America's military is the greatest in the world.

To answer your comment in http://www.debate.org... why yes, TheSkeptic, I would. ************************************************************** America's military might is by no means small, it has such a variety of armed and unarmed forces supporting it that it can adapt to most situations and handle them effectively, what that statement does not encompass, however, is the fact that the enemy would be trying to do precisely the same thing. I intend to prove two points: Firstly: That America's wealth and technological innovation do not give it any advantage in open warfare that cannot be mimicked or used by other countries. Secondly: That TheSkeptic is a very foolish person indeed for choosing to debate warfare with someone like myself. No offence. First lets look at numbers, according to http://en.wikipedia.org... the US has, in active service, in both combat roles and support roles, a total of 3,624,093 personnel, with an additional 850,000 in reserve plus Department of Defence employees which are at best support-of-leadership positions. Overall you're looking at just over four and a half million. Quite a number. BUT! Going on the same link, all but just over 1,100,000 of those personnel are serving overseas, instantly fracturing the military's combined strength. You don't need to be Sun Tzu to know that if two forces of equal size and competency are formed to oppose each other, and one splits up and the other remains in one piece then in open combat, the latter will steamroll over the former. Iran's total military, eleven million. http://en.wikipedia.org... That's right, that little grinning horse fellater Ahmidinejad has eleven million meatshields. And then you have the others who beat America numerically in terms of troop numbers: China: 8.7 million North Korea: 5.9 million Vietnam: 5.9 million South Korea: 5.2 million America is eighth on the list. Eighth, because as much as America's military tops three million combat personnel, it has an immense number of bureaucrats, administrators, logistics personnel, commanders, technicians, maintenance personnel, drivers, caterers, and so on and so forth which bolster the numbers but not the active combat potential. In addition, I would argue that unlike the rest of the world, the US overtrains each individual soldier. The US provides on-the-spot training for soldiers heading out to or already based in a foreign country, basic training about language and customs and practice,as Dr Thomas Barnett said "take a gift in the left hand, these are the sunglasses that don't scare people" Speaking of Thomas Barnett: http://www.ted.com... This video was uploaded in 2005, so for a minimum of five years, American senior commanders have been unable to deny the fact that you simply cannot expect your average soldier to do everything. You send Marines to fight, you send medics to heal, you send armour to reduce stuff to rubble and people to a fine paste, what you do not do is send medics to fight, armour to heal and marines to reduce stuff to rubble and people to a fine paste, though I have no doubt that the Marines would have a good go at it anyway. The point being that the US already recognises that it will have to fracture it's forces even more in order to make it more effective at not killing people. Which brings me to my next point, unique forces, the US Marines are probably the most well known here, but we also have to consider Iran with it's Republican Guard, America is by no means the only country with non-special special forces, England has the Royal Marines and the Desert Rats, America has it's Marines and Airborne and Delta, hell even the Somalians that the US fought in the 90's had a bunch of guys with old 20mm grenade launchers and old decommissioned body armour. Not that they were that effective because grenades were expensive and explosions tend to make people a bit jumpy. The point being that even considering the soldiers that are better than average, like Delta, like the Marines, like the Royal Navy, are by no means unique and although they can no doubt fight harder and more professionally than the average, they're still made of meat and bone and maybe a metal plate or two. In terms of equipment, the US doesn't have an enormous advantage, the UAV "Predator" drone is probably the peak of America's technological-military might, the problem with this being that Google enables anyone to copy it using pretty average stuff, actually. All you have to do is combine http://www.google.co.uk... with http://www.google.co.uk... In terms of armour and artillery, America is currently attempting to develop a super-accurate form of artillery, the problem with this being that like many military projects, it's easier said than done, and even if America makes a super-accurate artillery shell or artillery weapon, it will not be long before the technology becomes less than top-secret and is copied worldwide. Hell China copied the American-used M203 "underslung" Grenade launcher into their own LG-2 in record time, and the Chinese have a history dating back almost a century into directly copying and re-manufacturing foreign weaponry (the best and most prominent example being the Chinese Type 17 pistol, which was basically a copy of the German 19th Century Mauser C96. Hell, the fact that the American military chose not to update it's main battle right from the M4 to the XM8 due to the fact that the XM8 was generally less effective than the FN-SCAR developed in Belgium. That's right folks, A German rifle, the XM8, was beaten by the Belgians. I know, right? The Americans do make use of the SCAR but only SOCOM units are equipped with it, so there wasn't much difference in the long run and the dudes at the frontline are still using the M4. The point is that the weaponry carried by the average American soldier is by no means the greatest in existence, the fact that the M4 has been in service now for almost fifteen years certainly doesn't help, and although the M4 is good, it's not so good that it will enable you to walk away from having, say, eleven million Iranians versus you and three million buddies. My head hurts, argument end.