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War in Israel

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Random8145

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Swanee

Cereal Killer
pilot
None
Contributor
I thought the A-10 was obsolete and being retired… weird! ;)


It's a good airplane for what it does and in the current fight when you need more than what an MQ-9 can bring, it's pretty freaking great- we love working with those guys- but only so much as we can defend it from the SA threat (kinda like the MQ-9), and can afford to keep it flying.
 

Spekkio

He bowls overhand.
Let's look at it in another way... with the benefit of hindsight, would what we found have been a sufficient basis to conduct the war in the way we did it. I hope your answer would be an unequivocal no.
The bottom line is this: SECDEF Rumsfeld thought we should pursue regime change in Iraq, and President Bush 43 deferred most of his decisions to his cabinet.

I think that SECDEF Rumsfeld had the information you are talking about and disregarded it, and Bush was too trusting of his cabinet. This war wouldn't have occurred under the Obama administration because he was significantly more intrusive, and it wouldn't have occurred under a Trump administration because... well, he's Trump.
 

BattlingTrain

SNA Pro-Rec Y
Biden about to ask for $100 billion more in foreign hand outs. That's enough to increase the salary of every teacher in America by $100,000 each year for 3.5 years. Or double their salaries for nearly 7 years, and actually put a premium on educators, pull people out of poverty, and make that money back in the long term.

This was such a claim I had to do some research and you're actually on to something. There are roughly 3.2 million public school teachers in the US, so this would give each of them a $30,000 annual raise. Or imagine giving teachers a smaller raise but increasing the amount of teachers and general school funding
 

Brett327

Well-Known Member
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Super Moderator
Contributor
This was such a claim I had to do some research and you're actually on to something. There are roughly 3.2 million public school teachers in the US, so this would give each of them a $30,000 annual raise. Or imagine giving teachers a smaller raise but increasing the amount of teachers and general school funding
The federal government doesn’t pay schoolteachers salary.
 

JTS11

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
What do Yemen, Iran, and Hamas all have in common?

Our leaders keep sending them our money nearly every year.

Biden about to ask for $100 billion more in foreign hand outs. That's enough to increase the salary of every teacher in America by $100,000 each year for 3.5 years. Or double their salaries for nearly 7 years, and actually put a premium on educators, pull people out of poverty, and make that money back in the long term.

But hey, I'm sure financing a foreverwar between Israel and Arabs and securing European defense so our wealthy friends there don't have to is a better way to spend it.
The horseshoe theory is real. I couldn't distinguish if this post was made by Marjorie Taylor Greene or Bernie Sanders.

Shit, let's take that $100 billion (not sure why teachers need or deserve a $100,000 raise), and think of wilder things.

That $100 billion probably has a greater ROI for our national security than giving a federal subsidy of $100k to teachers, but I'm sure you disagree.
 

Randy Daytona

Cold War Relic
pilot
Super Moderator
These kinds of “if only we didn’t spend so much on X, we could do Y” statements are, with few exceptions, silly.
President Eisenhower’s “Cross of Iron” speech of 1953?

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The costof one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
 

Mirage

Well-Known Member
pilot
The federal government doesn’t pay schoolteachers salary.
The federal govt gives money to states for education with strings attached. They easily could, indirectly, supplement teachers salaries. Your claim is like my wife saying her earnings are for fun stuff and my earnings are for the bills.

That $100 billion probably has a greater ROI for our national security than giving a federal subsidy of $100k to teachers, but I'm sure you disagree.
Let's break it down and see!

$100B for foreign aid:
- we know much is wasted on local corruption or used for other than intended purposes
- efficacy is hard to predict
- necessity is hard to predict
- often ends up being used against us eventually (aid to Taliban against Soviets, Vietnam, Afghanistan again more recently, Iraqi aid to ISIS, Russia capturing our weapons in Ukraine, etc.)
- reinforces us as enemies to Palestinians/Arabs/Russians, potentially increasing risk of terrorism in US

$100B to teachers:
- 25%+ returned to taxpayer immediately via taxation of that income
- almost all of it returned to economy eventually as teachers spend
- better teachers means better education, decreasing poverty, crime, wage gaps, etc., while increasing average earnings, innovation, chances of finding the next Musk type game changer
- rewards teachers for their very difficult and important job
- creates smarter, better informed, and more responsible electorate and citizens.

Since when is investing in our children and our future some extremist idea, as you imply? What a shame people think like that.
 

Mirage

Well-Known Member
pilot
These kinds of “if only we didn’t spend so much on X, we could do Y” statements are, with few exceptions, silly.
Why is that? Because we can just spend on both X and Y? That seems to be the popular opinion in DC, and look where that's getting us.

It's a mathematical fact. If you have $100, and both X and Y cost $100, you have to either choose, or take on debt and defer the decision until later, with interest.
 

Brett327

Well-Known Member
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
The federal govt gives money to states for education with strings attached. They easily could, indirectly, supplement teachers salaries. Your claim is like my wife saying her earnings are for fun stuff and my earnings are for the bills.
Not really the point. It’s not as though spending less on X makes spending on Y more attractive to those making resourcing decisions in the government. I always love it when the isolationist republicans cite domestic social problems like poverty, homeless veterans, etc as a reason to stop foreign aid, when they’re also the party that wants to eliminate welfare and the social safety net.
 

JTS11

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
Why is that? Because we can just spend on both X and Y? That seems to be the popular opinion in DC, and look where that's getting us.

It's a mathematical fact. If you have $100, and both X and Y cost $100, you have to either choose, or take on debt and defer the decision until later, with interest.
I don't necessarily disagree with your statements here, but until there is a bipartisan effort to tweak Social Security/Medicare (Trump has made the effort less popular on the right. Paul Ryan tried...) then the deficit/debt situation doesn't get solved.

However, to suggest we're writing free checks for these foreign mil aid proposals is disingenuous. A majority of it is existing stocks that will be replenished by American workers.
 

Flash

SEVAL/ECMO
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Let's break it down and see!

$100B for foreign aid:

Yes, let's do just that.

- we know much is wasted on local corruption or used for other than intended purposes

We do have controls for that, and in the case of Ukraine most of it is for military material that can't really be 'corrupted' and for which we have pretty decent accountability.

- efficacy is hard to predict

It sure is but in the case of Ukraine we are definitely getting a big 'return' on our 'investment' so far in 1- Helping defend Ukraine and 2- Diminishing the threat to us and our allies from Russia.

- necessity is hard to predict

I think in Ukraine's case the necessity is pretty evident.

- often ends up being used against us eventually (aid to Taliban against Soviets, Vietnam, Afghanistan again more recently, Iraqi aid to ISIS, Russia capturing our weapons in Ukraine, etc.)

Often? Certainly a few examples there but the VAST majority of our aid has not been used against us and in many of those cases the amount of the arms we supplied that were captured and subsequently used by our enemies was limited.

- reinforces us as enemies to Palestinians/Arabs/Russians, potentially increasing risk of terrorism in US

The infamous 'blowback'. While there are decent arguments for it I think it is far overblown and in a lot of these cases folks won't like us no matter what we do. Playing nice with Putin isn't going to change his behavior, he is just an asshole. Same with many of our other enemies, they dont' like us becaue we are the biggest kid on the block and none of what we do or say is going to change what they think or do. North Korea is another good example, play nice and....nothing changes.

Have we made plenty of mistakes and paid for our failures? Certainly, but we ain't the source of most of the world's problems as most have often been and continue to be home grown.
 
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