http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/politics/main3495921.shtml
During a speech at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C. on Tuesday 13 November, 2007, Republican presidential candidate & former senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee called for the enlargement of the US Army & Marine Corps beyond Pentagon requests for a standing Army of 547,000 soldiers. Mr. Thompson yesterday went so far as to outline his plan for a 1 MILLION member ground force in the US military: the Army boasting 775,000 and the Marine Corps adding 225,000.
Mr. Thompson went even farther, advocating a policy pegging America's annual defense budget at exactly 4.5% the annual GDP. This massive annual increase (corresponding more or less to $150 billion more per year than current non-war related spending), however, was not specified as a means to foot the bill for such a large standing army.
In fact, Mr. Thompson totally failed to clarify exactly HOW the million-member military he called for would be recruited and paid for. This is an important question, since the Pentagon is already straining to meet existing soldier recruitment quotas, and started the current fiscal year with the lowest recruitment levels in the 34 year history of the all-volunteer standing Army.
Essentially, Mr. Thompson is doing nothing more than pounding the drum of Imperial Militarism, calling for a standing military so hopelessly large and expensive that it cannot be sustained in the face of a massively unpopular and immoral war, lengthening deployments, and dropping recruitment.
That begs the question of what exactly Mr. Thompson's point REALLY must be. Can he actually believe that enlarging the US military's ground forces to a million soldiers & marines while increasing already high military spending is in the best interests of a Republic built by free men yet already politically, militarily and economically strained to the breaking point? Or is it just possible that he's merely espousing more Imperial Militarism propaganda to reassure Neo-Cons of his 'peace through strength' credentials as being better than any other Republican candidate despite the manifest pie in the sky fantasies that such policies are smart, safe, and even Constitutional?
Friends, Brothers, Patriots! STOP the Imperial Militarism Madness of a Million-Member Standy Army! Support Ron Paul in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, and end the madness of warmongering, imperialism, and Federal usurpations that candidates like Fred Thompson will only too proudly perpetuate.
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2 comments:
What kind of old timey war are we fighting that he thinks throwing waves and waves of soldiers at our "enemies" will help us win? By win, i actually have no idea what that means... This is the 21st century! I thought technology was supposed to lessen the need for actual ground troups or something of that sort, i really have no idea what im talking about, but im thinking more soldiers doesn't equal victory or peace....i'm not for just abandoning what we're doing over there, whatever it is, because of how unstable it really is over there and how what would happen to the mass of people if we just drop them and leave them in chaos, maybe it was a bad choice to enter this war in the beginning, but that part we can't change, and we have to finish what we started. Plus, i'm not sure how that thin thread of alliance we have with pakistan will hold up once our physical influence is gone from the middle east. 10 billion dollars can only buy off a country with nuclear capabilities for so long......i hope my writing makes sense, it is 3 in the morning after all.....good luck with your blog!!! :)
Meg, you raised some really valid points.
Brute numbers and manpower will not win a contemporary war, this is true. The qualitative and technological superiority of American soldiers over our enemies is more important than numbers.
However, building a larger ground force allows the US more availability in deployments and interventions in more places than we currently can. This means we could invade more countries and prosecute more unconstitutional wars, and it also sounds strong and firm as a soundbite on campaign.
As for Pakistan, it's no different than our alliances with Saudi Arabia or Turkey. They're all brutally repressive, undemocratic, and imperialistic or monarchical. We did it for limited objectives and temporary convenience, and now we're morally paying the price.
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