Community | December 04, 2011 | 27 comments

A Little Straight Talk on National Defense

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kvb1
So by how much will the defense budget decline over the next decade? That could be seen as a trick question, because in nominal terms it will grow. Prior to the super committee's failure, the defense budget was slated to increase some 23% between 2012 and 2021. Now, according to Veronique de Rugy, the Pentagon will have to make do with a 16% boost...To pretend that this would make us virtually defenseless is to insult our collective intelligence. We can make that cut and still have the most powerful military on the planet by a factor of five or six. If that doesn't make you feel safe, nothing will.

How much is enough? During WWII we beat the Germans not by building the best tanks, just building more cheaper tanks. We do not need the largest navy in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S. Navy also has the world's largest carrier fleet, with 11 in service, one under construction (two planned), and one in reserve. The service had 328,516 personnel on active duty and 101,689 in the Navy Reserve in January 2011. It operates 286 ships in active service and more than 3,700 aircraft. The U.S. Army currently consists of 10 active divisions as well as several independent units. The force is in the process of growth, with four additional brigades scheduled to activate by 2013. Within the Army National Guard and United States Army Reserve there are a further eight divisions, over fifteen maneuver brigades, additional combat support and combat service support brigades, and independent cavalry, infantry, artillery, aviation, engineer, and support battalions. The Army Reserve in particular provide virtually all psychological operations and civil affairs units. As of 2009 the USAF operates 5,573 manned aircraft in service (3,990 USAF; 1,213 Air National Guard; and 370 Air Force Reserve); approximately 180 unmanned combat air vehicles, 2,130 air-launched cruise missiles, and 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles. The USAF has 330,159 personnel on active duty, 68,872 in the Selected and Individual Ready Reserves, and 94,753 in the Air National Guard as of September 2008. In addition, the USAF employs 151,360 civilian personnel, and has over 60,000 auxiliary members in the Civil Air Patrol, making it the largest air force in the world.

Is this all necessary? As a Vet., I say no. We could make do with a lot less, and apply that saving to necessary things like rebuilding roads and bridges, rebuilding crumbling sewage, water treatment, and water delivery systems, improved education system were kids are taught real science and math, health care reforms which would have its own savings by making Medicare/Medicaid negotiate pricing, creating high speed rail with our own products rather than other countries products, and finally building a green electrical grid. We could still have money left over if this is used judiciously.
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27 comments // A Little Straight Talk on National Defense

  • Des_Akkari
  • dugdog47
    • +1
      dugdog47  
    • Early man walked away as modern man took
      control.
      Their minds werent all the same, to conquer
      was his big goal,
      So he built his great empire and slaughtered
      his own kind,
      Then he died a confused man, killed himself
      with his own mind.
      Go!
      Were only gonna die from our own
      arrogance.

      -Bad Religion

    • 6 months ago
  • DanCastro
  • Leen61
  • Incredulous
  • remanns
    • +1
      remanns  
    • Incredulous:

      When MOST of us are directly at the point of a gun, probably.

      ( spend quickly,....those assets will be confiscated as quick as the bodies fall,.....its best to invest in advance )

    • 6 months ago
  • Progresshiv
  • remanns
  • PressCore
    • +1
      PressCore  
    • Recorded 13, April, 1967: 3rd, & 4th stanzas only, for effect:

      " The Windows of the World are covered with rain.
      What is this whole world coming to ?
      Everybody knows.....
      When men cannot be friends, their quarrel often ends
      Where some have to die
      Let the Sun shine through ! "

      " The Windows of the World are covered with rain.
      There must be something we can do !
      Everybody knows....
      Whenever rain appears, they're realy the Angels' tears.
      How long must they cry ?
      Let the Sun shine through.

      Authored by Burt Bacharach & Hal David, sung by Dion Warwick.

      Original arrangement to be played with plucked strings in the style
      of the Oriental koto, with finger cymbals to sound as raindrops
      sound on windows. This song was Hal David's public prayer to God.
      He had 2 sons of whom one was of draft age during the Vietnam War.

    • 6 months ago
  • kennymotown
    • +6
      kennymotown  
    • Screw the Department of Defense, all we are defending are the globalist Corporations, we are being used our tax dollars should go to the people's needs!

    • 6 months ago
  • PressCore
    • +3
      PressCore  
    • kennymotown:

      That's right.. Long, long ago, the American people found out as their
      Government's weapons of mass destruction were too horrible to ever
      use, they sensed what George Orwell explained was absolutely true:.
      That of all the world's nations, the belligerent ones' purpose for main
      taining an oversized military was not to defend them from foreign
      aggression. It was to intimidate their own people w/threatened abuses.
      The military aren't walled defenders protecting us from the barbarians
      at the gates, and keeping them out. They're meant to be prison guards
      to keep us in. The more they do their crime, the more we do their time.

    • 6 months ago
  • alexandrek
  • kennymotown
  • Des_Akkari
  • FoosMaster
    • +4
      FoosMaster  
    • kvb1 and PressCore are Right! And they have the facts and lessons of history to back it up! When will the People start to wake up to this Extreme Danger to everyone's lives? *(With the exception of the 1%)

    • 6 months ago
  • PressCore
    • +4
      PressCore  
    • FoosMaster:

      When ? Occupy Congress is set to march on D.C.circa mid January, 2012.
      McLame & Levin will be need to stock up on Depends when they see 10,000
      OWS movement protesters headed their way. That's learn 'em. Those 2 bags
      of merde presume they can con people into believing by putting words on paper
      they have the lawful authority to exert absolute power, as their Wall Street Fed
      Banksters presume they can make genuine money by putting words on paper.
      Neither of that complement of Mafia know what's counterfeit from what's real,
      because they're both so crooked & stupid they couldn't know which end is up.

    • 6 months ago
  • PressCore
    • +3
      PressCore  
    • P.S. I will Never wear anyone's uniform. Even a suit is a plain clothes
      type of uniform. I'd have to be threatened by a Judge with Contempt
      of Court, and jailed to ever make that 1 exception, because noone
      will ever see me wear a suit either. As a citizen who's lived in Colorado,
      and Texas,where I've registered my Saab, voted for President Carter,
      I'm a Westerner intending to own a modern Henry, a modern Sharps
      to become a dead shot marksman., And breed hoeses on a ranch.
      THAT'S my idea of an American. I mean to be laid to rest in denim &
      leather. With the kind of tailored twin high pockets flannel shirts Gary
      Cooper favored as a stunt rider in Montana. They can file all their
      bloody fucking asses in triplicate if THEY want, and play with red tape
      like kittens toying with catnip balls, for all I give a rat's ass. But ME ?,
      I'm a casual, not a casualty. Noone can ever take away your right to
      fight, and never surrender. Never surrender. Better to die on your feet
      than live on your knees under the yoke of oppression & tyrany of fiends.

    • 6 months ago
  • entropyincarnate
  • PressCore
    • +2
      PressCore  
    • entropyincarnate:

      Google up Sharp's rifle sometime through the Wikipedia internet source,
      mate. Several modern manufacturer's here in the States, and even one
      in Italy still make modern working specimens of different versions of the
      Sharp's rifle. Though they may be an exception to the general rule, they
      might even make them better than they used to with modern technology.
      If only because they might make them in such limited numbers, making
      the price of each rifle expensivem that they're closer to being custom
      manufactured than simply the mass produced rifles with equal quality
      control standards. If you've ever seen solid Western movies like Quigley
      Down Under, Valdez Is Coming, et al, which feature very long range yet
      supremely accurate rifled barrels, then you know why they nicknamed
      them " silent death " and " death by stealth " as the Japanese ninjas
      used to be feared. The only other American rifles I'm aware of sharing
      this reputation were the colonial flintlocks in the American Revolution.
      The Leatherstocking Tales written by James Fenimore Cooper detail
      the life & adventures of Le Lang Carbine, circa 1753, a frontiersman
      from colonial New York after the Dutch established Albany. Also nick
      named the Deerslayer. The Brittish used to write back to their friends
      to get all their worldly affairs in order before the King sent them to combat
      the Patriots in the American Revolution because our verrrry long, well rifled
      custom barrels were so accurate they earned a reputation for deadliness
      at very much longer range than the Brittish muskets.

    • 6 months ago
  • entropyincarnate
  • entropyincarnate
  • PressCore
    • +2
      PressCore  
    • Past a certain point, all defense is offense, because, as every
      action must have an equal & opposite reaction, the use of force
      exerted against something either propells it away, or destroys the
      forcer. I watch the Military channel a lot as I'm an Historian who
      watches the History channel always. Imho. most Americans don't
      have a clue that after WW1, WW2, and Korea, the U.S. military
      never demobilized as it did during the pauses in the 20th century
      wars. In competition with the Russians, Chinese, the U.S. military
      has overinvested the American people's resources as if doomsday
      were right around the corner. If it is, it's because we let it happen.
      I agree with the author's viewpoint, btw. The idea that too much
      is never enough might fly with love, but it sinks like a stone when
      it's only concern is effecting waste of human life, destruction of
      private/public property so the Banksters can also make their killing
      by loaning back our money to us to finance war & reconstrruction.

      " Military madness is killing my country " was a song sang during
      the early 1970s reflecting Vietnam as the first of the many following
      Corporate agressive Oil wars/for Piracy. One U.S.Senator, Kerry,
      involved in that agression is part of a skull & crossbones secret
      society populated by the likes of George Bush Jr whose family
      History originates in the 1930s when his grandfather supported
      the rise of Adolph Hitler, whom Churchill termed " The Maniac "
      so much, that the U.S.Government stepped in forcing him to
      desist as the National Emergency of WW2 was already upon us.
      My dad had already enlisted in the U.S.Army Air Force, as my
      uncle did in the Airborne Div. who left us as a paratrooper in
      Normandy 6/21/44. Bush's father, Reagan's V,P, from C.I.A,
      is properly attributed to being one of the cabal Murdering JFK
      to prevent him deescalating the Vietnam war which subverted
      our monentary system with Bankster Ponzi Scheme script to
      fund Vietnam, establish bases in 90 countries around the world.
      JFK issued executive order 11100 to end the national debt
      these Banksters had escalated during 1957-1963. Eisenhaur
      warned us of the military industrial complex looming as a threat
      to our national security in 1/61. Now they steal 53% of every tax dollar.

      And for what ? We don't have a national defense force so much
      as a national offense force seeking to invade every country their
      false flag of terrorism can con people into supporting. Meanwhile
      the Corporate Piracy the military's presence serves as their private
      security force to protect in Iraq, Afghanistan has wasted & pillaged
      those Arab countries causing more extremist Muslims to hate the
      USA. The suicide rate amongst American soldiers is 200% of the
      civilian average rate if suicides. Exporting the public's $$ abroad
      has shorted the money supply domesticly causing Great Recession.
      The Ponzi Scheme of debt based money is so badly reckless in
      sustaining the Bankster's obsession with unlimited wealth through
      unlimited greed, all it would take is one prolonged major natural
      disaster to cause a world wide collapse of the financial system,
      because it's a house of cards. Meanwhile the Racketeering passing
      for the civilian Government corrupted by pandering to their M.I.C.
      funding gravy train has guaranteed us war without end, an Orwellian
      TV surveilance culture stinking of the stench of death. Because
      people are forced to work to support the Merchants of Death to
      live at all, Hitler's dream of world conquest has become the USA's
      national nightmare as S.1867 proves.

      My point is this: The USA is a country born from civil war as only
      1/3 of us were Patriots seeking Liberty from opression, 1/3 Tories
      loyal to Fascism, 1/3 Banksters, & their brokered spy minions who
      sold arms & information to both sides in their duplicity as double
      agents. Money has no patriotism. Treachery is loyal to noone.
      After 225 years of struggle to maintain Liberty, specificly since
      WW2 in the form of FDR's 4 Freedoms: from fear, from hunger,
      of beliefs, of education, we're now worse off than ever saddled
      with an out of control M.I.C at the wheel aiming to drive us off a
      cliff. I support the OWS protest movement as we badly need a
      2nd American Revolution to wrest back our nation for civilians.

    • 6 months ago
  • tverdell
  • Swisher
  • remanns
    • 0
      remanns  
    • The Saudis are kicking ass !!! ( as a percentage of GDP ) No slackers there !

      ( gee,........they really ARE worried about Iran ).

      p.s. added to "Culture" and "Infoporn"

    • 6 months ago
  • kvb1
  • remanns
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