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Never agree with this guy, but he's right here.
Posted on: March 3, 2017 at 08:06:15 CT
GA Tiger MU
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As I, in my infinite wisdom, have oft said, we will never change one muslim mind. Only they can do that.
Throwing more money at the military won’t make it stronger
By Fareed Zakaria
The first time I met Gen. David Petraeus, he said something that surprised me. It was the early days of the Iraq War and, although things were not going well, he had directed his region in the north skillfully and effectively. I asked him whether he wished he had more troops. Petraeus was too politically savvy to criticize the Donald Rumsfeld “light footprint” strategy, so he deflected the question, answering it a different way. “I wish we had more Foreign Service officers, aid professionals and other kinds of non-military specialists,” he said. The heart of the problem the United States was facing in Iraq, he noted presciently, was a deep sectarian divide between Shiite and Sunni, Arab and Kurd. “We need help on those issues. Otherwise, we’re relying on 22-year-old sergeants to handle them. Now, they are great kids, but they really don’t know the history, the language, the politics.”
I thought of that exchange when reading reports that President Trump is proposing a $54 billion increase for the Defense Department, which would be offset by large cuts in the State Department, foreign aid and other civilian agencies. Trump says he wants to do this so that “nobody will dare question our military might again.” But no one does. The U.S. military remains in a league of its own. The U.S. defense budget in 2015 was nine times the size of Russia’s and three times that of China’s.
None of the difficulties the United States has faced over the past 25 years has been in any way because its military was too small or weak.
The article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/throwing-more-money-at-the-military-wont-make-it-stronger/2017/03/02/74716c22-ff99-11e6-8ebe-6e0dbe4f2bca_story.html?utm_term=.171dca277583
Throwing more money at the military won’t make it stronger
By Fareed Zakaria
The first time I met Gen. David Petraeus, he said something that surprised me. It was the early days of the Iraq War and, although things were not going well, he had directed his region in the north skillfully and effectively. I asked him whether he wished he had more troops. Petraeus was too politically savvy to criticize the Donald Rumsfeld “light footprint” strategy, so he deflected the question, answering it a different way. “I wish we had more Foreign Service officers, aid professionals and other kinds of non-military specialists,” he said. The heart of the problem the United States was facing in Iraq, he noted presciently, was a deep sectarian divide between Shiite and Sunni, Arab and Kurd. “We need help on those issues. Otherwise, we’re relying on 22-year-old sergeants to handle them. Now, they are great kids, but they really don’t know the history, the language, the politics.”
I thought of that exchange when reading reports that President Trump is proposing a $54 billion increase for the Defense Department, which would be offset by large cuts in the State Department, foreign aid and other civilian agencies. Trump says he wants to do this so that “nobody will dare question our military might again.” But no one does. The U.S. military remains in a league of its own. The U.S. defense budget in 2015 was nine times the size of Russia’s and three times that of China’s.
None of the difficulties the United States has faced over the past 25 years has been in any way because its military was too small or weak.
The article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/throwing-more-money-at-the-military-wont-make-it-stronger/2017/03/02/74716c22-ff99-11e6-8ebe-6e0dbe4f2bca_story.html?utm_term=.171dca277583
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Never agree with this guy, but he's right here. - GA Tiger MU - 3/3 08:06:15
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