Common theme is...right-wing military welfare types don't care about America or about the ballooning national debt. All they care about is:
1. continuing to get welfare from the government
2. refusing to pay taxes on even that welfare to keep spending to a sustainable level
3. public figures engaging in the childish theatrics that flatter their bigoted ignorance and make them feel like their country is on top of the world and not an impoverished and irrelevant mess
4. being spiteful towards Americans who are genuinely interested in serving their country and making a better future for everyone, necessarily challenging the entitlements and ignorance of the American right
Eturnalshift wrote:
Absolute disagree. I just re-skimmed the last bit of the transcript from the discussion of the 2014 Afghan timeline to the bit about discussing faith, and I only saw a reference to putting troops on the ground if it was "within the national security interests of the American people."
Since this could never be the case, it is clear he intends to do it no matter what and find any excuse towards that end...just like Bush.
Eturnalshift wrote:
But you can't assume that having a tough talk and tough position is immediately a call for war. Sometimes, tough talk is enough to deter an enemy. Sometimes it isn't.
"...if a Republican does it."
Tough talk is never good. It raises tensions and destroys credibility. It only sounds good to ignorant right-wing people who have an intense need for their thuggish mentality to be reflected in national policy.
Eturnalshift wrote:
Also, I didn't think Romney was proposing
increasing defense spending. He's proposing we set defense spending to a 4% floor.
A 4% floor on our current $15.09T GDP is $604B. Our current FY2012 budget in execution is about $713B for operations (4.7% GDP), and $902B (5.9% GDP) with veteran care, foreign aid, economic aid, etc. The sequestration budget cuts, which are about $500B over the next decade, will be about $50B/yr... or, if applied to this current fiscal year, not enough to drop below the 4% floor. The problem, I think, is a lot of people misunderstand Romney's position.
He's not advocating for a 4% increase on top of the current budget, but he's saying we shouldn't reduce the spending for military below 4% GDP. You talk about "4% GDP" because a single-digit percentage sounds better than "a third of the national budget, and more than the rest of the world's spending combined".
In reality what it amounts to is the military stealing thousands of dollars a year from each and every American and blowing it on welfare.
You bitch about the government taking your "hard-earned money" but like every right-wing type you seem pretty okay with it when that extortion benefits you personally.
Eturnalshift wrote:
His plan to expand our military infrastructure could simply be through re-appropriating funding from one program to another, and that could be done without increasing the budget at all.
Let's just say it like it is. You want to pretend that you can get stuff for free.
You want to have military pork barrel for you and your family, so you never have to get real jobs, while pretending it isn't strangling the country to death. And not having to pay the same taxes that everyone else would to support the pork barrel you benefit from.
Eturnalshift wrote:
As for the idea about weaking our relationships with our allies... let's look at where we are.
* Mexico is currently the nearest national security concern, as their violence is spilling over to our borders. Our government knowingly let a large number of assault rifles walk into the Mexican cartels hands, creating more of an issue for the Mexican government who has been trying to combat drug problems in the country.
As long as it is legal to buy guns in America, and as long as America refuses to deal with social problems that create an insatiable demand for drugs, this will be the case.
Eturnalshift wrote:
* Israel and this Administration have been having a widening rift, since this administration hasn't been supportive of our ally. We don't need to charge into war with them, but we don't need to remain silent when another country is threatening to wipe our ally off the face of the Earth.
Israel is not our ally. They spy on us, they steal our technology, when we invaded Iraq for their benefit they refused to loan us troops or bases (instead we must route air traffic through Turkey and Poland, which costs us billions a year on fuel).
The Israelis have spent the last 40 years stubbornly refusing to leverage their military superiority into peace, instead preferring to bully other countries in the region and tyrannize the Palestinians. When Rabin and Sharon started to make peace they were killed by their own people.
The Israelis have dug their own grave. Let them lie down in it. If they're to survive - in peace - it will only be by the US removing the option to rely on war to get by.
Fwiw, we send the Israelis billions a year. For someone who talks so much about waste and handouts, strange you make an exception for them.
Eturnalshift wrote:
* This administration, more or less, sold out eastern Europe on the proposed missile defense shield.
The shield is pure pork barrel and will never work anyway. Not that it would ever need to; that's the point, after all. And even if did work, why build it in Eastern Europe?
So far from caring about the national debt, you're complaining that Obama cut a worthless program that did nothing for Americans.
Who is it that can't watch their spending, Obama or the GOP?
Eturnalshift wrote:
I really don't want to get into the details of our waning support from some EU countries, either, since those matters appear to be more economic in nature, and less over foreign policy.
You're a fool.
You don't want to get into the details because you don't know what they are, but you know enough to know that the entire dispute is stupid but rather than say that you try to make it sound reasonable by doing what all ignorant right-wing military types do which is speaking in the broadest generalizations possible.
The EU doesn't spy on us like Israel. They aren't manipulating their currency to adversely affect us like China. They don't have absurd trade barriers like Japan. They don't support tyranny like Russia. They don't support terrorism like Saudi Arabia. They aren't making their problems our problems like Mexico. And they don't throw fits when they don't get their way like we do.
For over half a century, the EU has stood by us through thick and thin. Have they always seen things our way or done what we would prefer? No, but if you insist your friends do that, you won't have any friends for long.
The EU's friends and enemies are the same as ours. They have as much reason to fear militant Islamists, China and Russia as we do. The EU, unlike the US, has learned the hard way - the
very hard way - the costs of war and militarism. Don't mistake wisdom for cowardice. There's no better friend for the "bad cop" to have than a "good cop" and that's the EU.
Like it or not, the EU is our closest ally and will continue to be into the foreseeable future.
Alienate the EU and the US is all alone in a very scary and dangerous world.
The only reasons to lose sight of this are:
1. Insecurity at perceived European cultural superiority
2. Fear and distrust of the EU's social system
3. All of the above due to tuning into Fox News, which attempts to use appeals to bigotry to redirect American anger at the flaws in our society and at China, towards people who happen to be different from us, in an effort to protect the monied interests which support the status quo
