For the longest time I have been pretty upset that we have not increased Defense spending as a % of GDP above the lowest levels of the Clinton Era. Yes you read that right. The War Time “conservative”, President Bush, has kept Defense Spending under the levels of Peace Time liberal President Clinton. Go ahead and read that again.
The facts show the story of a nation unwilling to dedicate the same percentage of funds towards its own defense as it did when a substantially more rational enemy was faced across the Rubicon. (1990=5.6, 1991=5.0, 1992=5.2, 1993=4.8, 1994=4.3, 1995=4.0, 1996=3.7, 1997=3.5, 1998=3.3, 1999= 3.3)Defense spending in 2006 remained at 3.7% of GDP a level not far from the lowest point of the Clinton years and which we were led to believe by Candidate Bush was too low.
We got attacked by an enemy who has troops around the world. That enemy managed to destroy two of our tallest buildings in our most important city. While those buildings were being destroyed he had world wide network coverage of our fellow citizens choosing to jump out of 100 floor buildings rather than to die inside of horrific flames, then the buildings fell onto those below. Another plane full of his “Special Forces” managed to successfully attack the center of our military headquarters forcing the SecDef out into the lawn to do triage. Finally one other plane was headed towards Washington DC to attack our Capital. And we responded by…
Keeping Defense Spending at the same level as a percentage of GDP that it was when Clinton was in office. It was kept at the same level that had Candidate Bush declaring that our military needed rebuilding in a debate with Gore in 2000.
MODERATOR: You said in the Boston debate, Governor, on this issue of nation building, that the United States military is overextended now. Where is it overextended? Where are there U.S. military that you would bring home if you become president?
BUSH: First let me just say one comment about what the vice president said. I think one of the lessons in between World War I and World War II is we let our military atrophy. And we can’t do that. We’ve got to rebuild our military. But one of the problems we have in the military is we’re in alot of places around the world.
Well finally some people besides me are starting to wonder why we don’t have at least 15 divisions of troops ready to fight at any one time. We used to have during Reagan’s term almost 25 Divisions of Troops ready to defend our nation. We need to get back to that level because it is impossible to train the sorts of troops we need quickly so we as a nation simply have to understand that Prescription Drug Benefit and No Child Left Behind and the rest of the Pork spread around so liberally by a “conservative” congress means nothing if the Capital is on fire as it almost was except for the efforts not of our marvelous Special Forces, but by regular citizens forced to defend our capital because we were trying to do Defense on the Cheap.
Inside of Donald Sensing’s bigger article about the need to “Go Big” in Iraq. (I agree that killing them is a good idea) we find this gem, especially if it means that we will see increased spending on more troops. Thank god someone noticed…
One of Kagan’s points is that the size of the Army must increase. Some of us have been urging this for a long time, but since the main military figure of this alternative plan to the ISG was a retired Army vice chief of staff, Jack Keane, perhaps it is no coincidence that the serving chief of staff, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, warned the House Armed Service Committee two days ago,
- … that the active-duty Army “will break” under the strain of today’s war-zone rotations, the nation’s top Army general yesterday called for expanding the force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year and lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National Guard and Army Reserve troops.
Link to One Hand Clapping » Blog Archive » Bigger war for Iraq will be last chance
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[...] At least Clinton had the excuse that we were not yet aware we were in a war of existential import. The facts show the story of a nation unwilling to dedicate the same percentage of funds towards its own defense as it did when a substantially more rational enemy was [...]