Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Don't Panic Don't Panic!: Is Obama cutting the military's budget?
Posted by Andisheh Nouraee on Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 3:01 PM
Is Obama cutting the military’s budget?
As a rule, I try never to impute bad motives on political figures whose political positions I don’t necessarily agree with. Honest people can disagree.
Instead, I just assume Palin and Gingrich are nice, well-meaning people who just happen to have never read the U.S. Constitution and who are ignorant of New York’s proud diversity because they seldom (if ever) see the parts of NYC that aren’t visible during their short walks from the front door of Fox News’s Sixth Avenue studio to their limos.
I also assume Palin and Gingrich are just as strongly opposed to the construction of new mainstream Christian church facilities in cities where violent extremist Christians have committed atrocities. I bet they’d say “No new churches in Oklahoma City because Timothy McVeigh was a Christian” if you asked them. Too bad the biased liberal media never asks.
My willingness to give politicians the benefit of the doubt about their motives, however, vanishes when obvious, undeniable facts are ignored.
Remember when the Bush Administration and its cheerleaders insisted the Iraq war was a success even when it was obvious to anyone paying attention that the U.S. invasion kick-started a horrific civil war in Iraq that killed tens of thousands of innocent people and sent millions of Iraqi refugees into Jordan and Syria? Facts be damned. It’s a success because we say it’s a success.
Less offensive, but born of the same freaky militaristic blindness, is the persistent accusation that cutting the Pentagon’s budget even a little bit will somehow damage America.
Influential neoconservative pundit Max Boot wrote a bizarre column in the Washington Post on July 30 blaming U.S. military spending cuts for pretty much everything bad that ever happened to the U.S. For example, in Boot’s estimation the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because they didn’t fear our small, pre-WWII military. Of course, someone who’s read an actual history book might argue that the only reason the Japanese sneak-attacked our docked Navy as the opening strike of our Pacific expansion plan was precisely because they did fear the U.S. Navy.
Why couldn’t the U.S. secure Iraq? Not because it was a fool’s errand, but because lame-o Clinton cut the military’s budget, Boot says. But wait, there’s more. Why did anti-American revolutionary governments take over Nicaragua and Iran in 1979? Not because both countries were ruled by corrupt, cruel autocrats who were extraordinarily bad at their jobs, but because the U.S. military wasn’t strong enough to stop it. And my favorite of Boot’s “don’t shrink the military” warnings: his assertion that segregation gripped the Southern U.S. because the Union military was dismantled after the Civil War. It had nothing to do with ingrained racism, you see. We just needed a few more Vermonters patrolling the South with rifles.
Writing for the conservative opinion magazine The Weekly Standard, Gary J. Schmitt accuses the Obama Administration of jeopardizing America’s global leadership, as well as freedom itself, because he has already “cut some $300 billion in defense programs” while “spending nearly $800 billion to (supposedly) stimulate the economy.”
So are Obama and Democrats gutting or even trimming military spending by any objective measure?
Absolutely not. The Obama Adminstration’s proposed military budget for the next fiscal year is $708 billion. That’s 6.1 percent higher than any of George “With us or against us” Bush’s military budget — and does NOT include inevitable supplemental spending bills for the war Obama is escalating in Afghanistan.
In 2009, the U.S. was responsible for 43 percent of the entire world’s military spending. The next biggest spender is European Union — responsible for 21 percent of the world’s military spending.
In other words — the U.S. and its closest allies are responsible for nearly to 2/3 of the entire world’s military spending. Not even deep cuts in Pentagon spending will change the fact the U.S. is the world’s only global military superpower.
Some of the comments in the thread below have been removed because they violate our comment policy.
Comments (23)
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Just curious...who would you rather have as the world's pre-eminent military power? There's always a top dog. I like it to be us.
it's not an either/or situation. we can still be top dog while spending billions less on the military every year.
I think the Dutch should have a go. If you ever meet one on vacation, they're great to have at your table because they usually speak three, often four languages.
The Dutch are too stoned. The Danes might work. they have valiant cartoonists and they stuck it out with us in Iraq as long as they could.
Yeah, but Danes are too often concerned about whether or not they should "Be" and too often tell their girlfriends to "get thee to a nunnery." They never make up their minds, and when they do, all the characters in Hamlet end up dead.
How about the Norwegians? They haven't had a go a military supremacy since the days of the Vikings. They should get another turn.
This is true. Our Military Budget increased a little more than inflation.
Besides our current threats to America are right-wing Christian groups, Tea Party groups, pro-life groups, second amendment groups, and returning veterans; not Islamic terrorists.
Islam is a legal, political, and financial system, coupled with dress, moral, and social codes, which should be protected as a First Amendment right.
Islam is the Relegion of peace, inclusion, and tolerance and should be embraced by all of us.
"Besides our current threats to America are right-wing Christian groups, Tea Party groups, pro-life groups, second amendment groups, and returning veterans; not Islamic terrorists."
Dude you are seriously divorced from reality. Your IQ would have to quintuple to become infinitesimal. None of the groups you mentioned are a threat to America or Americans. Islamic Supremacist terrorists are sworn to destroy the western way of life and to kill all who will not submit. How can you even compare that to the ideologies you mentioned?
"Islam is a legal, political, and financial system, coupled with dress, moral, and social codes, which should be protected as a First Amendment right.
Islam is the Relegion of peace, inclusion, and tolerance and should be embraced by all of us."
OK at this point you've got to putting us on. Please don't sully the name of the great Maravich any longer.
Yes Oydave - I was being facetious. I have spent some time studying the Koran and it's Practice of Taqiyya - Saying something that isn't true. Muslims are allowed to lie to unbelievers in order to defeat them. What a great Relegion!
Islam does not believe in the separation of church and state, the freedom of speech (i.e. being able to make fun of Noah, Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammad with out fear of being killed), freedom to think and express ones self, equality between men, women, and homosexuals, equality of rights between those who believe in Islam and those who do not beleive in Islam, Islam does not reject the killing of Jewish people or anyone who does not beleive in Islam, and supports Hamas and Hezbollah which are proven terroristic organizations.
I can't wait for America to be Sharia Compliant! All of us could enjoy a good afternoon spent cheering on a good: stoning, beheading, honor killing, severing hands and feet, it is going to be fantastic!!
Just curious, Pete. Which "religion believes" in the separation of church and state?
Andishes - I believe that Christianity believes in the Seperation of Church and State.
Because Jesus avoided those who would trap him into taking sides for or against the Roman occupation of Judea. Jesus paid his taxes to the occupying power but said only, “Let Caesar have what belongs to him, and God have what belongs to him” (Matthew 22:21). Therefore, I believe that Jesus was the original proponent of a separation of church and state.
PistolPete - so you're going to ignore about 1800 years of Christian churches NEVER acknowledging such a separation, and another 200 years or doing so when forced by secular governments?
Yes Christianity has been guilty of similar outrage currently being inflicted on the world by Islamic Supremacists, but they were finished with that long ago. You lefties make a big whoop about "Christian terror" but that's laughable when compared to the wave of Islamic terror engulfing the world. The McVeighs and Rudolphs are rare lone wolfs, real nutters, that pop up randomly. Islamic Supremacy is a vast movement that seeks to supplant the West. My lefty friends say to me "it's just a small fraction of Muslims that support terror against the West." True, but 2% of Muslims is still millions of insane. homicidal, maniacs. Right-wing Christians may want me to live in Mayberry, but they're not gonna make me. Islamic Supremacist nutters want me to convert and return to the Middle Ages and they will kill me if I don't. Truly a ridiculous comparison.
On a side note, Andi, why do you have a picture of Adam Gadahn as your proflie pic? Or is that you in a wig?
Yes Andisheh - I will mostly ignore the history of Christianity. I will acknowledge that it was greatly flawed due to perversions of it. And I will work to repair any damage done because of it that I can. I am not that old!
I think when Islam is as old as Christianity I hope that Islam finds itself in a similar state of being that Christianity is in now.
I like Andisheh's picture he reminds of James Earl Jones in Conan the barbarian.
http://www.de-chelonian-mobile.de/illu/bil…
Andisheh - here is a nice story of tolerant Muslims acceptance of Homosexuality
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-108…
Pete - few things offend me.
Presuming and/or implying that I'm unaware of the viciousness of extremist Islam is one of them.
I'm pretty sure only one of us has half his family trapped in a violent, theocratic, Muslim theocracy. And I'm pretty sure it isn't you.
LOL! Andisheh I think we would disagree on many things but I do enjoy your sense of humor. I apologize to you. I sometimes think you are very Pro-Islam/Anti-American when I read some of your writings. Although I have adjusted my thinking slightly since past disagreements becuase of your writing style.
For 10 years I've been complaining about American foreign policies that I think weaken the U.S. For the most part, by diagnosis and prescriptions were right.
How this equates to being anti-American is beyond me.
As for me being pro-Islam. If my name was Andrew Newton you would never call me pro-Islam. I defy you to look through a single thing I've ever written that praises a single trait about Islam. I'll walk to your place of work and hand you a $100 bill if you can isolate a single sentence fragment I've ever written that praises or supports Islam. Every word I've ever written on the subject is in CL archives.
That said, I am adamantly opposed to religious bigotry. When I read people who clearly know zero about Islam pretending to be theologians, I speak up.
i'm more offended than either of u.
and therefore the biggest victim.
and therefore my views have more validity.
and my view is that people should stop pulling the victim card.
I've always thought Andisheh was more anti organized religion all together than pro-Islam or anti-Christian. They all have pretty silly beliefs if you examine them from an outside perspective.
Take Jesus for example. My wife had never heard about Jesus until she had to go to Catholic school in Ohio as a 1st grader. The nuns really frowned on her inquiry as to whether or not Jesus was a zombie. He did come back from the dead, but was not apparently hungry for sweet, delicious human brain.
Andisheh opposes fundamentalism, bigotry, superstition and human rights abuses.
When mainstream political leaders start going on TV to oppose church construction, and use a passage from Leviticus as their justification, I'll bitch about that, too.
I think that it is a repugnant thought that $100 million would be brought into the United States rather than be directed at dying and needy Muslims in Darfur or Pakistan.
Muslims know the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the infidel. The proposal has been made in bad faith and in Islamic parlance, such an act is referred to as “Fitna,” meaning “mischief-making” that is clearly forbidden in the Koran.
The Koran commands Muslims to, “Be considerate when you debate with the People of the Book” — i.e., Jews and Christians. Building an exclusive place of worship for Muslims at the place where Muslims killed thousands of New Yorkers is not being considerate or sensitive, it is undoubtedly an act of “fitna.“
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