Truscott belittles the Iraq War and Petraeus' role in winning that war. Max Boot saves me the chore of responding to that small man's attacks.
I have to ask again, is it open season on our generals? The timing, as they say, is interesting given the debate on military spending we will have next year.
UPDATE: Ah yes, the call for the military--already much more capable than potential opponents (As if China is a real threat, eh? And a lot of global military spending is by our allies)--to contribute their "fair share" to deficit reduction to save the foundation of our military strength, our economy:
None of these cuts would absolve us of the need to grapple with the unsustainable growth of entitlements and to raise tax revenues. But making defense pay its share would make those other economies less painful. And after all, as Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was fond of saying, “The single biggest threat to our national security is our debt.”
One, we spend a lot for a full-spectrum military that can go anywhere on the globe. That costs money even before we spend money for the first troop to hit the ground.
Two, we spend money--on training, readiness, weapons, and technology--so we don't have to spend as much in the blood of our troops.
Three, the spending of our allies adds little to real deployable power. At best it allows allies to defend in place against threats to themselves alone. Often it isn't enough given the threats. Total up the spending of our allies and it is irrelevant to the fact that even Britain will soon be able to only scrounge up a large battlegroup of perhaps 7,000 troops to fight with us for any amount of time.
Recall that the greatest concentration of military spending outside of America--European NATO--last year had great difficulty defeating the decimated forces of Libya!
And four, in what world do you live in where our defense spending is the cause of our deficits? I've said it in the past and I'll say it again, if we can significantly reduce our deficit with overall spending cuts, of course the military should be part of that. It's that important.
But if we continue to run huge deficits by only cutting defense spending, we get the worst of both worlds. Remember, the Iraq War cost about the same to fight as the 2009 stimulus act spent at the stroke of a signature.
But it is easier to cut defense spending when the military's reputation is tarnished by scandal. This is not a reason to excuse this behavior by our brass. But why all the attention now?
