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Republican Illogic About The Military

Posted by: Linda Carbonell on September 20, 2011.

Rep. Buck McKeon

According to Republican Representative Buck McKeon of California, if the bi-partisan debt committee can’t reach a deal by the deadline in November, we may have to reinstate the military draft.

This completely illogical statement is based on some rather stunning ignorance of mathematics. If the compelled cuts to all programs were to materialize because of failure of the super-committee to reach an agreement, how in heaven’s name would we be able to replace laid off soldiers with draftees? According to McKeon, a volunteer army is “very expensive,” and though “no one is proposing resurrecting a conscript system…” the cuts would force us to “break faith with the troops – destroying our ability to retain forces in sufficient numbers to meet the threats we face.”

First of all, our threats are not nations. Our largest philosophical opponent on the planet is China, which spends only 13% of what we do on defense, and has the second-highest defense budget in real money in the world. Neither Iraq not Afghanistan threatened us in any way. The Taliban in Afghanistan may have provided shelter for al Qaida, but the terror group was not an arm of the Afghan government, which for all intents and purposes didn’t even exist eleven years ago. And we had the situation in Iraq pretty much under control with the no-fly zones. The Kurds in northern Iraq had even created an independent republic with free elections under the no-fly policy. So, exactly what “threat” does McKeon think we need the biggest military in the world to defend ourselves against?

A lot of Republican lawmakers have defense industries in their districts, including Speaker John Boehner. This isn’t about our military readiness (if we had a large enough military, we would not have used the National Guard to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.) This is about scaring Americans into opposing any cuts in our defense budget to protect the defense industries in the districts of Republican lawmakers.

We spend as much money on defense as the rest of the world combined. We spend half the money that is spent on defense on this planet. There are 196 countries on this planet and 195 of them spend less than 13% of what we spend, including the second-highest spender. That’s obscene. We could cut 86% to 87% out of our defense budget and still spend more than China. Threatening us with reinstating the draft is just that – threatening us….keep our defense industries running or we will punish you.

McKeon’s appearance on Fox News to push this idea was filled with the usual nonsense – how we would be betraying our honorable troops if we made any cuts, how we would be leaving ourselves open to another 9-11, how we need to support our troops. It’s all propaganda, bull and the worst kind of fuzzy math.