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A Strong Economy is National Security
Author: Raine    Date: 07/08/2010 12:59:46

I am trying to figure this one out... Tea Partiers keep yelling and screaming about the "out of Control Spending" by the big evil government but when it comes to defense -- that is where they want more.

Queen Teabagger, Sarah Palin is quoted as saying:
"Something has to be done urgently to stop the out-of-control Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending machine, and no government agency should be immune from budget scrutiny," she said. "We must make sure, however, that we do nothing to undermine the effectiveness of our military. If we lose wars, if we lose the ability to deter adversaries, if we lose the ability to provide security for ourselves and for our allies, we risk losing all that makes America great. That is a price we cannot afford to pay."
I would like to tell you that I understand this logic, but I don't. Even Secretary Gates understands that we need to cut the Pentagon budget for the good of the Nation as well as our national security.
But Gates said that the ballooning national debt lends his efforts a new urgency. "The national economic situation is different than it has ever been in modern times," he told reporters Friday. "If we want to sustain the current force, we have no alternative."
What many people don't seem to grasp is that a healthy economy is just as much a national security issue as a good military. To continue to build a military with a faltering economy reminds me of of what many dictatorships tend to do --- and I think we know how well that usually works out. I think you could point to North Korea as one example.

But going back to the issue of undermining our military and the proposal that secretary Gates has talked about:
Among Gates's apparent targets for major cuts are the private contractors the Pentagon has hired in large numbers over the past decade to take on administrative tasks that the military used to handle. The defense secretary estimated that this portion of the Pentagon budget has grown by as much as $23 billion, a figure that does not include the tens of billions of dollars spent on private firms supporting U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The defense contractors, who populate new office towers throughout Washington's suburbs and have been a major driver of the local economy, are a significant source of budgetary bloat, Gates said. "We ended up with contractors supervising other contractors -- with predictable results," he said in the speech Saturday.
How would that undermine our military? I would go so far as to suggest that many of these private contractors are part of the problem in hurting our military. We have long reported the issues of KBR and Blackwater/Xe here on this blog and what they have wrought onto not only our troops but American citizens. These are the things that can and should be cut from the defense budget, if Sarah Palin is suggesting that we need private contractors to prop up our military in order make us a secure nation, then she is either misinformed or intentionally misleading her followers.

I personally believe that without a healthy economy no military in the world will make a country more secure. A strong economy is one of the biggest factors for national security.

Maybe she just doesn't know what she is talking about. Maybe.

and
Raine


 

52 comments (Latest Comment: 07/08/2010 22:26:20 by livingonli)
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