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Did you ever consider that maybe the rest of the world doesn't see or refuses to see the threat in the world.......you could say a modern day Neville chambelain mindset of Kum Ba Ya...
Let's see - the rest of the world racks half TRILLION dollars a year (every SINGLE year) in military spending.
No. I think the rest of the world understands "threats" well enough. Half a TRILLION dollars a year sure doesn't sound like any "Kum Ba Ya" I've ever heard of.
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Consumer sentiment slips in October
Consumer sentiment slips in October: survey - Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Consumer-sentiment-slips-in-rb-660245976.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=1&asset=&cco de - broken link)=
Stocks give back some of previous day's big gains - Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Stock-futures-point-to-apf-4133222732.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset= &ccode - broken link)=
Consumer sentiment slips in October
Consumer sentiment slips in October: survey - Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Consumer-sentiment-slips-in-rb-660245976.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=1&asset=&cco de - broken link)=
Let's see - the rest of the world racks half TRILLION dollars a year (every SINGLE year) in military spending.
No. I think the rest of the world understands "threats" well enough. Half a TRILLION dollars a year sure doesn't sound like any "Kum Ba Ya" I've ever heard of.
Ken
China 17.6 percent boost in official defense spending in 2008..Thats what they say in public...but I wonder what the real truth is...
Chinese military is formally referred to, has elicited both questions and concerns from the U.S. as well as countries situated along China’s periphery. Without any direct external threat aimed at China, skeptics wonder why there has been such a large and consistent hike in funding for increased Chinese military capabilities.
China 17.6 percent boost in official defense spending in 2008..Thats what they say in public...but I wonder what the real truth is...
Chinese military is formally referred to, has elicited both questions and concerns from the U.S. as well as countries situated along China’s periphery. Without any direct external threat aimed at China, skeptics wonder why there has been such a large and consistent hike in funding for increased Chinese military capabilities.
Again...modern day Neville Chamberlains...Kum Ba Ya...
Um - yeah, RIGHT!
From your OWN (1st) link:
"Yet despite the unyielding efforts and increased investment, China remains - for now - tied to asymmetric strategies aimed at offsetting American military superiority and saddled with defense industrial and technology capabilities that still lag behind the West. Strategic power projection is but a distant dream as the ability of the PLA to deploy forces beyond its borders for extended periods remains negligible."
From you OWN (2nd) link:
"China has boosted military spending by more than 10 percent annually for almost two decades, and the official figure of $71 billion this year is thought by many analysts to represent only a portion of total defense spending. It still amounts to only a fraction of U.S. defense spending.
China says much of the increase is used to improve salaries and living conditions for soldiers, but it has also been adding sophisticated new warships, submarines, fighter jets and other weapons systems to its arsenal. PLA leaders have also said they are considering building an aircraft carrier, but such a development is thought to be years, if not decades, away."
Again - VERY poor arguments for spending AS MUCH AS THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED.
"Yet despite the unyielding efforts and increased investment, China remains - for now - tied to asymmetric strategies aimed at offsetting American military superiority and saddled with defense industrial and technology capabilities that still lag behind the West. Strategic power projection is but a distant dream as the ability of the PLA to deploy forces beyond its borders for extended periods remains negligible."
From you OWN (2nd) link:
"China has boosted military spending by more than 10 percent annually for almost two decades, and the official figure of $71 billion this year is thought by many analysts to represent only a portion of total defense spending. It still amounts to only a fraction of U.S. defense spending.
China says much of the increase is used to improve salaries and living conditions for soldiers, but it has also been adding sophisticated new warships, submarines, fighter jets and other weapons systems to its arsenal. PLA leaders have also said they are considering building an aircraft carrier, but such a development is thought to be years, if not decades, away."
Again - VERY poor arguments for spending AS MUCH AS THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED.
Ken
with all due respect Ken...I really dont care how much the world including the chinese spend on their military...but if god forbid there's a conflict down the road...and we have to send our brave men and women into harms way...I want to make certain that they have an overwhelming advantage over an enemy....maybe thats not a concern to you and your liberal friends in general...but it is a concern to me!!!!!
Last edited by tonyandclaire89; 11-01-2009 at 04:48 PM..
with all due respect Ken...I really dont care how much the world including the chinese spend on their military...but if god forbid there's a conflict down the road...and we have to send our men and women into harms way...I want to make certain that they an overwhelming advantage over an enemy....maybe thats not a concern to you and your liberals in general...but it is a concern to me!!!!!
It's a concern to me too - but so is spending the APPROPRIATE AMOUNT to meet our needs - especially at a time (once the economy recovers) that we are going to under enormous pressure to reduce government spending. The military doesn't deserve (or need) a blank check just because they are the military. There is no need - nor justification - to spend AS MUCH AS THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED - NONE, NADA, ZIP! If we have to spent that much money to be "safe" then something is seriously wrong with the way we are spending it.
All too often we fund the WRONG things with WAY TOO MUCH money. How much did all that military spending protect us from 9-11? - an attack I might add that was carried out with super expensive and sophisticated weapons systems called "boxcutters".
How well did our nuclear arsonal protect us from THAT? We need to shift the way our military is postured. We are still geared towards super-expensive, super-destructive, large-scale thermonuclear warfare - when in reality the types of threats we most likely face are of a MUCH smaller scale.
You think you "know" so much about me - but in fact you know NOTHING about me. The fact of the matter is I come from a military family, have long been a "military-history buff" (even planned to teach it), spent 10 years supporting military logistics DIRECTLY (including providing direct computing support for Air Force One at Andrews AFB) - and probably know and understand MORE about the military than you and most of the other "Chickenhawks" on this board can even dream of - so get off your high horse about how I want to emasculate the military.
You folks on the Right go on and on about fiscal responsiblity - but when it comes to your "pet" subjects you have NONE WHATSOEVER.
The fact is, there is NO NEED to be spending as much as we are spending. All to often we are spending the wrong amount, on the wrong things, to meet the wrong threat. Try reading some military history to understand how nations ALWAYS prepare for the LAST war instead of the NEXT war. If you want to understand the mistakes we are making, read "Strategy" (originally titled "Strategy of the Indirect Approach") by B. H. Liddell Hart (probably the greatest military mind of the 20th century) - who understood DECADES ago how the presence of large-scale thermonuclear weapons dimished the threat of large-scale warfare but INCREASED the likelihood of small-scale insurgency-based warfare - you know - the kind of stuff we've been facing?
All those big, expensive, large-scale nuclear weapons systems do NOTHING against that kind of threat - they are TOTALLY useless - furthermore in many ways they even WEAKEN us because for every dollar that we spend on THOSE types of weapons systems that's one less dollar we have to spend in the areas we DO need to spend money on. We do not need the ability to destroy the world 20 times over - it's expensive and it gains us NOTHING. Being able to destroy the world once or twice over is MORE than enough.
Wake up, take off your ignorant "Chickenhawk" glasses and LEARN something about the nature of the threats we face - and the TYPES of RESPONSES that are suitable to THOSE threats - not the threats of the past that are not nearly what they used to be.
And get over your "Chickenhawk" high horse ideas that anyone who's not a radical Wingnut hates the military (that only shows how IGNORANT you are). I LOVE the military. I grew up in the military - and I have NO intentions of "abandoning" the military - I just don't see the sense in bankrupting ourselves to buy and maintain old outdated weapons systems that no longer reflect the realities of the current world situation. It's time to move on - to reposture our military and remold it into something meaner, leaner, and more suitable to the challenges it faces TODAY (and yes - into something we can more easily afford).
Are you in favor of bankrupting your country with over-the-top socialist programs? Don't you think that "all to often we are spending the wrong amount, on the wrong things" applies to many other areas as well? Take health coverage, for example. We could cover the uninsured for less than $50 million a years. Tweak a few regulations to take care of some of the injustices in the system, and bingo! We've just saved a trillion dollars.
I'd much rather see our money going to defense and improved equipment for our troops than
being wasted on bureaucratic programs designed by government for greater government control over all of us. If we're going to cut anywhere, military budgets should be low on the list.
Are you in favor of bankrupting your country with over-the-top socialist programs? Don't you think that "all to often we are spending the wrong amount, on the wrong things" applies to many other areas as well? Take health coverage, for example. We could cover the uninsured for less than $50 million a years. Tweak a few regulations to take care of some of the injustices in the system, and bingo! We've just saved a trillion dollars.
Wayyyyyy too simplistic (and wrong) a view of health care.
The idea that private business is somehow automatically efficient is essentially incorrect. The fact is, private business can be just as inefficient and screwed up as ANYTHING government does - and this is particularly true for BIG business (as health care is).
Ever wonder why Dilbert (you know, the cartoon showing the workers daily life in a TOTALLY screwed up company) became so popular? The answer is REALLY SIMPLE - nearly every reader had the exact same reaction to the cartoon strip - they automatically thought "gee, the cartoonist must work HERE!" What does that tell you about the state of American business when a cartoon portraying a company so totally messed up and mis-managed is thought by so many readers to be where THEY WORK? I'll tell you what it says - it says the dumb types of things shown in the cartoon are happening EVERYWHERE - in companies all across the country.
The fact is - companies all across America are ill-led and messed-up. That's not the EXCEPTION - it's the RULE - particularly in LARGE companies. Organizations - whether they a big union, a big business or a big government ALL make the same types of mistakes, fall into the same management traps, and develop the same types of heavy, inefficient and bloated bureaucracies. Despite GOP misconceptions, those things are not unique to government - private business develops that way too - ESPECIALLY BIG BUSINESS (which our Health Care System is built around). The only difference is that in the case of government all that "dirty laundry" of screw ups and mismanagement is constantly made public - whereas in the world of private enterprise such companies are not under the same glare of public scrutiny all the time and the mess ups are simply kept PRIVATE. People who work there of course know about it (why do you think Dilbert hit such a chord?), but folks outside are kept in the dark - thereby giving the illusion that private enterprise somehow runs "smoothly" - when it fact it doesn't run smoothly AT ALL. Big business is not efficient - it's overblown, bloated, filled with uneccesary redundancy and bureaucracy - the same as government - kept afloat in spite of all that simply by the inertia of their entrenched position.
Small upstart companies are often "lean and mean" and highly effecient, but few big businesses (you know - the types that dominate our health care industry) can truthfully make THAT claim. Most of those companies are just as big and bloated and inefficient and wasteful as any government-run program. Why do you think we spend so much MORE per person on health care than so many of those "Socialist Health Care" countries? If private enterprise was doing such a d*mn good job with health care that wouldn't be the case - but the fact is, it's NOT. Our current health care system is messed up BIG TIME - costs are rising FAR HIGHER than the rate of inflation and private businesses trying to provide health care coverage for their employees are being squeezed tighter and tighter and are starting to pass (by neccessity) more and more of that cost on to their employees.
Now, I'm not claiming to know what the answer is - but I CAN tell you this - a few "tweaks" isn't going to fix the problem. There are too many big bloated firms all throughout the industry that are all "feeding at the trough" - overpaid (and admittedly overworked) doctors and specialists struggling to pay off wayyyyy too expensive school costs (and live wayyyyyy to ritzy a lifestyle), massive drug manufacturing firms who gouge the American people for their products so that they sell those same products overseas for a fraction of the price, foot dragging Health Care Insurance companies who's primary interest is in making money and paying huge bonus's to their CEO's as opposed to providing good care for their clients (and who have their OWN so-called "death panels) and an army of bloodsucking mercenary lawyers (for patients, health care providers and insurance companies) who constantly pit one side against the other so that they can steal the money of both while they are all squabbling.
There is nothing even REMOTELY efficient about ANY of that - and a few "tweaks" isn't going to fix it.
Ken
Quote:
Originally Posted by southward bound
I'd much rather see our money going to defense and improved equipment for our troops than
being wasted on bureaucratic programs designed by government for greater government control over all of us. If we're going to cut anywhere, military budgets should be low on the list.
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