America's military is the greatest in the world.

Since my opponent has openly stated that his reply will be constrained by the character limit, odds are any attempt of my own to directly quote and counter would only enable me to answer for 50% of his argument, so instead I will quote key phrases rather than full arguments. "Thomas Barnett" Yes he does, but he also says, and I quote "we field a first half team in a league that insists on keeping score 'til the end of the game" a military defeat is still a military defeat even if their guys are dead and yours aren't. Military strength nowadays is as much about discriminatory violence as it is non discriminatory violence which gives America a disadvantage right from day one. "quantity vs quality" Normally I would agree, except that as of, I think, about 2005, China in particular has been updating it's Military in accordance with what it witnessed when the US invaded Iraq, much of the weaponry and equipment used by Iran was used (or mimicked) by China, when China saw how easily the US swept over Iraqi Republican Guard, China soiled itself. Since then, China has been doing everything from providing more training to it's soldiers, getting them better vehicles and equipment, getting them better weaponry and so on and so forth. Somewhat unrelated as it may be, Russia faced a similar situation against the Nazis, but still eventually won, such was the victory that Josef Stalin, upon seeing the "we have more men than you have bullets" strategy, stated "Quantity has a quality all of it's own" "Quite humorously," Quite humorously, my opponent ignores this very same point used by Dr Barnett despite earlier rely on Dr Barnett's testimony of "we can kill anyone" "DIFFERENT UNITS FOR DIFFERENT OPERATIONS" Apparently not, to quote Al Murry "no wonder that Iraq business isn't going well for you yanks, Sadaam gets a bit uppity and what do you do? You send Marines, Marines, Mariiiiines, water soldiers, and you send them to fight in the ****ing desert!" "the secrecy shrouding such units is too much to make any clear decision." My opponent doesn't seem to realise that American special forces, the Marines especially, are very loud about how good they are and what they can do. "The UAV drones America uses are MUCH MORE COMPLICATED than any DIY ones you can make off Google" http://www.urbandictionary.com... Whatever works. "accurate artillery" I admit that I learned about this artillery system via the Future Weapons program on the Discovery Military channel, which I'm sad enough to watch, the Channel's coverage of the artillery system is here http://www.youtube.com... I'd like to apologise, while it's on my mind, about the Artillery/armour point, I got a bit sidetracked in my opening argument, my opponent cites the example of the M1 Abrams, and while I agree that it's definitely one of the best tanks in the world, it's by no means invulnerable, especially not when there are ghetto-rigged UAVs or copy/pasted super-accurate artillery pieces in the area. There's nothing wrong with the M4 (I'd hope the M16 would be phased out of use by now save for display weaponry, but then again Marines use M-14s as Display weapons and those are fairly old) but the point is that in a period of actual warfare, the individual weapons can and do make all the difference, it's been theorised that had the Nazis released the Steg-44 onto battlefields earlier that they could have turned the tide in the infantry campaign against the Russians, and held off the combined American, Canadian and European push to the west and to be honest I agree, with Steg-44 was a masterpiece of the time, it's the one rifle that all future assault rifles were based upon, hell it was pretty much the first assault rifle if you can agree that the BAR was too heavy and unwieldy for an everyman weapon. The same can be said for tanks, our British Matilda couldn't touch Nazi tanks, so what did we do? We developed strategies to get around the obvious strengths and weaknesses until we could build something better. "the Army relies on supporting it's troops with armor" So did the Nazis, for the most part, generally speaking they had the best tanks, the battle-hardened troops and the best equipment, what they did not have was the ingenuity or the staying power (taking a second look at that "first half team in a league that keeps score 'til the end of the game) quote is lookin' pretty darn tootin' temptin' right now boy) The Air force points are good but ignore one fundamental point, over-reliance upon air power is a mistake that has been made at least twice in US history, the first was Vietnam, the second was in the second Gulf War. If we again look at the Nazis, the Luftwaffe blitzed England completely and for a long time the RAF was small and inconsequential to the Luftwaffe, but although the Luftwaffe had free reign over the whole of England for a while, England itself did not fall. It's all good and well having all those aircraft, but if you don't know how to use them then there's no point. This point also stretches to the US Navy. "listing facts" No, as much as any army or navy or air force might look good on paper, and it's capability to reduce things to rubble be evident, and it's plans and strategies be sound, it's good to remember that war, and individual battles especially, are confusing, and that as Colin Powell stated "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy" In addition, the American military is very wasteful and would most likely change dramatically should open and continuous warfare actually hit, lets take for instance the venerable M1 Abrams, a single M1, just one of those things, costs close to eight million US Dollars. (http://www.fas.org...) Just let that sink in, eight million dollars for one tank, and the Iraqis, despite being armed with the military equivalent of lego cars, have done pretty well against them. Imagine how badly they might fare against an enemy that actually has the means to take them on? (http://answers.yahoo.com...) I'm not saying the M1 is a bad tank, far from it, but the damage done by the Iraqis is at best a shocking reminder that no armour is invulnerable and certainly no armour is indestructible. "years of experience" Against poorly trained, ill-equipped and probably malnourished soldiers who do better once they go to ground and start giving it the guerrilla dance, not an actual well-equipped standing army. "immense production rate" Immense waste rate too. "potential players, the US dominates" You don't know that.