John Derbyshire going on about Military spending on the Corner.
Stanley: You write that: “We have been shown in no uncertain terms that our military is far too small to handle the demands of the war on terror.”
Couple of weeks ago I wanted to write a sentence saying: “The U.S. spends more on its military establishment than the next N highest-spending nations.” Of course, I needed to find a value for N.
I went to the CIA factbook, always a good stop for this sort of thing. Sure enough, they have a neat table of nations ranked by military expenditure. Starting with number two on the table, I worked my way down, intending to just keep adding up the numbers until the total surpassed the U.S. figure. From that I could deduce N.
After about twenty additions, I gave up. The sentence never got written.
What we spend on the military in comparison to other nations is irrelevant. Furthermore to imagine that the CIA actually has some idea of what China spends is laughable. These guys don’t have any idea what China spends on their military. The CIA should have been fired a long long time ago.
But beyond that it is simply a fact that comparing us to France and Japan, the next couple of nations on the list, misses the point. France and Japan are not expected to defend the entire planet, we are. We stand as the last wall between madness and civilization and I for one do not want to be frugal in that defense. At least if we must cut the budget let us cut Welfare, Prescription Drug benefit, Social Security, No Child Left Behind and any of the other millions of programs we simply cannot seem to end.
Furthermore it entirely misses the point that we have had Presidents not afraid to spend dollars on the military. Perhaps this is not to be admitted in polite company but Clinton spent more as % of GDP than Bush has by a long shot. At times we reached as high as 5% of GDP. We have not yet broken 4% with Bush.
Now if John wants to argue that we should be careful spending money fine. But even then he should be realistic and understand that its the Government and waste is endemic to the operation of any Government. We accept waste when the Government is fulfilling its primary duty of defending us.
Beyond all of this though, where we have completely gone astray is our willpower to fight wars. We simply don’t have the will to win. No weapon system in the world can help a people who don’t know how to win, to win. We are too genteel it seems to defend ourselves. And so we will exit the world stage much like the Dodo bird soon enough. So maybe all this worry about spending on the military is merely a waste of breath.
Someone who gets it Andy McCarthy.
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