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Comment by westmeal | Hacker News Reader

When was America last invaded by a foreign adversary?

This resembles anti-vax logic. We haven’t been invaded because our military maintains a strong deterrence and strategic depth.

Yeah, otherwise the USA would have been invaded by Cuba, Iraq, Vietnam, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and a hundred more, and they all would have a fight over who can have it. Thank god the US defended themselves against those terrible guys. Especially the WMDs were quite the close call, the Iraqis were minutes away from nuking the land of the mart.

> otherwise the USA would have been invaded

Yes, invading Hawaii was part of imperial Japanese planning. If you don’t understand that defense spending is still worthwhile even if you don’t blow anything up with it, I’m not sure how we connect.

But... you ARE blowing things up with it?

You haven't shown the value. There are multiple countries that have a very low defense spending and since WW2 haven't been invaded.

Cuba's an odd rhetorical choice given https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

I think you're the one applying anti-vax logic here. Imagine beating a guy up for looking at you wrong and then get into a semantic argument with the judge on how you shouldn't be charged with assault because it was actually an act of defense, you see if you hadn't assaulted them they would surely have assaulted you so it's defense.

You're basically saying the US don't need a Department of Defense because the Department of War is doing such a good job.

>We haven’t been invaded because our military maintains a strong deterrence and strategic depth.

How do you know that's the reason? There are many countries with very low defense spending that haven't been invaded since WW2.

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