U.S. military to return to pre-WW2 size

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Wow! It looks like we can go back to being a normal country!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/us/po ... pe=article

Finally!

Good, keep up the improvement

And it could be argued that the size of our pre-WWII military is one of the things that enabled WWII to happen.

The Army is not "the military."

And the Air Farce has been trying to get rid of the A-10 and the U-2 for more than 25 years. New conflicts keep popping up and they are found to be indispensable once again.

A US Army soldier in this day and age and the weapons systems that they have at their disposal is a far cry from what a soldier had pre-WW2, or even post WW2 for that matter.

The rest of the world has more advanced weapons than they did in the 30's, too. With spending cuts it's just a matter of time before our weapons systems become dated.

no what enabled ww2 to happen was the military industrial complex. the oil embargo on japan forced them to attack Perl harbor in retaliation
people seem to forget that embargo's are an act of war

Maybe we should stop interfering in the business of other nations and stop making enemies then maybe we wont have to worry about other nations messing with us. People say that Reagan built our military but having been part of Reagans military I can say that he cut our military in the mid 80's too and people loved him. People all around me, including myself with over ten years of service were told at that time that if we wanted to re-enlist we would have to go infantry. No options to reclassify or retrain otherwise, while infantrymen who should have been discharged were shoveled into our jobs. This was a deliberate effort by Reagan administration to cut budget by minimizing personnel. I know of few if any of my peers who re-enlisting but rather took their skills to the civilian marketplace.

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My point was that with a small military and the foreign policy to go with it it allowed other countries (Germany & Japan) to take liberties in the years preceding the war that they wouldnt have taken otherwise. We could also blame the Treaty of Versailles.

I believe in two kinds military presence abroad. One or the other with little to no middle ground:
1) Like it is now but a little more heavy handed and careless. Peace through intimidation, in other words.
2) Isolationist. We do little to nothing outside of our own borders and rely more on a smallish reserve military. No peacekeeping, no using the US military for any kind of international disaster relief efforts. Don't call us we don't care.

About freaking time. This bloated military spending cannot go on, it is unsustainable for us as a nation; the money would be more better spent improving our schools, roads, and other essential things.......

I would like to see a combination of the two. We give up trying to police the world, and largely retreat to our own borders, but retain the ability to strike anywhere at any time. Then, when any country gives us sufficient cause – and I mean 9/11, not 'we think maybe they have chemical weapons' – we attack with sudden overwhelming force, make a wasteland, then leave. Let the UN worry about "nation-building" afterwards if it wants.

I'll bet we'd only have to do it once ....

I once heard someone say that the amount of money the US government spends on its military is proportionately about equivalent to what most countries spend on healthcare. I can sort of see this being the case, considering how poor the US healthcare system is and how advanced their military is, but could anyone clarify if this in fact true?

I'd say we should stop being so unilateral and beef up our relationships with our NATO allies, our ANZUS allies, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, any friendly Arab state, and India. That way, we don't need a gigantic military to police the world.

I was under the impression that the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler coming to power and subsequently invading Poland enable WWII to happen....

hitler invaded poland to get the citys back that were stolen from germany after ww1. the germans in those citys were begging for liberation
both ww1 and ww2 were started by the rothschild family for massive profits since they loaned all sides massive amounts of money