[CNN] Obama to Push 3-Year Freeze on Discretionary Spending

[Surlethe]

This picture?

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I'd like to see that graph with current military spending separated out from interest payments on the various wars we've fought. It's not terribly honest if, say, military spending constitutes a sixth of that pie slice and interest on wars is the other five sixths.

[Samuel]

I'm sorry, but how are future conventional conflicts likely to be "limited wars with limited aims?" In many ways, I'd argue that modern conflicts are more difficult to fight than things like WWII because our aims are much broader. In WWII, our goals were to defeat Nazi Germany and Japan, and to win concessions that would alter both of those countries' foreign policies. Current conflicts are sort of social-engineering experiments that are taking place while bombs are going off. I don't think it's fair to characterize that as "limited."

The United States had to ration goods during WW2 because we needed them for the front. Until that happens for Afghanistan, it is not remotely as difficult- we are having problems because we are putting so little effort into the current wars.

I'd point out that the military serves many useful functions that aren't strictly combat-related, that would probably not exist in a "sane" military. For instance, after the Indonesian tsunami American nuclear aircraft carriers were by far the best aid-delivery mechanisms that exisetd in the world. Do we need as many of them as we have? Maybe not, but if we didn't have that many then we would've had to significantly alter our military operations elsewhere if we simultaneously wanted to respond to the tsunami.

Doesn't the opportunity cost of building and maintaining aircraft carriers outweigh such a benefit? We could have built an early warning system with the cost of one of them.

As for the graph, I believe more honest representations show military spending at about a fifth of the budget.

[MarshalPurnell]

The chart, originating with a pacifist organization (the Friends Committee being Quakers), uses some kind of undescribed methodology to break the national debt down into "military" and "non-military" portions. This is of course dishonest since the debt has to be paid regardless of where it originated from, and thus the largest single outlay in the budget is inevitably debt service, followed by non discretionary Social Security and Medicare spending. This should be obvious from any unbiased look at the budget.

Right now the military is involved in ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Getting involved in Iraq was obviously a mistake, but the mission there is winding down naturally. Accelerating the process to save money risks wasting the sums of blood and treasure already expended on there, and generally making the Middle East more of a problem zone. Afghanistan could be fought a lot more cheaply simply by providing security against the Taliban via rampant bribery of local warlords and limited deployment of UAVs and Special Forces to play whack-a-mole with whatever Al Qaeda figure rises to prominence in the region. However pulling completely out of Afghanistan would almost inevitably result in the Taliban coming back into power and harboring Al Qaeda again, as well as destabilizing Pakistan, so ending the commitment there is simply not an option. Insuring tolerable living standards and decent wages for the military is another major source of expenditures that rightly cannot be touched, leaving the acquisition of hardware and long-term force structure as the areas that money can be shaved from. The USN is already tacitly going to be shaved down to ten carrier groups in the future, which probably means six actually deploy-able at one time, most operating without anything like a full complement of aircraft. The aging F-16 and F-15 have to be replaced by something in the next couple of decades, though perhaps the USAF could be trimmed down overall, though of course that also means those replacement aircraft wind up costing more thanks to (the absurd use of) amortization. And of course the US Army has its own issues, though down-scaling the American commitment in Europe and the Middle East is one possible way of saving money in the long term. Reducing the level of military spending to "purely defensive" would effectively cede all American influence in Europe, the Middle East, and most importantly of all Asia and as such is implausible and definitely undesirable.

The major issue with the budget is the deficit, which could be resolved with a vigorous program to rationalize the bureaucracy and social support structures of the country and by raising taxes. As long as the Chinese and other Asians are willing to lend us money on extremely lenient terms to buy their excess production, and American treasury bonds are perceived as a safer investment than any domestic enterprise, the ballooning of the national debt was inevitable. The present crisis suggests that will not last much longer and it is long overdue for that rationalistic retooling of government and its relationship to society, and the tax structure of the nation. Unfortunately the Republicans have proven they will put ideological concerns above the welfare of the nation, and the Democrats could not, as it were, pour piss out of a boot if the directions were written on the heel. And if they could they'd probably be just as hyperpartisan and ruthless as the Republicans, not the saviors of rationalism and (truly) progressive policies.

[Sea Skimmer]

Current military spending including warfighting is about 5% of the GDP. The US did fine in the past spending at higher levels purely to sustain its force structure. Grouping debt payments leftover from fighting WW2 alongside current spending meanwhile is the most retarded farce possible. We had to spend all that money way back when, specifically because were drawn into a war caused COMPLETELY by the FAILURE of the US and to a lesser extent the other western democracies to take military spending and the threat of foreign wars seriously until it was too fucking late to matter! Tojo and Hitler were already attacking. So yeah, let’s go do that again so that we can keep ignoring the fact that even without the retarded bank bailouts making things worse, non military government spending is higher then ever, no matter how you measure it, while military spending most certainly is not. People want more from the government then ever, and expectations keep rising, The only solution is to raise taxes.

[MarshalPurnell]

There's another problem with the extent we spend on the military: we are fighting an enemy that wants to be killed. The Muslim fanatics have this infamous belief that if they're killed in battle, they'll go to some kind of Valhalla with lots of beautiful virgin women. They want to be martyrs, and attacking them will only give them what they want and motivate more of them to come.

And on a digression, this sort of argument annoys me intensely. One, it's patently untrue. Al Qaeda is not attacking the US because they want to be martyrs. Islamists are opposed to the United States and willing to wage war on it due to a variety of ideological and personal reasons, but they are (by and large) not suicidal lunatics. Secondly, history is littered with the corpses of causes that large numbers of people were willing to give their lives for. Yeah, remember all those Japanese soldiers who wanted to die for the Emperor? We gave two million of them the opportunity to do so. We're not still fending off kamikaze aircraft. The myth that heroic willpower will somehow make up for the deficiencies of one combatant and render it unbeatable is ridiculous, and the very fact that Al Qaeda and the like are stuck carrying out hit-and-run or outright terroristic attacks that predominately kill our Muslim allies or Muslim bystanders is a testimony to their fundamental weakness even within the Islamic world. Continuing to kill them efficiently will do nothing to improve their operational capabilities or appeal to Muslim populations in the rest of the world.

[Garibaldi]

I'm sorry, but how are future conventional conflicts likely to be "limited wars with limited aims?" In many ways, I'd argue that modern conflicts are more difficult to fight than things like WWII because our aims are much broader. In WWII, our goals were to defeat Nazi Germany and Japan, and to win concessions that would alter both of those countries' foreign policies. Current conflicts are sort of social-engineering experiments that are taking place while bombs are going off. I don't think it's fair to characterize that as "limited."

Right, which is exactly why our postwar record is so dismal. American strategy in World War II was complete and total victory, which is why those wars required such massive resource commitment. It wasn't enough to kick the Japanese out of the island chains or kick Germany out of France, you needed to completely destroy their military machines and occupy their homelands. But there's almost no conventional war scenario in the future in which that is remotely feasible now. The only real developed country we may possibly go to war with is China, and total World War II style victory over China is impossible short of nuclear war. And the invasion of Iraq has shown that we can't really expect total victory over developing nations either, because we'd quickly get sucked down a massively wasteful counterinsurgency hole.

You're right that our current conflicts are wide-ranging social-engineering experiments, and they're certainly not limited, and that's why they're going so terribly. Who honestly believes that if we just keep X number of troops in Afghanistan for X amount of time it'll become a democracy? Iraq is "stable", for now, but only a complete fucking idiot could argue that the whole affair was anything other than a massive net loss. America needs to abandon the idea that these sorts of open-ended, wide-ranging wars are anything other than an excellent way to waste money and lives.

Future wars will of necessity be limited, conventional affairs. If I may attempt a strained historic analogy, they will be closer to the 16th/17th century European wars which were fought over a single province or fortress or whatnot. This sort of strategy is why Gulf War I was such a resounding success and Gulf War II the biggest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam. As for terrorism and other "unconventional" threats, they are and always have been more suited to law enforcement, intelligence, and small-scale special forces operations.

[Sea Skimmer]

Future wars will of necessity be limited, conventional affairs.

That was the thinking of the 1890s and early 1900s too. Wars will be limited. Another big war will ruin the world economy and everyone involved in it ect… Didn’t mean a damn thing when something worth fighting over came up, like the entire balance of world power in August 1914. In any case the best way to keep wars limited is to prepare to fight the real ones, ensuring that a weaker enemy cannot delude himself into thinking he can win a short, victorious war before superior resources can mobilize against him. Then you are just left with brush fires, and nothings going to avoid all of those.

[SirNitram]

Yes! Let's try and grab some idiot conservative approval when they all think you're a socialist Islamic outsider. Let's go for headlines by announcing a freeze on 1/8th the budget, while your opposition gets a free ride for never funding their bills they put through.

[Edi]

The chart, originating with a pacifist organization (the Friends Committee being Quakers), uses some kind of undescribed methodology to break the national debt down into "military" and "non-military" portions. This is of course dishonest since the debt has to be paid regardless of where it originated from, and thus the largest single outlay in the budget is inevitably debt service, followed by non discretionary Social Security and Medicare spending. This should be obvious from any unbiased look at the budget.

Note that the figure only breaks down the tax money allocation, it is not a representation of the GDP or the military spending portion of GDP.

[K. A. Pital]

Reducing the level of military spending to "purely defensive" would effectively cede all American influence in Europe, the Middle East, and most importantly of all Asia and as such is implausible and definitely undesirable.

Why? Undesireable for whom?

The chart, originating with a pacifist organization (the Friends Committee being Quakers), uses some kind of undescribed methodology to break the national debt down into "military" and "non-military" portions.

The division of military and non-military portions of public debt is in any case resulting in only a modest 13,5% being ascribed to the percent on military-originating debt in the 2009 expenditures (here is what they say). Even if we assume that their methodology is flawed and actually the entire US public debt is civilian in origin (which is frankly fucking preposterous, but anyway)

That leaves us with "current military spending" still occupying 30% of the tax expenditure, and still being the largest article. I do not see how this significantly changes the issue posed by the chart.

Current military spending including warfighting is about 5% of the GDP.

Yes, but it's a significant portion of your budget (because it's small, relative to GDP - only 19.9% compared to 50-70% of some European First World nations, say) - considering your lackluster social safety mechanisms compared to Europe, this poses some issues as noted above. France spends 2,5% and Germany 1,5% on the military whilst their Government Expenditure is 50-60% of GDP. Quite certainly that leaves them enormous amounts of money to use for other priorities because both the budget share is greater and the military share is much smaller.

The US did fine in the past spending at higher levels purely to sustain its force structure.

Whatever the US does, it's always fine. It's a First World nation. Any worsening done by military expenditures would be hardly noted on a nation of such industrial magnitude. However, it will continue to harm public spending, because small government expenditure will have to be divided between competing military and civilian sectors.

Grouping debt payments leftover from fighting WW2 alongside current spending meanwhile is the most retarded farce possible.

They do not significantly change the picture anyhow; excluding them would still leave 30% of tax being spent on military (current) expenditure, and the greatest expenditure article thus. The rest of your post attacks a strawman; these 13,5% additional percents on "military-originating" debt accrued do not significantly change the nature of the point made.

So yeah, let’s go do that again so that we can keep ignoring the fact that even without the retarded bank bailouts making things worse, non military government spending is higher then ever, no matter how you measure it, while military spending most certainly is not.

Non-military government spending is still preciously small compared to what it is in some other First World nations, while military part of it is significantly larger. That is the issue. The solution can be to both lower military expenditure whilst expanding the government spending and thus taxation. *shrugs* Speaking of "the only solution" is feeding your inner military-industrialist, but it's just not correct.

[Sea Skimmer]

The division of military and non-military portions of public debt is in any case resulting in only a modest 13,5% being ascribed to the percent on military-originating debt in the 2009 expenditures (here is what they say). Even if we assume that their methodology is flawed and actually the entire US public debt is civilian in origin (which is frankly fucking preposterous, but anyway)

That leaves us with "current military spending" still occupying 30% of the tax expenditure, and still being the largest article. I do not see how this significantly changes the issue posed by the chart.

Nope. That document explicitly doesn’t show socialist security spending and a few other things, which raises US federal spending over 3.1 trillion dollars before the bailouts and stimulus. Now those have pushed it up to more like 3.9 trillion, not 2.4 trillion.
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/pdf/summary.pdf

Your document, chosen from the most bias source on the topic possible, doesn’t even try to claim it’s just only showing discretionary spending either, because it’s trying to be deceptive. Quakers fucking love doing that on defense spending, I know, I happen to be born to one.

This is besides the fact that that document is also only federal spending, far different from government spending. My local school district has a 45 million dollar budget, of which less then a 500,000 dollars comes from the state and only around 200,000 from the federal government. All the rest comes direct from local property taxes and never sees higher hands.

Yes, but it's a significant portion of your budget (because it's small, relative to GDP - only 19.9% compared to 50-70% of some European First World nations, say) –

Your numbers are wrong. Estimated US government spending in FY2009 was 6,600 billion before they even threw in all the bank bailouts. The US GDP was around 14,200 billion. That is more like a 46% ratio, not 19.9%.

We spend a lot of money in this country, nearly half if it in fact, at the level of state and local government. You cannot call the US federal budget all government spending, though it is almost all military spending. The states chip in only a tiny bit towards the national guard. The US does tax less, but the whole debt problem is no secret. It’s still not the worst in the industrial world either, that goes to Japan, a nation that spends just 1% on its military thanks to US presence.

considering your lackluster social safety mechanisms compared to Europe, this poses some issues as noted above. France spends 2,5% and Germany 1,5% on the military whilst their Government Expenditure is 50-60% of GDP. Quite certainly that leaves them enormous amounts of money to use for other priorities because both the budget share is greater and the military share is much smaller.

Those nations also exist under a US defensive umbrella, like it or not. Same with Japan that spends even less on its military, and yet has an even worse debt ratio then the US does. Germany and Japan both paid the US to fight the Gulf War after all. They know they need that oil, and if the US wasn’t around with the only real strategic military on earth they’d have to spend a whole lot more to do it.

They do not significantly change the picture anyhow; excluding them would still leave 30% of tax being spent on military (current) expenditure, and the greatest expenditure article thus. The rest of your post attacks a strawman; these 13,5% additional percents on "military-originating" debt accrued do not significantly change the nature of the point made.

No what changes the picture is the bullshit nature of the source you have chosen to base an argument on. Its not questionable methodology, it’s outright fraudulent when you delete a 675 billion dollar item like social security. Your percentages are wrong, and you can’t even tell because you obviously had no idea how much money the US government actually spends to the proper place in trillions.

[stormthebeaches]

I don't get it, the US managed a joint occupation of Germany and Japan at the end of World War 2 and balance the budget. Why can't it do the same for Iraq and Afghanistan?

[Guardsman Bass]

I don't get it, the US managed a joint occupation of Germany and Japan at the end of World War 2 and balance the budget. Why can't it do the same for Iraq and Afghanistan?

The US didn't have as much federal social program spending at the time, and the programs it did have (Social Security was one of them) were much less costly (plus, you had a greater ratio of workers to pensioners).

At the same time, the US did cut back a lot on military expenditures after World War 2, and had help in the occupation of Germany and Japan (it helped that we made the Japanese pay for a lot of the costs of their occupation).

[Darth Wong]

I don't get it, the US managed a joint occupation of Germany and Japan at the end of World War 2 and balance the budget. Why can't it do the same for Iraq and Afghanistan?

In addition to spending being lower in other areas, people understood on some level that they had to pay their bills. Tax rates were much higher, particularly on the wealthy. There was more of an understanding that your taxes were part of the way in which you supported the nation. Today, people think that you support the nation by waving the flag and talking about how great soldiers are, and that taxes have absolutely nothing to do with it.

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I don't get it, the US managed a joint occupation of Germany and Japan at the end of World War 2 and balance the budget. Why can't it do the same for Iraq and Afghanistan?

The US didn't have as much federal social program spending at the time, and the programs it did have (Social Security was one of them) were much less costly (plus, you had a greater ratio of workers to pensioners).

At the same time, the US did cut back a lot on military expenditures after World War 2, and had help in the occupation of Germany and Japan (it helped that we made the Japanese pay for a lot of the costs of their occupation).

Wasn't there also the issue that US Debt was bought up for in the form of bonds, by its own citizens?

[Guardsman Bass]

I don't get it, the US managed a joint occupation of Germany and Japan at the end of World War 2 and balance the budget. Why can't it do the same for Iraq and Afghanistan?

The US didn't have as much federal social program spending at the time, and the programs it did have (Social Security was one of them) were much less costly (plus, you had a greater ratio of workers to pensioners).

At the same time, the US did cut back a lot on military expenditures after World War 2, and had help in the occupation of Germany and Japan (it helped that we made the Japanese pay for a lot of the costs of their occupation).

Wasn't there also the issue that US Debt was bought up for in the form of bonds, by its own citizens?

Sort of. A lot of it was held by the Federal Reserve, too, if I recall correctly.

[K. A. Pital]

Nope. That document explicitly doesn’t show socialist security spending and a few other things, which raises US federal spending over 3.1 trillion dollars before the bailouts and stimulus. Now those have pushed it up to more like 3.9 trillion, not 2.4 trillion.

I thought it was showing not all spending, but tax allocation?

Your document, chosen from the most bias source on the topic possible, doesn’t even try to claim it’s just only showing discretionary spending either, because it’s trying to be deceptive.

It is not a share of spending but as a share of tax gatherings (and thus tax allocation). Or not? That's easy to check - divide military expenditure FY 2009, what's that, $738 billion? On the tax revenue 2009... hmm... $2.106 trillion. And yeah, state spending excluded because as I gather state taxes are also excluded? Or?

I got 35%. Have something to say?

Your numbers are wrong. Estimated US government spending in FY2009 was 6,600 billion before they even threw in all the bank bailouts. The US GDP was around 14,200 billion. That is more like a 46% ratio, not 19.9%.

Officially as I gather it's $3.515 trillion, which is... 23%. In any case, 2009 is an outlier thanks to enormous bailouts.

It’s still not the worst in the industrial world either, that goes to Japan, a nation that spends just 1% on its military thanks to US presence.

Japan would be dandy fine without the US. They don't need the US any longer, their Navy can sink most opponents in case they actually go to war. They lack nuclear weapons but so do many other nations. Japan could've militarized even with US "presence" - it depends on hostility of environment. Japan's environment is not hostile. Look at Israel for a counterexample.

So the US has nothing to do with low spending in Europe and Asia. Low probability of conflict is what has to do with it.

Those nations also exist under a US defensive umbrella, like it or not.

See above.

They know they need that oil, and if the US wasn’t around with the only real strategic military on earth they’d have to spend a whole lot more to do it.

Middle East is not all there is to oil, much less Iraq.

No what changes the picture is the bullshit nature of the source you have chosen to base an argument on. Its not questionable methodology, it’s outright fraudulent when you delete a 675 billion dollar item like social security. Your percentages are wrong, and you can’t even tell because you obviously had no idea how much money the US government actually spends to the proper place in trillions.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/106xx/doc106 ... 09-MBR.pdf

That's what I used.

How much a percent of GDP does the US government spend, usually, in pre-crisis years 2000-2008? I'd like to know.

[Simon_Jester]

I'd point out that the military serves many useful functions that aren't strictly combat-related, that would probably not exist in a "sane" military. For instance, after the Indonesian tsunami American nuclear aircraft carriers were by far the best aid-delivery mechanisms that exisetd in the world. Do we need as many of them as we have? Maybe not, but if we didn't have that many then we would've had to significantly alter our military operations elsewhere if we simultaneously wanted to respond to the tsunami.

Actually, I'd argue that the Navy is the one force that shouldn't take a major hit from a "rationalization" cutback process, for the following reasons:

1) They're the main arm that makes direct invasions of American soil actually impossible; they will sink an enemy before they get here. The other arms merely make it suicidally foolish to invade us, while doing (relatively) less to prevent it outright.
2) They give us flexibility: we can redeploy the ships more or less at will to respond to new problems, so if we do have a situation where it makes sense for us to commit force (say, in support of an ally that is seriously willing to supply most of the ground forces itself), we can do that with carriers much more easily than we can with armored divisions.
3) They play a useful role in disaster response, which wins us good PR; by contrast, we get no good PR from having swarms of nuclear-armed bombers flying over people's heads. By itself, that isn't enough to justify the cost of the carriers, but it helps.
4) Finally, while we can use them against any direct threat to the US from overseas, we can't use them to get ourselves embroiled in large scale occupations of continental landmasses. Which is the kind of war that gets us in trouble, because we end up spending hundreds of billions to maintain a high-tech army in a country whose will to fight can easily outlast ours.

If we're going to cut back our military, we should do it in ways that encourage us to be sensible about what wars we can and cannot fight. The Navy isn't the arm that makes us think we can achieve the impossible; that's mostly the Army and Air Force.

Current military spending including warfighting is about 5% of the GDP. The US did fine in the past spending at higher levels purely to sustain its force structure.

Yes. On the other hand, we've cut taxes repeatedly since then, which doesn't help. Raising taxes to levels where our current military spending and our desired nonmilitary spending are both sustainable is a reasonable solution... but it's going to be even more difficult politically than cutting the military budget. Because the same major political faction that will go after anyone who cuts the military are also the ones promising that tax cuts are the new golden hammer.

If we're going to make cuts, given the disparity between the military we have and the military we really need to protect ourselves (as opposed to what we need to maintain a world-spanning empire hegemon)... I think we should be taking a very serious look at DoD's budget. I'd rather raise taxes, though I doubt my own objectivity on this issue.

[stormthebeaches]

4) Finally, while we can use them against any direct threat to the US from overseas, we can't use them to get ourselves embroiled in large scale occupations of continental landmasses. Which is the kind of war that gets us in trouble, because we end up spending hundreds of billions to maintain a high-tech army in a country whose will to fight can easily outlast ours.

I would just like to point out that the reason why the Iraq war in particular was so costly is because Bush ignored the Pentagon's advice and sent far less soldiers than the Pentagon advised for the occupation (the Pentagon advised 400,000 to 500,000). A competently planned and prepared occupation doesn't need to cost anywhere near as much.

[Simon_Jester]

4) Finally, while we can use them against any direct threat to the US from overseas, we can't use them to get ourselves embroiled in large scale occupations of continental landmasses. Which is the kind of war that gets us in trouble, because we end up spending hundreds of billions to maintain a high-tech army in a country whose will to fight can easily outlast ours.

I would just like to point out that the reason why the Iraq war in particular was so costly is because Bush ignored the Pentagon's advice and sent far less soldiers than the Pentagon advised for the occupation (the Pentagon advised 400,000 to 500,000). A competently planned and prepared occupation doesn't need to cost anywhere near as much.

The problem with that is that we don't have half a million soldiers to send to a place like Iraq. I mean yes, there are physically that many people in the military, but we didn't have those kinds of numbers just sitting around doing nothing.

Logically, of course, the response is "Well, we don't have enough soldiers to occupy the country? Gee, let's not invade it!" And that would be smart. But much of the entire reason that anyone in the Bush administration was stupid enough to expect to be able to succeed had a lot to do with their faith in the "rah-rah transformation of warfare" crap... which, like it or not, was promoted or at least assented to by the Army. They liked the idea that they could now win wars with a tiny elite all-volunteer force... until someone actually called on them to do it and it turned out to be impossible.

In many areas, the US military is just large and capable enough to trick Americans into thinking it is capable of feats that it can't actually perform. The Army is large enough to appear useful for things like occupying foreign countries to the foolish... but not large enough to actually be useful for those things. Not once you subtract out the troops already committed around the world to various things we can't just drop. To get that kind of manpower we'd need either conscription or a truly enormous increase in volunteers, neither of which is politically plausible.

And that's the kind of thing that I'm talking about. The interaction between the military and popular culture, and the immense resources we put into the military, has given a lot of people an exaggerated sense of what it can do. When that happens to the public it gets stupid policies supported; when it happens to politicians (like Rumsfeld) it gets stupid policies enacted. And so we end up stuck in foolish, destructive, unnecessary wars like Iraq, because we have just enough strength to make ourselves think we're stronger than we really are. We expect that our half-trillion dollar a year military can get us cheap, easy victories when it isn't that simple.

And it does little good for the generals to protest after the fact that they never said they could do it; I'm not blaming this on them. It's a country-wide problem; even people who are not avid fans of the American military tend to overestimate it.

So we end up spending far more money on it than our needs justify, but not nearly enough to achieve our desires... which is a foolish place to be.

[stormthebeaches]

I agree that we don't have enough soldiers for occupying foreign countries without conscription. I'm just saying that the idea a weaker military (or at least army and airforce) will lead to less foreign adventures is false. The fact that the Bush administration invaded Iraq despite knowing that the forces they were sending were way below the Pentagon's estimates for the amount of soldiers needed to control the country is proof of that. If the modern right wing wants to go on a foreign adventure they will, regardless of the resources at hand.

[MKSheppard]

The problem with that is that we don't have half a million soldiers to send to a place like Iraq.

We did.

In 1991 with a volunteer military.

The problem came when Clinton took a ruthless axe to the force that had won Desert Storm. Bush the First did have some cuts programmed now that the Cold War was over, but Clinton greatly exceeded those cuts with his final plans.

[Garibaldi]

A competently planned and prepared occupation doesn't need to cost anywhere near as much.

A competently run occupation may have reduced the costs associated with the Iraq catastrophe, true, but the other problem with a huge military that can occupy any country at will is that idiot militarists start thinking this is actually a good idea. Perfect example right here:

The problem came when Clinton took a ruthless axe to the force that had won Desert Storm. Bush the First did have some cuts programmed now that the Cold War was over, but Clinton greatly exceeded those cuts with his final plans.

The "problem" is not that a bunch of reckless militaristic adventurists decided to commit a massive strategic blunder by invading Iraq for another reason, it's apparently that Clinton decided to reduce the size of the military! Had we gone guns blazing with half a million men into Iraq then...what? We would have lost fewer men, possibly, but what additional strategic purpose would have accomplished? The enterprise was bankrupt from the start.

[Sea Skimmer]

I thought it was showing not all spending, but tax allocation?

It’d be bullshit either way Stas. Social security is funded by taxes. It is not included. The chart is intentionally deceptive.

It is not a share of spending but as a share of tax gatherings (and thus tax allocation). Or not? That's easy to check - divide military expenditure FY 2009, what's that, $738 billion? On the tax revenue 2009... hmm... $2.106 trillion. And yeah, state spending excluded because as I gather state taxes are also excluded? Or?

You cannot ignore state spending and state taxation when you fucking want to make statements about social spending in the US in comparison to foreign countries with higher ratios of national vs. local spending. You didn’t even specify if the percent of government spending you are quoting is national only or all government spending total either.

Officially as I gather it's $3.515 trillion, which is... 23%. In any case, 2009 is an outlier thanks to enormous bailouts.

Officially the Federal Budget for 2009 was 3.9 trillion, but it was supposed to be about 3.1 trillion. This means nothing when YOU started talking about how much was spent on social welfare, and your just willfully ignoring a huge portion of it not being in the US federal budget, then make vague comparisons to government spending of foreign powers. This is fucking pointless to discuss further if you insist on using just meaningless comparisons and I’m not going to waste more time on it until you clarify what you are comparing and why it makes any sense to do it that way.

[Simon_Jester]

We did.

In 1991 with a volunteer military.

The problem came when Clinton took a ruthless axe to the force that had won Desert Storm. Bush the First did have some cuts programmed now that the Cold War was over, but Clinton greatly exceeded those cuts with his final plans.

Shep, I used the present tense for a reason. Let's assume for the sake of argument that it's all Clinton's fault; it's still true. And it was just as true in 2002-3, when the invasion of Iraq was prepared and launched. What kind of idiot launches a war of choice they don't have the manpower for simply because it was their political opponents who left them without that manpower?

Blaming Clinton's post-Cold War reductions doesn't wave away the problem here. It's still a bad idea to bite off more than you're prepared to chew, and an even worse idea to bite off things when you haven't taken the time to figure out whether or not they're edible.

And it's dangerous to go around being just tough enough to think you can handle anything without actually being that tough. Which is what the Bush administration did, and what many Americans are still doing.

We could probably afford the level of firepower and manpower we'd need to be as powerful as we already seem to think we are... if we were willing to put ourselves on at least a limited war footing. We'd have to raise taxes, and do something to greatly increase enlistment in the military. You might be fine with that, but the American public isn't interested, and the politicians they elect aren't either. That being the case, we shouldn't let our idea of our own capabilities lead us into dangerous situations we lack the ability to win in.