Except Carriers have been used in the Afghanistan and Iraq. While also being used in China to hamper Chinese aggression.

It seems like the ships are getting good use in the current climate. Carriers are the best choice of weapon in an asymmetrical war against terrorists. Terrorists can't target a Carrier Group, but Carrier Groups can bomb them all day, every day nearly perpetually.

>While also being used in China to hamper Chinese aggression.

Where Chinese aggression = China trying to police its own area?

Maybe some Chinese carriers should have helped tamper US aggression all those years in Banana Republics, Mexico, Panama, South America, etc...

..or building islands to make bogus UNCLOS claims.

Chinese aggression like stationing their ships in the Philippines and Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Shoal#Claims_by_Ch...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_China_Sea_EEZ_disputes

>Chinese aggression like stationing their ships in the Philippines and Japan

The same Philipines the US occupied and used as a colony (and neo-colony) and the same Japan where the US nuked civilians and had the country under supervision (it's army) etc. post-war?

Not to mention this is not actually "stationing their ships in the Philippines and Japan" (which the US does all the time, literally, in their harbors), but having disputes over some sea territory.

So your first argument is that we should refuse to learn from history?

The US has not had any ships stationed in the Philippines since the early 90s. In response to local demand the base there was closed.

Granted, parent misspoke of China as stationing ships in those places, but your argument is similarly absurd.

I've never really understood the line of reasoning that compares one country's possible past misdeeds with another country's possible present misdeeds. I don't think a nation exists with a spotless historical record, the US is obviously not exempt from this criticism, but beyond hoping to acknowledge, learn from, and possibly offer redress for past wrongs, I'm not sure that pointing out historical misdeeds has much to do with discussing the situation at present.

The issue at hand isn't China's possible hostility towards neighboring countries centuries or decades ago but rather their fairly hostile posturing with regards to territorial claims today.

With regards to your second point, from what I've read the Philippines and Japan view China's currently expanding territorial claims to be an aggressive military expansion. I'm not sure the act of US ships being present in the harbors of Japan and the Philippines is analogous to China's military activities in the South China Sea and Western Pacific, particularly as I assume both of those countries have given explicit permission to the US Navy to enter their territorial waters.

That's a different argument. Now you're effectively saying that the US shouldn't maintain a blue-water navy.

Thats extreme. Its not that the US shouldn't have a blue-water navy. Just that it shouldn't have a useless, expensive, dangerous one: which is what it has right now, at least in the case of war.

(I'll concede one thing, carriers are useful in times of non-war: as a policing force and threat to lesser nations ..)

It didn't work in 1971, when Nixon deployed the Enterprise and the rest of Task Force 74 to the Bay of Bengal to intimidate India during the war with Pakistan. All it took was a couple of Soviet submarines to call their bluff.