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Comment by burnt-resistor | Hacker News Reader

$24 billion in American taxpayer money went to Israel in 2024, or about $65M/day. That's 32 equivalent of those. Each and every day. And this is what enables burying/killing a wide ranging, unknowable number (60k-200k?) of humans, half of whom were children, by systematic aerial bombardment using 2000 lbs. unguided Mk. 84's into urban areas and terrestrial structural demolitions, forced concentration/ethnic cleansing, and engineered famine by siege. Not all Israelis and Americans are okay with this, but protesting so far hasn't made much difference.

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"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

-- notorious antifa leftist Dwight D Eisenhower

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."

-- Smedley Butler, a United States Marine Corps Major General and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.

But then, if you were in Gaza right now and consider how many buildings/lives might have been saved by the existence of a whole bunch of air-to-air or ground-to-air missiles to trash bombers with, you start to wonder if having these things for the moment you need them might not make a lot of sense. Similar story for Ukraine.

The only thing the missile has to do is be cheaper than the bomber it’ll destroy. To be cheaper than the infrastructure that can’t be bombed into dust because the bomber was destroyed by the missile. Taken in that light they suddenly seem pretty cheap.

Thanks didn't know about that speech: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech

A lot of it going back to American arms cos, so a subsidy of industry.

Now, imagine that money going to American infrastructure and health.

If numbers are unknown, how can you claim half of them are children?

Ps: Ukrainian army has better use for ammo than Israel. Should have sent there

Very simple. Demographics of the populace. Median age is around 18-19.

So you prefer us assisting the killing of Russian soldiers rather than the killing of Hamas soldiers?

Right. To help an ally to defend against unprovoked invasion. Punish the bully, keep global peace.

Who wouldn't? Its a far more morally justifiable position to hold. Ukraine deserves freedom from Russian strikes on their civilians.

I think I prefer a war fought between soldier to one fought between bombers and children.

It’s not all the numbers that are unknown, but so many are still buried beneath rubble that the scope of death isn’t clear. The numbers that are known are depressing enough.

That's a misconception about military aid. That money is flowing straight back to US defense companies. It's not actually costing the US; it's profiting from this. And it's not actually tax payer money but freshly minted dollars that are created through debt. Nobody is getting taxed "extra" to pay for all this.

If you strip away all the moralism and suffering, the conflicts (plural) in the middle east and increasingly Ukraine are all about keeping the defense industry and the economy going. Same with Ukraine. Same with just about any other conflict where countries like the US supply the weapons.

> And it's not actually tax payer money but freshly minted dollars that are created through debt

Minting dollars is a form of taxation (albeit one partially paid by foreign entities that hold dollars)

You mean they are funneling their citizens’ money into some private corporations, and killing a decent number of children while doing it?

Edit: they are helping to kill the children, they are not doing it themselves

This is the US devoting resources to do one thing, build things go bang abroad, instead of doing other things like building/renewing infrastructure or providing services to citizens. So, that is a cost. The question is what are the benefits. In Ukraine I can see that, in Israel it’s got a lot more messy.

That's some top tier clown economics.

Do you think the labor and resources that went into creating that materiel would vanish if it wasn't created? Like a missile is magic and conjures engineers and metal into existence just to fulfil its creation?

Oh and in fact leaves a little left over, the "profit", because thankyou for giving it some schools to obliterate?

What would we do if we weren't blowing people to bits huh, building theme parks or something instead - oh the waste! Think of the ~slaughter~... ahem, I mean the "economy"!

the profit was made by defense contractors when it was built. and flows as wages to the workers in GA / VA / wherever building it.

what happens after it's made is a function of utility. lotta waste, but if a 2 million missile can trash 4 million in buildings, cars, and humans, then it is still a win, even if there is no profit.

Nonsense. If the US instead just ordered $24B of military equipment and gave it to Israel would you still be calling it 'not a donation'? The two are equivalent.

Doesn't change the end result, but it paints a moral dimension on those who actively profit from the deaths of imprisoned civilians. The money goes into the pockets of the owners of mostly American defense contractors' owners, arms leave for conflict zones, and mostly civilians where Gaza is concerned get made homeless, injured, or flee for tent cities, only to be pushed around again.

Conflating Ukraine with Gaza is genocide-denial gaslighting.

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