FDL: Obama’s Pentagon Strategy: A Leaner, More Efficient Empire

[JackRiddler]

41. Military spending will remain at or above current levels.

The only question is whether the military and war budgets will be slightly lower after accounting for inflation. The absolute spending in dollars is supposed to rise.

In Obama's words, the military budget will remain larger than at the end of the Bush years and larger than at least the next 10 nations combined.

This means that the military and war supplemental budgets, plus the costs that follow from war (such as higher veterans benefits and higher interest payments), will continue to make up the majority of the federal discretionary budget.

In Panetta's words, the military will be built to engage in a major land war in Korea and then deal with the simultaneous blocking of the Straits of Hormuz.

I find it hard to make statements more hyperbolic than these.

And yet: They are just facts.

In combination with the expansion of the drone and other largely remote-based programs, the escalations of hostilities on several fronts (Afpak, Yemen, Somalia), and new legalisms defining the homeland and the rest of the world as battlespace and allowing indefinite detention without charges, lawyers or even notification, it is no exaggeration to speak of a leaner, tougher imperialism.

One would have to intentionally distort to compare such factual statements to the defactualized monologues of a Glenn Beck. (What's with the strawmen? Is that how it's going to be when we disagree? Always accuse those deviating from a simplistic D-party line of being R's, or Freepers, or Paulites, or Becks?)

And if something has changed at FDL and indeed at DU, then I submit it's that we've crossed the threshold where there is any rationale for supporting the Obama administration other than lesser-evilism. Consider what that means; and as a supporter you shouldn't be so intent on rapping everyone who says it on the knuckles, because lesser-evilists and not full supporters are going to make up the bulk of his voters come November.