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

[paulk]

81. I take small comfort in this change of strategy

from the article -

“Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow,” the president told reporters, “but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow.” In fact, he added with a touch of pride, it “will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration,” totaling more than $700 billion a year and accounting for about half of the average American’s income tax. So much for the Pentagon’s budget being slashed – like we were promised – the way lawmakers are trying to cut those “failed domestic programs.”

The U.S. could cut its military spending in half tomorrow and still spend more than three times as much as its next nearest rival, China. That’s because China, instead of waging wars of choice around the world, prefers projecting its might by investing in its own country. On the other hand, the U.S. under the leadership of Obama is beefing up its military presence in China’s backyard, more interested in projecting its dwindling power than rebuilding its economy.


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It's not about strategy, imho, it's about money. Money we don't have - being funneled into the trough of the military industrial complex while the infrastructure of our nation falls apart, while the economy destroys the middle class, while unemployment and poverty turn what was once the greatest country on the planet into a pale shadow of our expectations.

And I disagree with you on this - "The starting point for anything at any moment is right where you're standing". That's been the credo of the Obama administration from the start and it's their greatest failing, imo. Bush, after stealing the 2000 election, set out to reverse every Clinton administration policy he could - Obama, after winning one of the largest mandates in recent history, accepted the hard right turn of the Bush years as a fait accompli - he started from "where we were standing" instead of aggressively trying to roll back the degradations of his predecessor.