Subject: Why is it that the U.S. has trouble maintaining less than 200K combat troops?
Posted by: Left to Right on Thu Aug 14 2008 9:53:09 AM
Message:
I agree that our military has been worn down, and it never should
have come to this. We are a nation of over 300 million and the
Defense Department has a budget of $515 billion. Given the our
nation's population and the amount of money going to the military,
we should be able to easily maintain fighting forces in two
relatively low intensity conflicts. And yet we are having trouble
doing so. To me it indicates malfeasance by our nation's leaders.
Benjamin Friedman, Cato research fellow in defense and homeland
security studies, may have it right. He says:
"The United States defense budget, the $515 billion that we just
submitted to Congress really has nothing to do with terrorism. We're
buying fighters, F22s, we're buying army divisions, we are buying
destroyers, ships, submarines. That stuff doesn't really do much
against terrorism, so what is happening in the country since
September 11 is we've become very concerned about national security
and we've invested all this money on stuff that doesn't even defend
against the thing we're concerned about. So we have this very odd
situation in the country where we've basically bought a bunch of
stuff that doesn't really react to the danger that most concerns us."
He is talking about defending against direct terrorist attacks, but
much of what he is saying can be applied to the wars in Afganistan
and Iraq. We seem to be using the defense budget for big-ticket,
defense-industry sponsored items, while not providing our troops on
the ground with the "small scale" weapons and technology they need
to combat the guerilla wars we are actually fighting. It pisses me
off because this policy has almost certainly gotten troops
needlessly killed and wounded. If we are going to order soldiers
into harms way, we should at least make sure they have everything
they need to protect themselves and inflict casualities.
