Comments on: Does the administration really want defense spending cuts?

By: aligatorhardt

aligatorhardt — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:46:57 +0000

For those who depend on nuclear deterrent to invasion, consider that radioactive fallout does not stay in place; poison one and poison all. Retaliation would occur, resulting in nuclear fallout everywhere. When we all lose, then nobody wins.
As far as the idea that military spending creates jobs, that is fantasy. Until you can get the other side to pay for military needs, we are only spending our own money. The question is what do we get for that expense? It seems we get resources used up, people damaged and lost, health care costs for damaged soldiers escalated, support for military families must be paid, extra transportation costs for shipping supplies overseas to the troops, all negative costs and no return. If there is any advantage gained from stolen resources, those gains are taken by corporate groups and kept by managers.
What we should be spending that money on is the needs of our own citizens. We should be rebuilding America, not blowing up foreign countries, then rebuilding them at our own expense.

By: duhhhh

duhhhh — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:52:31 +0000

There’s way too many defense contractors in the red states to think that any meaningful spending cuts will occur in the sector–especially since they will have a hard time blaming the Democrats should any cuts actually happen to materialize.

By: txgadfly

txgadfly — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:21:18 +0000

Stonewall defense cuts and it will get slashed beyond recognition, the officer corps will be dismissed and replaced, and current defense contractors banned for 50 years. Sound good?

No more offensive war capability. American politicians are incapable of not finding a use for such power. So if you don’t want your country turned into a war machine, gut the whole military and depend on our nukes. Attack us and you die, your land an unusable waste for 1,000 years. No more invasions.

By: ARJTurgot2

ARJTurgot2 — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:01:44 +0000

I’ve stopped dissing the Obamists, it’s simply not worth the time. The Dems did their own little affirmative action number in ’08 and are now seeing the consequences. They compounded that by retaining Pelosi in ’10, and she is showing signs of increasing mental instability. Reid knows how the buy the unions and that’s the sum of his ability. Irony here is that I am NOT in any way a right-winger, I’m simply weary of the Dem tendency to complete ineptitude.

By: Art_In_Seattle

Art_In_Seattle — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:50:51 +0000

Obama and the Democrats need to take a lesson from their adversaries and learn to stay on-message. Panetta should be paying attention to what his boss is saying and doing and keep his yap shut unless he’s playing off the same page.

On the other hand, in an oblique way he’s brought up the fact that ever since World War II, military spending has been one of the principal means of priming our nation’s economic pump. Furthermore, the Cold War, like it or not, provided an excuse for lavish spending on constant readiness to face down the Evils of Communism anywhere in the world, and maintaining the means to destroy the entire planet if it appeared the bad guys might actually prevail. Inefficient and immoral though that might have been, the “military-industrial complex” put more people to work, fostered more advances in science and technology (think of the Internet, and going to the moon), and provided us with a collective sense of purpose the like of which we’ve been searching for ever since the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed. Our current feeble attempt to cast a rabble of radical Islamists in the same role as the Great Russian Bear just doesn’t cut it.

By: Blackorpheus

Blackorpheus — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:39:22 +0000

With troops, ordnance and rendition camps across much of the globe, the US can easily lower its defense budget by at least 300 billions dollars a year, but Obama and his team have decided instead to target “entitlements” such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

By: stambo2001

stambo2001 — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:21:18 +0000

Face it, the US is never going to cut military spending.

Considering the regime changes in the air. Considering riots in Western countries, the UK for example. Considering riots/flash-mobs starting to unfold in American cities like Philadelphia. Unless the economy pulls an unlikely miracle out of thin air it will get worse. The military think-tanks already know and expect this. American troops are being trained and conditioned for domestic applications, say controlling mobs.

The American military will soon enough be needed to protect the government/wealthy from the people themselves. The game is over, just not enough common people realize it yet. When they do Rome will burn a second time.

By: bates148

bates148 — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:08:22 +0000

Military spending creates jobs. Entitlements do not. It’s as simply as that.

By: aligatorhardt

aligatorhardt — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:57:07 +0000

Panetta should be blamed for his remarks, not Obama. Of course the military wants to continue it’s immense gravy train, with getting anything they want at any price. As others have mentioned, our foreign policy creates enemies, and waste and fraud are the rule, not the exception. We are concerned that bankrupt Russians are going to take over the world? How delusional can one be? The military can and should be scaled down. We have not had a war of defense since WW2. It was ridiculous for Obama to get a Nobel peace prize for merely suggesting a scale down of nuclear weapons. Our foreign policies have not improved, as we are engaged in more places now than ever. The military leaders see demons in every shadow, but they must be held on a leash rather than let to run wild. We need re-assessment of modern military needs and equipment, and the value of maintaining bases in so many places, most of which are capable of their own defense. Our military should not be used to prop up profits of multi-national corporations that owe allegiance to no country.

By: seattlesh

seattlesh — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:48:16 +0000

What better ploy to use against the right wing element in the Republican/TP than to use their own rhetoric and stir up the terrorist fears that they so often speak to as a means to get tax increases. On the other hand maybe the plutocrats that control our government are fearful of a domestic uprising such as in Egypt that may put their wealth and power at risk.