Vaguely baffled

[james_davis_nicoll]

Pharyngula disagrees with spending priorities in the US.

1: Excessive education causes undesirable frequency of class ascension by the lower classes, who will then want stuff like voting rights and not being treated like property. Why should people already at the top want this?

2: Outspending everyone else combined militarily is peacock feathers for great powers.

3: While it seems likely much of official policy in intended to provide enough dead bodies to prevent the universe from collapsing every 52 years, not everything the US does is disliked by the people on the receiving end:

"Thank You USA - Armend Miftari MENDI (Official Video)" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

I think PZ and I agree on this one, we need to STOP being the world's police. Costs too much and the PR fallout is terrible.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

This is "police" in the American sense, yes? Beating people up who don't know the correct procedure to take when confronted by a police officer who has unexpectedly taken an interest in you? I think I can agree with that; that's a world role no-one requires.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

The problem isn't the US being a the world's police; it's our last two presidents' choices of what requires police action.

Helping countries that are being invaded by neighbors - an absolute must.

Stopping genocide - go Team USA!

Getting involved with purely internal conflicts in countries that, though run by not-so-nice dictators, don't actively involve mass murder - not such a hot idea.

If the US cuts military spending and stops getting involved with the first two situations, it'll create doubts in Japan, South Korea and our NATO allies about our willingness to support them. And that's the problem with PZ's graph -- Japan and Poland might have a tiny defense budget, but they can only get away with it because they're sure the US has their back. If the US cut military spending to the level of China, you'd see a lot of other countries increase theirs.

[seawasp]

Maybe, but we could cut it in HALF and still be outspending the top four, near as I can read that graph.

[gohover.livejournal.com]

It costs more to maintain the ability to project force around the world then it does to stay near your own borders (see Obama's comment about Russia as a regional power.) And in the Libya intervention, European countries were running out of supplies even though they were operating very close to home.

Edit: Oh, and it also costs more if you want to limit civilian casualties. I guess a mild example of that is the cost of a smart bomb vs a dumb one. A more extreme example is that Israel only barely has the capacity to fly directly to Iran, degrade its nuclear program with pinpoint strikes, and then return home, while it would be a lot cheaper to use ballistic missiles. Caveat: I'm just guessing - I generally don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to the military.

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

"America is the world's policeman" is not a view that is commonly held outside the US. "America is the world's Mafia enforcer" is.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

I pretty much only ever hear that line put forth by people in the US, and then generally by people who are firmly convinced the US is doing something around one hundred percent of anything resembling peacekeeping, development aid, military interventions, etc. abroad.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

Our security apparatus is out of control. Anyone who thinks the average American approves of this isn't paying attention, our country has always been one where rich white jerks come first, everyone else second (or less).

[david wilford (from livejournal.com)]

Myers' point about underfunding higher education is valid, especially given the huge increase in tuition and fees at public universities since 2000. Blaming it on Afghanistan, eh, not so much, because it fails to ask the question of what happens if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan. Is the return of anarchy or the Taliban a real possibility or not, and should we consider that to matter not only to us but to the Afghans and their neighbors? I'd rather hike income tax rates and restore the public university support that were the norm after WWII.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I don't believe that PZ is blaming the shortfall directly on involvement in Afghanistan (although it can't be helping). It's a point of comparison: plenty of money for bullets and bombs, not a penny more for pencils, books and teachers. You know, things that are fairly directly productive.

[david wilford (from livejournal.com)]

A disclaimer: my own POV on this subject is influenced by the fact that my brother-in-law is currently working (for almost two years now) in Kabul helping to create a technical school program there. I think that's productive, but it wouldn't be possible to do it without the military support, obviously.

Here's a little about him and his work:

http://www2.education.uiowa.edu/archives/edatiowa/fall08/features/story6.htm

[nelc.livejournal.com]

No offence meant to your BiL; my cousin was in the UK diplomatic corps out there for a while. It's dealing with the consequences of bad decisions made early on at the high political level that have exacerbated today's problems, I believe. (Disclaimer: I do not talk with my cousin about his work over there, much less his political opinions about it. These opinions are my own, right, wrong or mu.)

[david wilford (from livejournal.com)]

I'd much rather not be making the best of a bad situation in Afghanistan myself, but there it is.

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, PZ's son is in the military. I don't think he's deployed yet, though.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

I would like to see more funding of technical education. You know, get workers educations that let them do high-wage manufacturing work, rather than the kinds of jobs that will be automated or flow to low-wage countries.

[gohover.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry it is Kosovo that has become the poster child for liberal military intervention, and not Bosnia. Stopping the genocide in Kosovo was a very good deed which I completely support, but it wasn't a perfect intervention, due the roughly 500 civilian casualties in Serbia. NATO's intervention in Bosnia *was* just about perfect, other than coming years too late: Once Operation Deliberate Force commenced, there were zero NATO casualties, almost no enemy casualties (it was somewhere around 24), zero civilian casualties (please correct me if I'm wrong about that), and within a month, a horrible war ended, and atrocities like the Srebrenica massacre came to an end.

Serbia and Kosovo

[(Anonymous)]

The problem is, the two sides took different lessons from Bosnia. The US and NATO took the lesson, "Hey! This is easy -- and if we had done it sooner, we could have saved thousands of lives. Next time, let's not wait so long!" The Serbs took the lesson, "Crap, that was really humiliating. Next time, we hang tough."

That said, I agree with you -- Bosnia is the Jan Brady of US peacekeeping interventions.


Doug M.

Re: Serbia and Kosovo

[gohover.livejournal.com]

But fortunately for everyone, even the hardliners weren't completely stupid: Serbia didn't turn into a long running insurgency, and the political upheaval after the fighting ended means that Serbia will eventually be a peaceful and wealthy member of the EU.

Rather than saying "The US can't be the world's policeman", I think we should be trying to figure out how to identify more situations like Bosnia and Kosovo.

Re: Serbia and Kosovo

[dewline.livejournal.com]

No doubt in my mind that Mr. Putin considers such an outcome for Serbia as Highly Undesirable if not Outright Horrific.

Re: Serbia and Kosovo

[gohover.livejournal.com]

Well, it isn't as though relations between the two countries haven't been strained before. A quote from a letter from Tito to Stalin:

"Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle (...) If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Broz_Tito

Re: Serbia and Kosovo

[dewline.livejournal.com]

An entertaining quotation, that.

Who's the current Chief Executive in Serbia?

[seawasp]

My god, that's one of the most awesome real-life quotes EVER.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

I live in an area that's been a boon for US military -- service is one of the rather few ways for young people to get the hell out of the area and into some actual job opportunities. Except that the quality of education is low enough that potential recruits are failing to meet even the entry-level requirements.

How's that for meeting the challenges of the current national security environment?