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[Zanzetkuken The Great]

massive expansion of military budget,

eh. from a defense standpoint, I'm not sure whether this is a valid point. it's not like he was pouring money down the drain: a shitload of reagan-era gear is still in use. plus, y'know, cold war.

We have far more hardware than we needed then, than we need now, than we can really use outside of just waging war on a vague nebulous concept like "drugs" or "terrorism" oh shi-

You know, I am fairly certain that the only reason our military has remained as large as it has is due to the World Trade Center attacks.  Someone who was older at the time may have a different opinion, but as far as I can see, the attacks essentially gave the US an enemy to focus on after the Soviet Union fell.  Hell, Bush might have turned out a decent president instead of the mess we got, as I've heard that he was more suited to being a domestic-focused, diplomatic president rather than a international-focused, militaristic president.

Granted, was a kid at the time, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

[Descan]

I'm not sure we can justify varying degrees of mistreatment of human beans just because it was relatively accepted for the time.

I think it's less "justify" and more "consider the person and their personality and ethics despite going along with societal views on slavery."

Like, you can be somewhat forgiven for holding views like that in the society, if you were otherwise a moral upstanding citizen. Only somewhat though; there were plenty of people who did not have slaves despite the opportunity to, and plenty of abolitionists at the time as well.

[redwallzyl]

I'm not sure we can justify varying degrees of mistreatment of human beans just because it was relatively accepted for the time.

Won't someone think the of the plight of the poor oppressed beans?

[EnigmaticHat]

That's cause literally every rich man at the time owned slaves.

Haven't we found that slavery wasn't as wide spread as we thought mostly because servants were... well... as good as slaves anyway?

That varies wildly by time and place.

In America from the nation's founding to the end of the civil war, no, slavery was widespread.  Many factors leading up to the civil war concentrated slave ownership into a small number of wealthy plantation owners, but even small time slavery never stopped.  A general rule over time is that slave ownership increases in number but goes down as a percentage of the population.  However this is because of foreign immigration into the north, not because of any reduction in southern slave ownership.  If we ignore all regions but the south, the amount of slaves was always high, but got completely ridiculous towards the end.  Most southern states had somewhere between a third to half of the population as slaves, with South Caroline and Mississippi taking the strange fruitcake with their majority slave populations.

[smjjames]

massive expansion of military budget,

eh. from a defense standpoint, I'm not sure whether this is a valid point. it's not like he was pouring money down the drain: a shitload of reagan-era gear is still in use. plus, y'know, cold war.

We have far more hardware than we needed then, than we need now, than we can really use outside of just waging war on a vague nebulous concept like "drugs" or "terrorism" oh shi-

You know, I am fairly certain that the only reason our military has remained as large as it has is due to the World Trade Center attacks.  Someone who was older at the time may have a different opinion, but as far as I can see, the attacks essentially gave the US an enemy to focus on after the Soviet Union fell.  Hell, Bush might have turned out a decent president instead of the mess we got, as I've heard that he was more suited to being a domestic-focused, diplomatic president rather than a international-focused, militaristic president.

Granted, was a kid at the time, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

Yea, I had also heard talk that he was expected or was thought of as being likely to be a domestic focused President as well, but then history intervened. Or maybe it was thought he'd be a domestic President like Clinton was or maybe it was because he had campaigned on domestic policy, I don't remember the specifics behind it.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Thats how it always goes isn't it? The President/Prime Minister/Premier focused on domestic issues, diplomacy, and etc. gets fucked over by a tragic historical event that demonizes him in the eyes of the world?

[Starver]

You know, I am fairly certain that the only reason our military has remained as large as it has is due to the World Trade Center attacks.  Someone who was older at the time may have a different opinion, but as far as I can see, the attacks essentially gave the US an enemy to focus on after the Soviet Union fell.  Hell, Bush might have turned out a decent president instead of the mess we got, as I've heard that he was more suited to being a domestic-focused, diplomatic president rather than a international-focused, militaristic president.

Granted, was a kid at the time, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

My impression (being older, but not necessarily so wise about the world, despite a decade or so of online communications with that (then) rare beast, the fellow Internet user) was indeed that Dubya was working towards introversion and staying out of World Geopolitics. That's with the possible exception of keeping in mind what to do about his Papa's legacy involvement in Iraq, but not so much more trying to deal with Yugoslavian fallout, keeping mostly out of the way in Israeli/Palestinian agreements, etc, unlike Clinton.

Not so sure that being allowed to do that (in a more genteel 'America First' way, maybe) would have resulted in running down the military, what with all the interesting new 'toys' coming onto the scene (better stealth, autonomy/remote control, etc, the same developments that soon inspired the 2005 film called 'Stealth', indicating where theory was already heading, if not practice), but it might have led to mothballing outpacing any other form of overseas deployment, just participating in NATO commitments, etc...  Letting the UN deal with regional issues of no direct concern to the US, etc.  Except maybe for some meddling in Iraq (short of an invasion, perhaps sponsoring a soft-coup and)

(And it would have been a different world. But hard to predict how.  And if 911 had never happened, to harden the world's civil security against a repeat of 911, I'm fairly sure that an instead-of-911 incident would have happened elsewhere/elsewhen, because the people with the basic ideas would have still been around, to pass them on in unofficial terrorist mindstorming sessions if not to use them themselves. The only way for it not to happen is if some other terror-meme came to play first.  But, anyway, I digress.)

I think Bush Jr could have been a happy-enough non-extreme right-of-(US-)centre leader. Maybe just the one term, maybe still the two. But that's just my impressions, a decade after and thousands of miles away. I certainly don't think he had the "we must lead the world" (in the supposed 'convention of sort-of-equals' that are the UN, NATO, G7/8/whatever, etc) mindset of one or other He Who Shall Not Be Named person, the choice of whom I shall leave up to you.

But, again, not my area of expertise, just an impression.

[PTTG??]

Uh, what does 9/11 have to do with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? That was orchestrated by a member of the Saudi royal family who would later hide in Pakistan and practically within sight of a major military base. Bush and Cheney would have happily attacked the middle east within a few years regardless; clearly 9/11 was a useful propaganda victory for him (since people still believe it was somehow related to his wars....), but it had no practical effect on which war he would declare.

[Max™]

massive expansion of military budget,

eh. from a defense standpoint, I'm not sure whether this is a valid point. it's not like he was pouring money down the drain: a shitload of reagan-era gear is still in use. plus, y'know, cold war.

We have far more hardware than we needed then, than we need now, than we can really use outside of just waging war on a vague nebulous concept like "drugs" or "terrorism" oh shi-

You know, I am fairly certain that the only reason our military has remained as large as it has is due to the World Trade Center attacks.  Someone who was older at the time may have a different opinion, but as far as I can see, the attacks essentially gave the US an enemy to focus on after the Soviet Union fell.  Hell, Bush might have turned out a decent president instead of the mess we got, as I've heard that he was more suited to being a domestic-focused, diplomatic president rather than a international-focused, militaristic president.

Granted, was a kid at the time, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

It was literally my 21st birthday, the military was still huge during the first Bush and Clinton years.

Not sure how many of you remember this pretty little thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YF-22 and it's somewhat less conventional cousin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23 but I had the die-cast toys of those as a kid. I grew up with the only thing that I actually shared with my dad--besides some dna--being a fascination with jets and such.

As a result I learned a lot about military appropriation schedules, the newer hardware in place today was being planned back in the Reagan/Bush Sr. years, the build-up from the end of the Cold War is still technically in place. The F-22 was meant to counter the SU-27 and MiG-29, both of which have -35 versions in service today, and entered service in the mid-80's when both were rather uncomfortably capable new counters to the F-15 and F-16.

Bush v Gore was the first election I could have voted in... I think I was still pretty much feral at that point (had a stretch where I kinda stopped caring about anything related to being a person and call them my feral years, running through the woods barefoot and snarling at people being actual things I did at the time) but even if I hadn't been, let's just say I didn't exactly find it the most exciting prospect choosing between the kid of the man Ann Richards teased for "being born with a silver foot in his mouth" and mr. "co2 is the debil and I invented the internet" lended a disappointing quality when faced with the idea of Kerry beating anyone, much less a wartime president coming off of a unifying event like 9/11, cause, well, hah!

Where was I going... oh yeah, the military size, as I said, Bush inherited a massive military which was still in the process of actually getting hardware rolled out before 9/11 happened, so here you have Bush holding a massive hammer and everybody else trying really hard to not resemble nails until the WTC was hit.

Years later we ended up tracking down the guy behind it and using a small squad with a few helicopters to take him out, and we've seen how little use all the gee-whiz hardware is when trying to root out the various enemies we've been facing--and making--around the world, especially compared to the rather foolhardy implication of said hardware being useful if we were to commit one of the great classical errors: engage in a land war in Asia.

[Lord Shonus]

massive expansion of military budget,

eh. from a defense standpoint, I'm not sure whether this is a valid point. it's not like he was pouring money down the drain: a shitload of reagan-era gear is still in use. plus, y'know, cold war.

We have far more hardware than we needed then, than we need now, than we can really use outside of just waging war on a vague nebulous concept like "drugs" or "terrorism" oh shi-

You know, I am fairly certain that the only reason our military has remained as large as it has is due to the World Trade Center attacks.  Someone who was older at the time may have a different opinion, but as far as I can see, the attacks essentially gave the US an enemy to focus on after the Soviet Union fell.  Hell, Bush might have turned out a decent president instead of the mess we got, as I've heard that he was more suited to being a domestic-focused, diplomatic president rather than a international-focused, militaristic president.

Granted, was a kid at the time, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

No. The US military is very large because of the massive number of defensive treaties the US is part of. With current budgetary and force levels, if more than one of those treaties were invoked they would stretch available forces to the breaking point even if so much money hadn't been poured into Operation Bomb Useless Dirt. If those treaties could be obsoleted by resolving the root conflicts, or by the treaty partners gaining enough strength that US protection is unnecessary then drawdowns could take place.

As things sit however, the US military is huge, but the missions for the US military are huger.

[smjjames]

I was 17 then (having been born in an odd numbered year), so, I wasn't quite old enough to vote then. Would have voted Gore if I could, don't remember the reasons at the time though. And in 2004 , I voted Bush because I thought (perhaps naively) that since we were in the middle of a war, it wouldn't be a good idea to change Presidents in the middle of one (or something along the lines of that) and used FDR as precedent.

Of course though, the Presidency changed hands during the Vietnam War, which kind of demolishes that precedent.

[Max™]

I can understand Gore over Bush, but that would involve choosing Gore still so it's like... can we get a do-over?

[Lord Shonus]

Of course though, the Presidency changed hands during the Vietnam War, which kind of demolishes that precedent.

Considering that Vietnam was probably the most bungled foreign policy situation in American history, it reinforces the idea.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Can we count pre-revolutionary America or the Civil War as foreign policy situations? Both of those stack up to Vietnam.

[smjjames]

Of course though, the Presidency changed hands during the Vietnam War, which kind of demolishes that precedent.

Considering that Vietnam was probably the most bungled foreign policy situation in American history, it reinforces the idea.

The whole Iraq-Afghanistan business and the effects that flung off of it are competing with the Vietnam War for that prize. It's also not entirely clear whether things would have been better with Kerry.

Can we count pre-revolutionary America or the Civil War as foreign policy situations? Both of those stack up to Vietnam.

I don't see how the Civil War would count as a 'foreign policy situation'.