The whole defense industry leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Once you peel the narrative that we are supposed to be the good guys (hint: in some/most cases, we are not), you realize that you really just help to kill people.
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Or you can wake up to the reality that a strong defensive, and sometimes offensive capability is required in order to enforce the state of peace that we all take for granted, and be part of the process of keeping all the sheeps safe.
The sheepdog is a scary beast. It growls, it bites, and it intimidates sheep and wolf alike. But the herd is better off with it than without.
The majority of the worlds population do not take peace for granted. The question is, to what extend has US hegemony extended war and violence, and to what extent has it depleted it (compared to the available alternatives). Clearly enormous loss of life has occurred in places like Latin America, Iran, South East Asia Cuba etc due to US led toppling of democratic leaders and installation of often brutal dictators. But the overall balance of suffering is difficult if not impossible to calculate. Is Pax Americana a net good? Hard to say. But we can trivially reject the jingoistic 'a few good men' narrative of brutes manning the barricades of peace.
Before them, we had two devastating world wars in the span of about three decades, with over 100,000,000 dead total. Now we’ve gone over seven decades without another.
Let’s hope the deterrent holds through the current, ongoing, and horribly irresponsible brinksmanship.