Reddit reviews How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon

If you genuinely care read How war became everything

Seizing resources in other countries and creating coups in Venezuela, Ukraine, Haiti, and the leftover dictators we continue to support, or are complicit to, that still destabilize countries- that's imperialism. It's not just taking land. I think the last proper land seizing was committed by Israel in the 50s. Although India's trying for the new record right now.

The idea that we need even a 5th of our military budget to continue to scare the world is insane. We already have military bases in nearly every country as well as many aircraft carriers parading around every body of water you can think of (and of course they're all named after warmongers). We've been spending the excess on shitty built jets that are embarrassingly falling apart. I was listening to Evil Friends by Portugal. The Man recently and they have this great line on "Waves"

>When you don't bring them home and the war hasn't ended
>There's still money there and that money needs spending

That's what happens with a $600+ billion dollar military budget. You have Bush and Obama, driven by American Exceptionalism and the Military-industrial complex, create the most lucrative war: a never ending war. And when the US sells their guns to Saudia Arabia fully aware that they're filtering into the hands of literally Al-queda to further the 21st century's greatest humanitarian crisis (Yemen that is. Iraq and Afghanistan are close behind), provocations in Iran, JSOC assassin squads operating with freedom, free drone bombings in countries like Syria where we don't even have the pretext or any legitimately recognized reason to be in, and none of that money and energy is going towards actual impassioned reconstructing of these countries we've torn apart, tell me why we need a budget that big that does nothing but encourage modern imperialism. Modern imperialism being drones, aircraft carriers, illegitimate arms trades, illegitimate boots on the ground, any attempt to invade or illegally walk into another country with the intention of protecting or furthering U.S. interests.

Great book on Afghanistan reconstruction- and how absolutely fucking pathetic and mismanaged it was despite the billions poured into it

So please, spare me the bullshit that America needs it's inhumane, destructive, not doing one damn good thing this century to a foreign country, enormous military. Hell, we haven't even constitutionally declared a war since World War II. It's been 80 years since we've gone through the proper channels that allow us to legally and morally bring American military onto foreign soil/ foreign airspace. We just do as we please, tearing countries apart, pretending we're the victims when Mossadegh's coup and installing the Shah is why Iran hates us, the Gulf War and our attempts to make "Afghanistan into Russia's Vietnam" created the Taliban, we had all the knowledge to stop 9/11, our invasion in Iraq under ludicrously false pretenses is akin to invading Canada because there was a threat in Mexico, we never gave one damn about the millions of lives ruined while American media banged the drums of war and we never took any reconstruction effort seriously. Now we just drone people from the sky? Do you know about the civilian causalities? But of course, "that's the cost of safety". America doesn't deserve it's omnipotent foreign presence. It doesn't deserve a trillion dollars military force. And if you want to say it does, than at least America has to man the fuck up and say Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, UAE; Panama, Nicaragua, Brazil, Chile, the Philippines and more was partially or entirely their fault.