This is such an interesting thing to discuss. Of course I agree with you, guns, war planes, missiles are obscene, every dollar spent on weapons when people are dying from dirty water is revolting, our armies seem to be deployed primarily to expand and protect empire. But while as a twenty year old I was firmly anti-military, got arrested at anti war protests, personally I began to look at the military differently after the Australian army's deployment to East Timor, in Bougainvile after the ceasefire, and the federal police deployment to the Solomons after the civil war - I believe these deployments protected civilians from real danger. Perhaps as I have come to understand my own limitations, I am less bold in my imagination as to how long it will take us as a species to transcend selfishness and violence. For the foreseeable future violence and war will be part of the human experience, this doesn't justify its glorification, it doesn't justify empire or drone strikes on weddings, but this realisation has utterly dismantled my previously held belief that abstaining from all preparation and participation in violence and war is the responsible, progressive position I thought it was. The abysmal quality of political debate doesn't require us to reduce the sophistication of our own thinking to simplistic characterisations, we're capable of understanding that state sanctioned violence at the police or military level is supported by both good and bad faith agendas, and perhaps only at the extremes it is possible to tell which is which.

I don't think it's a black and white thing. It's entirely possible to support Australia's peacekeeping deployments to Timor Leste and their humanitarian deployments after natural disasters while being opposed to their deployment to them murdering unarmed Afghan civilians.

I can't comment on other militaries, but the ADF does a lot of good, alongside the bad. They do a lot of critical work in the Asia-Pacific region, both peacekeeping and disaster recovery. At the end of the day, they're subject to the whims of whoever happens to be running the country at the time.

To quote the gun-loving Right, sometimes the only person can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The better solution is to prevent there from being bad guys with guns, but this isn't always possible.

> instead of building gigantic inhumane "defences" to kill our enemies.

In all seriousness:

A radar chain doesn't kill anyone.

I also understand why people are against the military but we need to see the context of all this:

1. The world had just suffered another large war because a large number of countries hadn't been able to defend themselves:

If Poland had been able to stop Hitler or if they'd been able to convince others to stop him the second world war hadn't started at that point.

2. After the second world war USSR quickly took over most of easter Europe. And unlike USA who hasn't always been to nice either the USSR didn't leave until early 90ies.

Having a plausible defense is important when you stand against a Hitler or a Stalin.

Eisenhower (Supreme Allied Commander Europe the President - hell of a CV) has a famous speech known as the “Change for Peace” speech in which he expresses those sentiments exactly.

> 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 cost of 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 50 miles of concrete highway.

Sure, and if you don't do that then you'll be forced to build that bomb instead of having a choice. You have to be able to defend yourself. If you can't then somebody that's worse than you is going to come along and make you do their bidding.

But this isn't about bombs..! This is you trying to twist a discussion about an early warning system into a discussion about offensive weapons!

I am most thankful for all the bombs that were dropped on the territory of my country during the Nazi occupation, and I am thoroughly sad the USA didn't drop any during the Soviet occupation - the effects of that 40 years are prominent even today, maybe more so than in the 90's; the old communist elite had 30 years to rebuild their wealth and influence and they're trying very hard to get back in power, this time as "centrists".

> Perhaps, once we get to Mars, we'll finally have a planet at total peace.

And two planets at war. Mars-Hitler, whoever they are, born yet or not, will be quite the foe.

We repeat patterns. The gulf of interplanetary space is no obstacle to war, any more than the gulf of the oceans are.