2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

I agree with what you say, but I disagree with what this implies, which is that Clinton irresponsibly compromized America's ability to defend itself. I'm not sure if you subscribe to this implication. If you do, I would object that Bush Sr, Reagan and Carter had a cold war with a superpower going on, while Clinton didn't. Therefore much of the decrease in defense spending can be attributed to America's reduced need for defense. I would also point out that America, with (from memory) about 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of its GDP, accounts for more than 50 percent of its military spending. In other words, America still spends more on its military than all the rest of the world combined. This suggests that the size of America's military is adequate or more.

Definitely more, Thomas. If we got our heads straight, we'd be spending a third of what we spend now. I suspect that if we didn't bother to get our heads together but simply cut out the pork, we could cut it in half overnight.

I agree; they don't, he is, He does.

There seems to be an implied formula in this argument... the larger a military body gets (more men, more equipment, larger percentage of GDP) the more properly the government is doing its job.

Has anyone here read, or seen, Shaw's 'Major Barbara'? Or read Anthony Sampson's 'The Arms Bazaar'? Does anyone else here think perhaps the Pentagon ought to just rename itself to Krupp?

When the big steel producers faced a falling market after the railroad boom, they switched to producing cannon. In order to sell cannon, they had to promote the notion of a previously 'unperceived' threat level to potential customers.

Munitions producers NEED war, they NEED threat. The whole weave of military activity NEEDS dangerous enemies about slavering to loose havoc and bring down our glorious way of life.

What Eisenhower warned of HAS arrived in full bloom, you ninnies. You have some fifty percent of your population investing in public companies, and huge public companies profiting from - depending for their existence upon - constant continuing warfare, and individuals at the top levels of government and the military moving in an out of directorships and consulting positions in these companies. If Christ returned, waved his hand and made peace, your economy would collapse in a second.

Just giving thanks here today.

Like Thomas, I am proceeding from memory, but I believe he exaggerates the relative size of U.S. military spending. Moreover the figures themselves are misleading in that budgets are at best an approximation of military power - a very complex thing - and there are other very capable military powers out there.

Overall the pace of change in the world has been at least equal to the ability of the various sages to forecast even the general trends. I believe Clinton's greatest errors in the area of national security were not so much in preserving military capability as they were in fecklessly failing to deal with ripe issues that were before him. The first serious effort to take out the World Trade Center occurred in the first year of his first administration. It was followed by a series of organized terrorist attacks all done by obviously well organized Islamists, operating on an international basis. His response was wholly inadequate to even the evident manifestations of a growing worldwide awakening of a very reactionary and dangerous form of radical Islam. He did nothing to either deal with the problem or to remind our European "allies" that it is the legacy of their actions over the last several centuries.

Worse he personally associated himself and the U.S. with an absurd "peace offer" to the Palestinians he cooked up with P.M. Barak, which was deliberately mischaracterized as an unprecedented and substantial offer of about 90%of the West Bank (when in fact it was about 40%, and the 90% applied only to what Israel thought was 'negotiable'). The offer consisted of about 15 Palestinian enclaves, each entirely surrounded by Israeli territory, and with no water, air or security rights - modern Bantustands for the new Apartheidt state. This merely inflamed the situation and we have seen the results.

Similarly he submitted to the absurd demand of the North Korean, Kim Jong Il for unilateral negotiations with us and even reduced us to bribing him to delay his nuclear weapons program, and sending Madeline Albright over to kiss him up. What a contrast with Bush who has firmly reminded China, Japan, and South Korea that they have a problem in their neighborhood, and they must deal with it.

He signed the ill-conceived Kyoto treaty and then, for two years made no effort whatever to get it ratified or even persuade the American people of its supposed benefits - this in the face of a 97 - 0 Senate resolution warning him that the treaty was unacceptable, even before he signed it. After a near two year impasse in the negotiations over the Treaty of Rome concerning serious issues we have the ICC, Clinton, in the last weeks of his term, impulsively signed this awful treaty, bequeathing to his successor both the consequences and the European stew that followed.

Europe of course liked him because he indulged them in their favorite pastime of inward looking complacency and fiddling with EU formalisms while serious problems boil around them (and in their midst in Bosnia). (It was Senator Bob Dole who at last pressured Clinton into action in the disintegration of Yugoslavia.)

george

Composition rule #13: limit use of the same adjective, no matter how emotionally invested you are in that adjective, to a single appearance per five consecutive paragraphs.

Composition rule # 1: avoid cliched ideas by seeking to spot them in your own prose. If you don't, your absurdly disagreeing readers may well assume, perhaps absurdly, that you haven't said anything that isn't absurd.

Blatham,

You are right. I should have said 'ill-conceived ' Kyoto treaty. - I have fixed it

As for the cliches - they are only in your thoughtless and styilized habitual rejection of well founded ideas.

Nonsense. The point is that even allowing for a shrinking military, spending critical to military readiness declined disproportionately. I just don't buy your Arms of Krupp argument. Perhaps more pertinent than Manchester might be Tuchman's The Guns of August, or Prage, et al's, At Dawn We Slept. Denying the approach of war, ignoring it and hoping it will go away and leave you alone, has never worked. As observed by JFK, "To assure peace, we must prepare for war". The '90s decline of US military preparedness coupled with irresolute and inconsistent US response to terrorist provocation over the same period is the proximate cause of the current geopolitical unpleasantness, IMHO. Had appropriate response been made to such events as the first WTC bombing, Khobar Towers, the attacks on our embassies and on the USS Cole, among other fumbled plays, 9/11, and all that has ensued, would have been far less likely to have occurred. Clinton's policies emboldened the Islamists, leading them to conclude they could win by virtue of our reluctance to fight. Similar message was inferred by DPRK, though unfolding events and current US foreign policy are disabusing Kim and Co. of that notion.

Scrat -- That's as good an argument for abolishing god as anything I've seen! Or do I mean Satan?

Tartar, If god goes the way of the dumpster, satan disappears on its own - non-existence.

Now, if only Bush would go away, trailing after false gods (but wearing his Crawford boots, struttin')...

You know, The Republicans' most valuable players are The Democrat Activists. Good job, kids ... keep it up.

Timber,

Don't ignore themany contributions the ten dwarves are making every day.

timber and george, Nothing like sticking to the subject, rather than the people that participate. Shame on both of you - especially timber who reminds us often about this very thing.

cicerone,

Well the candidates are the subject of this thread. How do you feel about Tartarin's post above?

George is right on this point, I was wrong. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, US military spending is 43 percent of world military spending, not 'more than 50 percent' as I said. Mea culpa!


I agree, but several points here: 1) Imprecision cuts both ways. The dollar expenditure might either overstate or understate America's dominance. Unless you suggest a measue of military power that is clearly more adequate, we are stuck with this imperfect, but nevertheless workable and objective measure.

2) I would still argue that 43 percent of world spending is adequate for self defense. Pushing America around is not an option for any single country in the world. Nor is it an option for any remotely probable alliance of countries. This is clearly a good thing.

3) What the 43 percent may not be adequate for is the kind of imperial overstretch that neo-conservatives like Wolfowitz and Perle want to get into. I would argue that this, too, is a good thing. I prefer decentralized equilibrium to centralized coercion in societies for well known reasons; I also prefer it between societies for the same reasons. To put it less pompously, I don't like the idea of any nation pushing America around, but I don't the idea of America pushing any other nation around either. Military power ought to be distributed over the globe in a way that makes either evil impractical.

With all this in mind, I continue to think that the size America's military is just about right, and that the current explosion in defense spending is a waste of money, brains and time.

George -- Don't tell me you think a real god would back Bush? Seriously? A god you'd actually believe in?

george, I'm sure timber will remind tartar about sticking to the subject.

Here's one "candidate" who seems to be in another party: Hillary Clinton has come out full of praises for Karzai.

I dunno, c.i. , I think my earlier comment was pointedly topical, applicable across the entire field of current Democrat newsmakers, declared candidate or otherwise. As to guiding folks back to a topic, I rarfely bother unless the point is to defocus a couple or so of the participants from one another. Most digressions are fine with me; I often participate in them. Its only when they get mean that I get mean.