I was listening to a speech by Colin Powell a few nights ago and someone asked him what he thought the main threats were to America now and in the future and of course it was terrorism and he also brought the point up about the true lack of major country threats to the U.S. like it was in the Cold War and previous times. So I thought about it for awhile. America is now the only superpower in the world, we really have no major enemies that are countries. But yet we have such a large defense budget as if we still are fighting against the former soviet union. I believe in a strong defense, but when you think about it's getting out of hand. The only real true threat to America is terrorism. A force that isn't naturally defeated with tanks and normal military equipment you would use in a all out war. We have hundreds of bases all over the world, probabaly over stretched and under paid. The current country threats to the U.S. right now are Iran and N. Korea, both of which would probably end in a nuclear war, if it was going to come to that point, so normal military eqipment wouldn't do very much. India and Pakistan have cooled down, and then their are countries like Haiti who are having civil wars, but don't have much influence or impact on anyone but themselves. And of course there is always going to be Israel and the Palenstinians. But once again they don't pose a threat to American soil, but of course the Middle East is a very important region to balance out and cool down. So why is our military consistently being funded to the point where education, health care, homeland defense,our infrastructure and other needed government expenses that are vital to the survivival of Americans here at home are being dropped to sad levels. We now face a threat of terrorism here at home and abroad and the most important weapon to defeat terrorism is people. In the form of spies, CIA analysts, and of course homeland defense, and special forces when needed to defeat those enemies. I think we need to start rethinking how we plan to build our military and its way of attack for the 21st century. That doesn't mean we cut military spending to the point where we can do nothing, but there needs to be some analyzing of current global threats so we can better build a military that is faster, smaller, and more equipped for the threats that face us now. We are no longer in a world where we're being threatned by major countries and we could just destroy that threat with mass military might. Our only wars in the past decade or more have been against 2 third world countries-Afghanistan and Iraq, that obviously speaks volumes about what we're going against and what we actually need, compared to what we have to win a war. I just want to know what you all think about the military of the future and what should be done to reform it so it's more progressive towards terrorism and protecting us here at home and a broad and at the same time not being over funded?

Josh

You already posted this topic. Don't make repeat threads.