This is probably bureaucratic empire-building

Post #33,144 by neelk 3/22/02 11:10:42 AM Reply	This is probably bureaucratic empire-building The US military has maybe one tenth of our special forces and 1 /percent/ of our total manpower in Afghanistan. It's rather unlikely that this small a commitment has strained the US military as badly as the generals claim; most likely they are trying to outmaneuver their fellow generals for a bigger slice of the pie. That said, I'm kind of surprised by how cheap the campaign is turning out to be -- if we were spending at the rate that we were in 1982 (at the height of the Reagan buildup) the US defense budget would be right around 600 billion dollars. I hope it stays low, too, because beefing it up that much would knock something like 0.3% off the annual real GDP growth, which is serious bad news.
Post #33,148 by marlowe 3/22/02 11:43:11 AM Reply	But this is bigger than just Afghanistan. We won the first round. But the fight's not over. [link\|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html\|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html] Truth is that which is the case. Accept no substitutes. If competence is considered "hubris" then may I and my country always be as "arrogant" as we can possibly manage.
Post #33,152 by Brandioch 3/22/02 11:58:47 AM Reply	Gimme a "V"! Gimme an "I" Gimme an "E" Gimme an "T" Gimme an "N" Gimme an "A" Gimme an "M" The "war" that started with "Get Osama!" But Osama git hisself away and be hiddin. So, we "Get the Taliban!" And the Taliban they be out of central control. But now we have guerilla units what be hiddin in dem mountains. So, we "Get the guerillas!" And we do the ole US-back-local-government-of-democracy (but-really-is-just-another-band-of-thugs) thingie. We trade gooks for sand-niggers and jungle for mountains and you know what? I is gonna go home now and fire up mah DVD of Apocalypse Now. All that is old is new again.
Post #33,178 by Ashton 3/22/02 3:44:07 PM Reply	No..._____there IS something new A new generation raised from momma's* knee on the slogans (unchanged) of past iterations. Wrapped in The Flag, stocked with the Jingoism... and blinkers donned - to blindly go where others have gone. * fewer and fewer poppas stick around, after the 3-minute Fun part.. nowadays. The dehumanization is always Step #1: what new epithet shall replace the gooks of the Vietnam prototype? (We weren't screwing around in the Balkans long enought to create a 'Bucktoothed Jap' surrogate there.) Common denominator though: there's Always marlowesque rhetoric in the sports bars, at this stage of the A) impatience for Action B) further simplification of the Whys for the Action and - just How Far We Should Go THIS Time... but without C) Hurting the GNP / shopping toooo much. [but it'll be Fine to raid the school, medical, SS funds {illusionary as they are anyway} since WTF: mostly it'll hit the smarmy Me-Me-Me Boomers first..] and who wants to train any really Smart kids? Hell, That isn't what our educational system is supposed to produce! Smart Kids could pronounce cannon fodder and realize They Are it. (Wish I could find the libretto for The Green Table, a kinda stage ballet of >20 years ago: showing the Pols gesticulating around a Big Green Table / and then as the lights dimmed: showed the consequences, the heaped dead burned young bodies. Then later - at the Table - they all shook hands over the 30-yr.old. Cognac. THAT's our Real History) Damn.. don't we ever tire of re-runs?
Post #33,179 by Ashton 3/22/02 3:49:25 PM Reply	Omniscient LRPD notes: ____ It's Howdy Doody Time!
Post #33,219 by Brandioch 3/22/02 10:47:30 PM Reply	Heh heh heh. Damn.. don't we ever tire of re-runs? What was that about "those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it? All that is old is new again. I say we get over there and teach them gooks a lesson about how we'll make them free!
Post #33,257 by a6l6e6x 3/23/02 7:15:46 PM Reply	Who said? - George Santayana said. George Santayana famously warned that "Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it." Alex "Never express yourself more clearly than you think." -- Neils Bohr (1885-1962)
Post #33,197 by neelk 3/22/02 6:08:06 PM Reply	Re: But this is bigger than just Afghanistan. Sure, but a basic premise of US military planning since the end of the Cold War has been to retain the ability to fight two medium-sized (ie, Gulf War-sized) wars simultaneously on different continents. The Afghan campaign is a lot smaller than the Gulf War, so that's why I think believe the military's testimony to Congress overstated their need. The "Clinton drawdown" is generally overstated in the press -- in constant dollars we spent about the same as we did from the mid-to-late 80s through the end of the Clinton administration. I think the current Bush proposal is about right, actually. Adding some 50 billion dollars to the budget gives the military room to conduct military operations without having to gut R&D or infrastructure work. Throwing money at the Pentagon is not guaranteed to produce better results, anymore than throwing money at the local school board will produce more educated students. Better organization and tighter oversight are needed to make sure the money flows where it's needed. Fortunately, Donald Rumsfeld both understands this and has a rep as a truly vicious bureacratic infighter, so I'm modestly hopeful that we will see value for our tax dollars.

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