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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| THE LAST HAPPY AMERICAN |
| 2006-04-11 |
| Refreshing read. Do the Us majority of RB readers agree with that optimism? Ray Lyman The U.S, military is the one great bargain that the American people still get and they are paying less for it now than at any time since Pearl Harbor. When President Eisenhower made his farewell speech in January 1961 warning of the influence of the military industrial establishment in America, defense spending was a whopping ten percent of the national GDP and almost 50 percent of the Federal budget. Today it is 3.7 percent of the GDP and 16 percent of the Federal budget. That's right. The Military budget for fiscal year 2006 is around 450 billion in a 2.7 trillion dollar Federal budget. You do the math. It is the ONLY part of the Federal budget that has actually shrunk in the last 20 years. Factoring inflation, Defense is a little more than half of what it was in 1990 before the Bush41/Clinton demobilization of the 1990s. That is reflected in the fact that the Navy has fewer than 300 ships in commision versus almost 600 in 1988 and 1200 in 1961 and the Air Force has reduced the number of its fighter wings from 35 to 20 in the same period and the Army has reduced its combat divisions from 16 to 10 and its manpower from 750,000 to fewer than half a million. That being said the military can do more now with less than at any other time in its history. It is indeed the most extraordinary fighting organization since Roman times, capable of logistical and power projection efforts that will continue to astonish the world in the 21st Century. That is only part of the story, of course. The Defense budget of the United States is unlike any other in the world, with the possible exception that of Great Britain. More than 60 percent of it is devoted to personnel costs, everything from veterans pensions to child care for military families. The last Civil War widow to receive her pension died just a few years ago, so these costs are with us for a long, long time. It is estimated that we will be paying World War II pensions and costs until the middle of this century and Vietnam costs until the end of it. When the Army builds a school in Iraq or Afghanistan, and they have built more than a hundred of them, that is part of the Defense budget, when a U.S. military hospital is opened to Iraqi civilians and provides health care to thousands, that is part of the Defense budget, when a public park is created in the Presidio of San Francisco, that is part of the Defense budget, when food and medical supplies are brought to victims of the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean, that is part of the Defense budget. Even aside from the hundreds of pork riders that are attached to the Defense appropriations, the Defense Department does many things that are not directly related to the national defense of the United States. Now, if I may paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, we are engaged in a great conflict to determine whether a civilization commited to individual freedom and tolerance can long endure in the face of a challenge from a hostile civilization commited to its destruction. There are those who would say that this war is the result of our quest for empire and domination of others. If this is so, we are the most benign of history's empires for wherever our armies have marched they have brought freedom, an end to brutal oppression, usually prosperity and the first taste of justice that many people have ever experienced. We have not brought about perfect societies anywhere and until the Second Coming, I don't expect to see any. France is hardly a perfect society, beset with riots, high unemployment, anti-semitism, illegal immigration, Islamic radicalism, economic malaise and popular anti-American feelings. Does that mean we should not have mounted the Normandy invasion and sacrificed 90,000 American lives to liberate the country? I have been critical of some American decisions in Iraq. For example, I think it was a strategic error to disband the Iraq Army after the fall of Baghdad. It takes the U.S. Army 20 years to train a man to lead a battalion in battle and it takes even longer to build an army from the ground up. That we have accomplished this much in just three years is an astonishment to me. We will probably be in that country for the rest of the decade and when we do leave, I do not expect that we will leave it looking like Switzerland, but the tyrant Saddam Hussein will by then be a fading memory and sectarian violence will probably have abated to the level of say India. Even, if I were to concede that the invasion of Iraq in and of itself was strategic error, and I do not, then it still would not diminish my conviction that victory in this great conflict against Islamic terrorism is essential to our national security and survival. All of our wars from the Revolution to the present have been filled with sacrifices, disappointments and failures that have produced needless loss of life and treasure. One of the greatest Allied efforts of the Second World War could be characterized as such and I am speaking of an Italian resort city 30 miles south of Rome called Anzio. It was a conceived by Winston Churchill as a means to outflank the German defense line in Italy and capture Rome in a coup de main, but the results were far different. An Allied army larger than the coalition forces in Iraq today was bottled up on a small beachhead about the size of New York's Central Park for four months from January 22 to May 17, 1944. The U.S. Army suffered 29,000 casualties and the British about 9500 for virtually no result. The cost in munitions, vehicles and supplies must have been incalculable. Four times as many Americans died there in four months as have died in Iraq in three years. Yet today, no historian will say the war itself was a failure and a wasted sacrifice because Anzio was a failure. And because the Second World War did not produce a perfect world and universal peace and justice, we do not say it was not worth fighting. I suspect the same will be said about this great struggle. Ther are those who see a future of bankruptcy and decline for America. As an investor and entrepreneur, I believe that is quite simply dead wrong. When Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower moved into the Whiet House the GDP of the United States was 358.6 billion in 1998 dollars and Federal spending was about 68 billion in 1998 dollars per year. In 2006 that GDP is projected to be in the 14 trillion dollar range and the Federal spending will be 2.7 trillion of that. No nation I can think of in recorded history has become wealthier to such an extent in such a short period. This does not mean we will not have recessions, housing bubbles, energy shortages, high deficits and fiscal crisis, but I think it means that only a fool will sell America short in the next century. General Motors may declare bankruptcy or employ far fewer workers, but KIA Motors, a butt-kicking South Korean auto manufacturer, has just anounced plans to open a plant in Atlanta that will employ 4500 people. This will always be the place to find opportunity and invest capital. The road to economic success will always be a rough road with plenty of pot holes, but the only things that can slow us down or stop us are more regulations and government management of the economy. As long as we embrace the free market, the economic success of our nation is assured. For that reason I am a happy American indeed. "If Communist tyranny ever comes to America, it will be called fairness and social justice." |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #7 Its NOT Communism or Socialism, but "ANTI-FASCISM" - send the author to the unmitigated hell-hole and tortue that is GITMO and Glaze-Gate. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-04-11 23:52 |
| #6 It was a conceived by Winston Churchill as a means to outflank the German defense line in Italy and capture Rome in a coup de main, but the results were far different. An Allied army larger than the coalition forces in Iraq today was bottled up on a small beachhead about the size of New York's Central Park for four months from January 22 to May 17, 1944 The campaign at Anzio can't be discussed without the mention of its sister battle in Cassino, where "multinational" forces couldn't break through the defenses of several rivers and entrenched German forces that had been allowed to escape from Sicily. American Generals wee in sharp disagreement with Churchill on the value of "sucking resources" down to the medditeranean while the "real game"- the Normandy invasion, was being planned. It can be said that even if viewed as a "bad campaign", Anzio still kept the Nazi's logistiaccly tied up on a third front, as well as took the Italian Army out of play. Anzio was signed off on by Eisenhower mostly to placate Churchill. |
| Posted by: Capsu 78 2006-04-11 12:49 |
| #5 And God bless you and your family, HB. Thank you for your service! ------- I'm with Lyman: I have CEASED to bitch about the Income taxes I have paid since 9/12/01. Chalk up another American happy about the performance of his nation's armed forces. God bless 'em all. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2006-04-11 09:09 |
| #4 hmmm... I don't know much about this writer, but should this be filed under Someone Gets a Clue? Sure, its optimistic but and he makes great points we rarely get to see in print, but I have a problem when someone tries to make a point with misleading information like this: The last Civil War widow to receive her pension died just a few years ago, so these costs are with us for a long, long time. It is estimated that we will be paying World War II pensions and costs until the middle of this century He makes it sound like we've been paying mega bucks in civil war pensions up until recently, but there were just a very few child brides to very old soldiers left to pay. And most of the WWII pensions will not be left to pay into the middle of the next century, but again, very few. And I don't get the last line either. So nice article thanks, but color me skeptical of the author. |
| Posted by: 2b 2006-04-11 08:56 |
| #3 Me Casa,Su Casa,amigo. |
| Posted by: raptor 2006-04-11 07:10 |
| #2 Welcome back to your home! Cheers! |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-04-11 05:25 |
| #1 Ray nails it. The dollar is strong because no military can beat us, thus making our dollar a secure investment. Making the dollar an even better investment is our commitment to free markets, freedom of thought, and the rule of law. Therefore, barring foolish changes of our own accord, we are the currency to buy, enabling us to finance our present government and military with bargain level deficit spending. The only rule we must follow as we enjoy the international bankrolling of our government is this: we must continue to invest in improvements, be they technological, legal, or social. The market and its parallel, "the marketplace of ideas", will provide for most of that investment in improvement. A little advanced research will have to be the purview of the government. Written and posted my last day in Iraq ... |
| Posted by: Homeward Bound 2006-04-11 05:21 |