Wow, this thread is still going? To make a long story short, Russia can hold its own in today's world, and its just not worth it to fight them.

Lets all get along and work together to make peace, which we can do if we just try hard enough. And elect politicians willing to do that.

I’d scrap all but 6 of the Ohio and scrap all the Seawolf and Virginia class, and keep just 15 of the Los Angeles. 21 subs.
en.wikipedia.org...

I would reconfigure the Ohio's and make all of them cruise missile submarines ( currently four or four planned have been reconfigured and returned to service) thus retaining the hulls and making them 'useful' in a conventional war. I would retain the LA type boats and keep building more while starting a construction program to build as many diesel submarines as can assure coastal defense against submerged threats. These boats can basically serve to protect the coastline of both North and South America and ensure that sea lanes are not interrupted. I would again turn the USAF into a intercontinental bomber /continental defense force and turn all offensive operations over to the carrier arm which may be expanded ( more carriers) or just serve as platforms for fighter aircraft that can fly in support of the USAF bombers or coastal defense. I would never build a base on foreign soil unless the host government pays for all my costs involved ( unlikely but wars happen) and i would most certainly not do anything that could remotely be interpreted as imperialist.

I would have had a national ABM defense system with tens of thousands of dual use Sam's and ABM's that could have defended every city with enough people to miss as well as a smaller but mobile land based ICBM force that can not be defeated by any type of first or second strike.

If i did just some of that ( but mostly just ending pentagon corruption and military industrial complex theft) i could slash the Pentagon budget by 50% ( or more imo) while expanding it's manpower, available weapon systems and generally making it far more potent force.

Outside Europe and Japan, any politician who ran on a PEACE NOW ticket would be wiped out! Sorry about that.

The younger Bush did, so did Clinton and Reagan! People want PEACE NOW but all they got was no means of serious self defense which allowed the government the means to drive them into wars to 'prevent' the expansion of the supposed very nations that they were guaranteeing peace against. Fact is that the American people do want peace ( trough superior and more firepower) and they do not seem to mind too much paying for it.

It is a sad joke that all they got for the massive bill Is the current USN, USAF and US army. In my opinion your exceedingly lucky if you get what you pay for in this world.

So in closing ( to westpoint, westcoast and a few others) i have always tried to show that the American people got far less than what they believed they paid for and that they in fact could have gotten something truly awe inspiring that could have defeated the Vietnamese, the Koreans/Chinese despite the fact that American draftees didn't want to be there and that America as democratic nation had nothing to gain from being there.

Stellar

Who doesn't! I suppose that 5% that earns enough never to be concerned about medical costs or retirement but despite the massive propaganda effort the large majority of Americans want a national health care service.

You can easily maintain the current ten division army and instead invest in quick deployment capacity for both the USN and USA.

Why? If your going to cut the only USN how can the US defend it's legitimate trade activities?

. . not even this proponent of disarmament would call for carriers to go unless they are to be replaced with similar force projection capabilities. If one's trade routes are attacked it only makes sense to have the means to launch conventional strikes against enemy airfields or cruise missile batteries.

[Submarines are needed if] Not for coastal self defense but certainly to keep all the sea lanes open in case some major player in the world ( to say nothing of a coalition) decides to intervene your going to need what the USN has and possibly more.

The problem isn't that the USN or US armed forces have 'too much stuff' but that it's far too expensive for it's intended goals. Fifty odd attack subs in three Oceans means that you can at best hope to have half on station at any one time provided no [major loss] of land based infrastructure. That isn't a whole lot (half a dozen per ocean) and I wouldn't want to defend global economic empire with so little.

I would have had a national ABM defense system with tens of thousands of dual use Sam's and ABM's that could have defended every city with enough people to miss as well as a smaller but mobile land based ICBM force that can not be defeated by any type of first or second strike.

It is a sad joke that all they got for the massive [multi-trillion dollar Defense] bill Is the current USN, USAF and US Army. So in closing I have tried to show the American people got far less than what they believed they paid for . . could have [possibly] defeated the Vietnamese, the Koreans & Chinese despite the fact that American draftees didn't want to be there and that America as democratic nation had nothing to gain from being there.

Fact is that the American people do want peace (through superior and more [sophisticated] firepower) and they do not seem to mind too much paying for it. Stellar

Originally posted by donwhite
I’m reading Juan Williams book, “Enough: The Phony Leaders . . “ 2006, who said the top ONE PERCENT earn as much as the bottom 40%! He also said the top ONE PERCENT own property equal in value to the lower 90% of the population. With 14% capital gains tax, almost no estate tax and I heard a 5% tax on income earned outside the US, the rich no longer advocate for the FLAT TAX. They have it!

I know. Tax rates on the rich were significantly higher earlier , and for most, of the twentieth century and certainly the Reagan and Clinton era reforms made the rich richer at a pace not seen since ( as i remember) the age of tycoons in the mid nineteenth century. It is interesting then that while some reactionaries in the 'liberal' , but strangely corporate owned, msm claims that socialism for the poor is on the rise when the only thing that seems to get handed out is tax breaks for those who have more houses than they know what to do with.

I thought it was ten brigades and not divisions? Whatever Armed Forces we keep, they certainly need to be prepared for the kinds of conflict we are likely to be involved in. At that force level, I’d see the USMC about 50% the size of the Army, 5 brigades.

1st Armored Division, 1st Cavalry Division, 1st Infantry Division, 2nd Infantry Division,
3rd Infantry Division, 4th Infantry Division, 10th Mountain Division, 25th Infantry Division,
82nd Airborne Division, 101st Airborne Division.

Well there honestly isn't much you can do with a ten division if your going to keep the war conventional with the current limitations of the USAF. I agree that the USMC should be massively expanded if the US withdraws from all foreign bases. Obviously you need a specialized force that will create the bridgeheads from which any invasion force must fight.

And therein lies the crux of our current American empire. Long ago, perhaps by the War of 1812, we had hit on the notion of an economic domination of weaker nations and not a old style European empire form of control.

It was always the intent of the founding fathers to build a empire ( first continental obviously) worthy of their privileged station and the main problem of the time was the very strong empires that existed at the time. The US could barely defeat Britain while it was occupied in a continental war of epic proportions so that should give some idea of it's limitations.

Let me recite that Haiti has been invaded by the US more than 6 times, and we occupied Haiti from 1918 until 1933. Yet it remains the poorest country in the Hemisphere, or so we “boast.”

There are no surprises there for the few of us who had at some stage started reading books about empires now and then...

Let me remind that we overthrew the only land reform government ever in Guatemala (1954) and since that time, 200,000 Guatemalans have been killed by the Right Wing Army we put into place and still oversee. We had Salvador Allende in Chile killed to avoid nationalization of Anaconda’s copper mines. And everyone saw what happened to a CIA stooge when he gets off the ranch, Manuel Noriega. We called him a president before he went on his own now we call him a dictator.

Saddam Hussein is probably the best example of the lot given how his reign and overthrowing have now cost two million Iraqi lives. We should probably point out that by 'land reform' we mean that the people of that country were attempting to end modern feudalism in their country which then led to the direct involvement of the US national security state on behalf of the landed rich folk.

This is the problem in Iraq today. The Iraqis will not grant sweetheart concessions to ExxonMobil, TexacoChevron and ConcooPhillips. That is the price tag the US has put on our ending the occupation of their country. And for which ordinary folks have paid with 4,200 KIA. Thank you George Bush.

I will let Americans care about the 4200 killed in action ( and the few dozen thousand seriously wounded despite the best efforts of the occupation forces to hide in sprawling bases) and focus my concern for the million odd Iraqi's who's lives have been ended by this brutal conflict. Had the US forces patrolled the streets to preserve the peace ( as demanded of a occupation force under the Geneva conventions) it would have been more than 4200 killed but clearly 'hard' decisions are being made and Iraqi lives not counted.

What you have labeled our “. . legitimate trade activities” I want to see us abandon that White Man’s Burden concept and treat all God’s Chil’uns as our equals.

Don't we all. Fact is even the 'evil' US empire conducts legitimate trade that can and should be defended with or with attempts at empire. Being heavily armed and armored allows one the options to do ' the right thing' if that was ever part of the intent. Currently the US have no worthy defense against the primary threat of ICBM's/SLBM's and is thus in the classic imperial way 'forced' to invade entire countries to 'defend' itself. Obviously i believe this is why the US have no continental ABM defenses ( it's very cheap as compared to invasions) as it's government will then be largely robbed of it's 'excuses' to invade and butcher of false premises. At least these days the 'enemies' must be accused of having nuclear weapons where some decades ago you just invaded them based on the premise that 'communism' was 'expanding'.

Note: "The White Man's Burden" is a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published in the popular magazine McClure's in 1899, with the subtitle The United States and the Philippine Islands.
en.wikipedia.org...'s_burden

I think the USMC has a small fleet of troop carrying ships also fitted out with helicopter landing pads. There may also be some USMC ships capable of supporting a few Harrier jump-jets

As of today as I write this, we need some aid to Arizona which is being invaded by drug cartel gangs. We are going to have to begin to treat Mexico as a partner and not as a servile “protectorate” if we are ever going to stop this madness called the War on Drugs. That was started by President Nixon in case you have forgotten.

Originally posted by donwhite
The only “enemy” coming at us from the sea lanes is cocaine from Columbia. Despite a declaration of War on Drugs in 1969, and more than 1 million Americans imprisoned on drug or drug related crimes, it seems the price of illicit drugs gets cheaper and the product is more plentiful.

As for the “keeping” the sea lanes open, don’t forget it equally important to the SELLER as it is to the BUYER to keep the sea lanes free and safe. This sounds more like a job for the top 20 import/export countries to work on themselves. Maybe a UN Open Seas force supported by a TAX on the tonnage of goods shipped?

America cannot afford to be the world’s policeman no matter how much about ½ of our population likes the machismo effect!

Who doesn't! I suppose that 5% that earns enough never to be concerned about medical costs or retirement but despite the massive propaganda effort the large majority of Americans want a national health care service.

Why? If your going to cut the only USN how can the US defend it's legitimate trade activities? I mean sure no one wants those one thousand bases all over the world but not even this proponent of disarmament would call for carriers to go unless they are to be replaced with similar force projection capabilities. If one's trade routes are attacked it only makes sense to have the means to launch conventional strikes against enemy airfields or cruise missile batteries.

. . but to keep all the sea lanes open in case some major player in the world (to say nothing of a coalition) you’re going to need what the USN has and possibly more. The problem isn't that the USN have 'too much stuff' but that it's far too expensive for it's intended goals.

Fifty attack subs in 3 oceans mean that even in wartime deployment configurations you can at best hope to have half on station at any one time provided no destruction of land based infrastructure. That isn't a whole lot (a half dozen per ocean) and I wouldn't want to defend [a] global economic empire with so little.

The problem isn't that the USN or US armed forces have 'too much stuff' but that it's far too expensive for it's intended goals. Fifty odd attack subs in three Oceans means that even in wartime deployment configurations you can at best hope to have half on station at any one time provided no attrition or destruction of land based infrastructure. That isn't a whole lot (half a dozen per ocean) and I wouldn't want to defend global economic empire with so little.

I would turn the USAF into a intercontinental bomber defense force . . turn all offensive operations over to the carrier arm which may be expanded (more carriers) or serve as platforms for fighter aircraft that can fly in support of the USAF bombers or coastal defense.

I would most certainly not do anything that could remotely be interpreted as imperialist.

I would have had a national ABM defense system with tens of thousands of dual use Sam's and ABM's that could have defended every city with enough people to miss as well as a smaller but mobile land based ICBM force that can not be defeated by any type of first or second strike. Fact is that the American people do want peace (through superior firepower) and they do not seem to mind too much paying for it.

The American people . . could have gotten [weapons] truly awe inspiring that could have defeated the Vietnamese, the Koreans [and the] Chinese despite the fact that American draftees didn't want to be there and that America as democratic nation had nothing to gain from being there. Stellar