[jessaustin]

...Russia...China...

Wow their military must be much smarter than ours. Or perhaps they are held responsible for their performance?

...US budget is bloated because of these corrupt fat cat defense industry companies, huge waste, etc...

So... does all of this argue for more or less civilian oversight?

[throw_this_one]

Lol who holds them responsible? Not civilians, I can assure you.

They’re just more nimble because they’re top-down leadership. Not as good at expressing the people’s will, but more nimble at implementing autocratic decisions.

[jessaustin]

Wait, "expressing the people’s will"? Who in this conversation does anything like that? Certainly not USA. We didn't vote for spending three-quarters-billion-dollars-a-year on a military that hasn't accomplished anything in over five decades. Neither did we vote to spend the untold hundreds of billions we spend "in the black budget" on the even less effective unsupervised services. The last four presidents have run for office promising less militarism, but not a single one has delivered on that promise. "People's will", what a joke.

[jessaustin]

  s/three-quarters-billion-dollars-a-year/three-quarters-trillion-dollars-a-year/

Why is that so hard to type?