoking it.

Bizarre that you're getting down-voted.

Though the answer to your suggestions is that any populist conception of the American Empire is delusional. Like a mafia they will take your money and spend it in whatever way they damn well wish, and there's nothing you can do about it

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