re: #407 Fourth Football of the Apocalypse

Oh, our military is “depleted”.

On that very point, Stonekettle goes nuclear:

Stop what you’re doing and read this. It’s worth your time. https://t.co/ikjNOa5l4B

— Erik Fichtner (@unixronin) March 3, 2016

All these right wing loons saying the military is depleted or needs to be stronger, please be specific - what isn’t strong enough. What must be even stronger?

Or, is that really code for the willingness to consider negotiations and diplomacy before using bombs as a last resort. Because that’s exactly what the GOP is doing. They think Obama isn’t using enough force - dropping enough bombs, as though that’ll solve insurgencies, conflicts, and make our enemies cower.

All the bombing in the world didn’t defeat Vietnamese insurgents. Bombing Chechnya didn’t end the insurgency there. Afghanistan. Iraq. All places where military force proved inadequate/insufficient.

On and on it goes.

But the GOP thinks we need to spend even more on the military. Memo: we already spend more than the next 10 countries combined (and that includes our allies among big spenders). We are throwing down a trillion dollars on a new fighter jet program to combat what exactly? When exactly was the last air to air fighter battle because the new plane can’t even do air to ground properly for another few years.

We’re buying new carriers (and I’m a fan of carriers and carrier aviation because of force projection), but we have more than the rest of the world combined - and again, that includes France and UK - our allies.

So, when you hear we need to rebuild our military, it’s really about fear projection.