Israel sells and donates weapons as we speak. It dosn't need any help. Their industrial capacity allows them to produce more weaponry than they use in Gaza.
It dosn’t need any help. Their industrial capacity allows them to produce more
Arguably one of the reasons Israel gets so much aid is because it ensures that the Israeli defense industry can't compete, functions as a subsidy for the US defense industry (and the millions employed by it), and serves US strategic interests. Relevant article:
Similar story in Europe, despite Trump's complaints. As Ukraine illustrates, Europe currently lacks the industrial base to support Ukraine on its own, arguably also due to an over-reliance on the US and its defense industry. Luckily Trump, and more recently republicans blocking Ukraine aid, are likely to accelerate a pivot away from the US and towards increasing self-reliance.
The fediverse is often very left wing, but I get the idea that this is a huge blind spot for a lot of people here. US foreign policy starts to make far more sense, when you realise the US defense industry is sizeable, employs a lot of people, and the US administration defends that industry accordingly.
Certainly makes far more sense than this idea that the US is somehow beholden to a tiny little country like Israel, chooses to give it billions in military aid because pro-Israeli pressure groups are somehow incredibly powerful, or that politicians support Israel out of idealism, while almost entirely ignoring the fact that a lot of them are backed or lobbied by the defense industry. Certainly no one goes around complaining about the pro-Taiwan lobby, when discussing US military aid to Taiwan.
This, this right here. The military-industrial complex is the reason we are so fast to invade countries in the Middle East but slow to withdraw. Eisenhower warned us about it, but we have not heeded those warnings in the modern era.
Yeah, war is a gigantic waste of human effort and resources. I'm not sure going to mars should be our next goal either, maybe we could decarbonize our power grids or start reversing desertification first.
Those are much larger and complex ideas though, this meme is just about changing the delivery address on the stuff that's already being shipped.
I mention the space industry because there's a lot of overlap between that and the defense industrial complex in engineering terms. NRO had a couple hubble-sized telescopes laying around they built and didn't use. USAF has their own space shuttle. They're currently planning to update all of our ICBMs. They could move other payloads to orbit. We don't even need ICBMs, with submarine-launched missiles, even the new ones will be obsolete bulls-eyes for nukes in the midwest.
The society that unilaterally decides it's not interested in war gets conquered by the ones that don't follow along. It's an unfortunate reality, but history is full of civilizations that were largely peaceful and reaped the rewards that come with it, and were predated by other civilizations who kept the hard edge.
Si vis pacem, para bellum (If you want peace, prepare for war)
If you aren't ready for war, you get conquered by a war monger. If you want to be at peace, you must be ready for war against those who want to conquer.
Anthony Blinken said "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu.". The US sure lives by the law of the jungle in international relations. Although this has been the case for centuries, this style of foreign policy really got going with WWII. Our country's war materiel production was behind what was necessary at the time to participate in a 2-front global war. Soldiers were training with cardboard weapons, but because we hadn't outsourced our production offshore, we created an economy based on war that was so lucrative for business that that economy has lasted to this day. Such is it that a war economy itself can conquer a nation. Eisenhower warned about this in his farewell address.
There's protecting a country from invasion, and then there's basing a country's whole economy on a continuation of arms sales. The latter provides a perverse incentive to destabilize regions in order to maintain demand for the American arms industry. In the case of defense of the US against invasion, are you honestly suggesting that the country with the highest private gun ownership rate in the world has that to fear in any scenario? Even if we did need a military at all, one that could appropriately be called a department of "defense" would be a tenth of its current size.
A single F35-L2 could completely dominate the nearest 300 kilometers of airspace uncontested. The best trained Ukrainian pilot would take, at the shortest, half a decade of practical training and years on multi-million dollar simulators to fly one. Not enough time to retake Ukraine from the pieces of Russian shit military. Meanwhile Israel have been training on F35s for the past 20 years.
There's another poster here who is hinting that Russia are the good guys, and I wouldn't be surprised if this person were hinting at that also rather than trying to say Palestinians are evil.
I wholeheartedly disagree with that sentiment, but it's what some of the people in this thread are saying.
Maybe, just maybe, it's not a coincidence that we're supporting Israel, but that we actually might be the bad guys other places as well? Just a thought, since your post is titled after the slogan of genocidal nazis and our role in the lead up to the Russian invasion https://youtu.be/LL4eNy4FCs8
Who is justifying it? To be clear, I'm a pacifist and against all wars. I too believe in the self sovereignty of people. One can be against the Russian invasion, and for the peace treaty that was about to be signed spring 2022 before Boris Johnson came and put a stop to it. Diplomacy over bombs I say, but our leaders see it as economical to fund a war against Russia, so that Ukrainians can fight it instead of our guys. I think that's inhumane and unwise.