So you want us to be Freedonia… a “poll” a few weeks ago listed many typical countries and the percentage of the GDP spent on the military (but it didn’t mention the current level for the U.S.). The world average is 2% – the U.S. is about 3.9%, the same as Russia. Israel, which is surrounded by countries that want to destroy it and in which all citizens are required to serve in the military is at 7.3%…
The most popular response was we should match Freedonia’s 17.6% of GDP. Freedonia was the fictional country in the Marx Brothers movie “Duck Soup”.
I’m puzzled by this on at least two counts. Conservatives generally agree that the Federal government is too big and taxes are too high – yet the group who answered that poll want to increase military spending to a level only exceeded by the spending of Nazi Germany during World War II.
The other paradox is there is a strong sentiment here that President Obama is not even President – yet he is the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Military per the U.S. Constitution. The military is obligated to salute and follow his orders. If you don’t trust the president, why would you want to give him a military 4 times larger than the current military?
I believe the Pentagon has lost trillions in the past. I’m sure this money will be accounted for and not wasted on training our troops to exercise restraint.
Guns! Guns! All God’s children got guns!
My followup to that was…. Okay, so you want to spend more on the military – what do you want to spend it on – the answered were mainly increasing pay, increasing pensions, and increasing spending on VA hospitals (already at $48 billion). Buying new weapons or starting new wars wasn’t high on the list. I stand by the opinion that the US military has evolved into a multigenerational social welfare organization. That’s why it’s costing $1 million per soldier per year to sit in Iraq playing with camel spiders.
I watched the TV news on podcast and NBC was laying the groundwork for the US military needing to go back into Somalia. Something about the “new” al Qaeda training ground.
I thought that was Dearborn…