@Dave15
I wonder what history books you have been reading to have such a hard on for the USA? Certainly not truthful ones.
You said in WW2 the USA gave Britain nothing. Ask some of your WW2 tank drivers if they drove the "Ronson", aka the Sherman M4 - made in the USA. A lousy tank but better than nothing. The British did not like the tank (nor did the US tank drivers) but we had a design and produced over 45,000 of them during the war. How many of your sailors were manning the 40 destroyers that President Roosevelt had such difficulty getting transferred to the Royal Navy at Churchill's request? He was even approaching impeachment for violating US law. How about the US Navy ships that were prowling the Atlantic ocean in 1940 and 1941 looking for German U-boats, then radioing the position of the U-boat - in the clear, so that the British could intercept the message and know where the U-boats were. There are many more instances. Or perhaps you tend to think in terms of the pejorative phrase allegedly used to describe what was wrong with the Yanks in Britain - "Overpaid, oversexed, and over here."
In the 1938-1941 time frame, the US political environment was a hot bed of isolationist sentiment. Our Congress had declared we were a neutral nation. The average voter depended on the Atlantic ocean to keep the US out of the "European" war. The contortions of logic and law and even outright lying that the Roosevelt administration went to to provide weapons and supplies to Britain were enormous. Even after the the shock when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, there was one Nay vote in the House of Representatives on whether to go to war with Japan. Do a little research to find out what your own Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill had to say about the materials that came from the US to Great Britain.
As for the gold, I was not aware that the US acquired your gold reserves - never heard that before - but it is customary for a nation to pay for materials with their own currency/gold. You mentioned the overseas bases that Britain lend-leased to the US in exchange for the 40 destroyers - how many of them were outright transferred from Britain to the USA in perpetuity? Specifics, please. And I know that both Britain and France ran up large debts to the USA during WW2 and that some foreign debt was forgiven after the war.
The British military individuals, at least at the lower ranks, are some of the finest military people in the world and it is a shame that the British politicians are not supporting them as they deserve. I would hope that the British military would be structured in the best way to preserve your national sovereignty as far into the future as possible. That means doing threat analysis and then developing the structure and equipment needed to defeat or fend off the threat. Has that been done? I tend to agree with Lewis to the extent of his agreement with the retired generals and admirals but I am not close enough to put your defense posture under a microscope - Lewis is.
The question at issue is whether to have speedy bombers or versatile close support aircraft. (Britain bought some CH-47 Chinook helicopters but had a problem getting some software when the US would not allow them access to the source code for computers.) Close support works best in the type of warfare of Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether the speedy and sophisticated aircraft like the F-35 or F-22 will ever have to meet comparable enemy aircraft is not known but seemed unlikely until the rebirth of the Russian military. The B2 has been used but the missions - flying from the US to Afghanistan - are long and costly. The current use of drones, armed and unarmed, is an entirely new factor to be considered. Any arbitrary decision the MOD makes will certainly be wrong.
Does Britain need a military force? Yes. Loss of sovereignty occurs only once. Only the congenitally stupid or the traitorous could say do away with all your military capability. How you best structure that force is not for me to say but the US is interested in how you do it.
On the issue of whether the US went to war with Iraq to get the oil, it is instructive that the only Iraqi oil that has reached our shores came through the international oil markets. The Chinese get the bulk of the Iraqi oil and have since the US got the oil fields working again. The US has not made a penny from our invasion.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
