Should our Armed forces move towards a more humanitarian role?

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I think this would be a great idea because right now we are spending anywhere from 300 billion to 685 billion dollars a year on our oversea bases( this is a high estimate considering that I mainly looked at the total defense budget). Many of these bases have various purposes, and more then a few are for non-combat purposes. Many of these bases are used to help corporations to continue their trade of non-renewable resources, and to maintain a steady investment without interference. Thus these military bases are often used as a means to protect the capitalist motive of profit, and provide security for international trade.

I think these bases should instead focus on more humanitarian roles instead of providing support for all of these multinational corporations. After all shouldn't the value of peace be considered more important than profit?

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No, 'our' Armed Forces should be disbanded.

how would that effect the labor market?

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No.  We should withdraw our troops from the more than 130 countries they are stationed in, cut the military budget, and use our armed forces for actual defense.

obviously you have never played command and conquer generals......

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No.  We should withdraw our troops from the more than 130 countries they are stationed in, cut the military budget, and use our armed forces for actual defense.

Well can we leave some troops in those countries for defense, or logistical reasons...like needing to get somehwere fast for our defense.

Your solution seems a bit too draconian.

Well, that would make sense.  It's pretty unnecessary to have troops stationed in Europe though.

jets and aircraft carriers need to be refueled. its common sense and it cuts down on costs.

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We could cut deals with our friends in NATO that operate bases in Europe for refueling, it's not like they don't know how to refuel American aircraft over there.  Refueling isn't the issue as we can and do, do that from the air.  Keeping F15s/F16s and divisions of Marines closer to where we may need them is the big benefit.

(aircraft carriers don't need to be refueled being nuclear powered and all.  The jets do of course, but they do it from other ships in the fleet.  An aircraft carrier fleet doesn't need to "port" for years at a time, by design.  They do, obviously, but they don't need to.)

how much of our fleet is nuclear powered, and secondly they still stop off in order resupply.

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Soldiers are primarily trained to kill and after boot camp they are routinely ordered to simulate war games, and military exercises. In fact even the National Guard ( i think) will sometimes participate in these simulations, and will learn how to deal with various situations. For example one to seven soldiers may be asked to go out into a wooded area and simulate guerilla tactics against an entire company. From what I know a good strategy for the guerilla's is to dump off ammunition, and supplies in particular spots that they can run back and forth to. By doing this they can set up particular ambush, and harassment positions that will keep the entire company occupied for the duration of the exercise. what we have here is an almost vietnam like simulation where our army in this instance is learning how to deal with small groups of resistance that would normally be encountered in countries such as pakistan. Thus the exercise would only provide useful in countries that we are tying occupy, or conduct major military operations for an extended period of time.

In short such Military operations routinely raise the question "why are we training our soldiers to involve themselves in conflicts that are unpopular, or may not require an immediate military solution?".

Finally the military exercise mentioned above is an example of what situations we are training our soldiers for, but as I pointed out the exercise would only apply in various situations where we may not be needed. For example perhaps a strong presence is needed in Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan, but not the rest of the world. Thus we are training everyone in the military to deploy in such situations, but not everyone in the military is going to be deployed in this region. we have over 1,390,000 active members in the military,but only 100,000 of them are in afghanistan, and finally we all know about the Iraq war winding down. In short their is a large part of the military that may never be deployed in situations that are similar to the military exercise mentioned in the first paragraph. Thus such military exercises should become more limited, and replaced with something that involves peacekeeping. After all maybe the military can train with the peace core from time to time as a combined arms operations?

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They sign up to defend at all costs. Humanitarian roles aren't for the military necessarily.

The roll of our institutions should change over time in order to meet the needs of society.

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They sign up to defend at all costs. Humanitarian roles aren't for the military necessarily.

The roll of our institutions should change over time in order to meet the needs of society.

The needs of society are to stop wasting so much money on the military.

Go DIAF

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They sign up to defend at all costs. Humanitarian roles aren't for the military necessarily.

The roll of our institutions should change over time in order to meet the needs of society.

Like the need to stop terrorism?

Yes, our military should be built to stop terrorism as well as expand their role for peace keeping and humanitarian missions.

[Free Trade is managed by the invisible hand.]

They sign up to defend at all costs. Humanitarian roles aren't for the military necessarily.

The roll of our institutions should change over time in order to meet the needs of society.

Like the need to stop terrorism?

Yes, our military should be built to stop terrorism as well as expand their role for peace keeping and humanitarian missions.

The peace corps does that now.

Does the Peace corps have the same engineering capabilities that our armed forces have?