Matt Wuerker for July 29, 2015

Too big to fail, well not, actually.

^Perhaps some countries are deliberately vague, even misleading, as to how much they spend? That can cause the differences betweeen the results given by various analysts.

It doesn’t matter how well equipped your military is if you persist in negotiating from a position of weakness.

Thumbs up!

^I agree. While I sometimes disagree with him, Mike is almost always thoughtful and respectful, able to give reasoned views, and able to back up his thoughts with facts. There are so many sources out there that discrepancies are bound to occur.

The main idea of Mr. Wueker’s offering for the day is what matters, not whether America outspends the next twelve countries or twenty, not whether America has 9,000 planes or 8,000. (Nobody has that many battleships, for heaven’s sake. I don’t believe there were that many in commission in the whole world during either world war. That’s just pedantry, however.) The idea is, why is America spending that much?

Lastly, the problem with having such a big miltary is that some joker’s going to say, “Hey, we got this here big military! Let’s use it!” Egads, look at most of the individuals running for president. I wouldn’t be comfortable with most of them owning a shotgun if they were my neighbors.

Here are some links backing up Matt’s cartoon.

“The U.S. spends close to what the entire rest of the world spends in defense. $711 billion. Per year. The next closest is China at $143 billion.”“The M1 Abrams tank has seen more combat than just about any other tank on the battlefield today. It has never been knocked out by enemy fire. (Completely killed). Ever. “China has less than 500 Type 99 tanks, that have just been developed, and are not even close to being as good as the Abrams. We have 8,700 Abrams. “We have 10 aircraft carriers. The good kind. Everyone else has 10. Combined. And they are mostly small ships that can launch helicopters.“There are 8,400 attack helicopters in the world. The U.S. has 6,400 of them.”http://www.military1.com/all/article/402211-how-much-stronger-is-the-us-military-compared-with-the-next-strongest-power

On spending: http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison

On rankings: http://www.globalfirepower.com/

@BozhiWhen H voted for W to invade Iraq W had screamed from DC that if you didn’t support him you were unpatriotic and that you believed we should strike back for 9/11. That’s a paraphrase on my part but you get the jist. More importantly, nobody wanted to be painted as unpatriotic.

Great cartoon! Should be nominated as one of the “Year’s Best!”

Wow. I see that.

…and an increasing number of discontented citizens.

No. they expect other people (preferably poor people) to do the dying as they count their profits and watch their stocks rise.

Yep. America in a nutshell. Doesn’t help that those next twelve countries also turn to US with their problems so they don’t have to.

Why quibble about numbers! For some of us, the important point is that the United States spends too much on our military! And our mighty military produced what in North Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq?