Well, we’ll just have to wait for him to explain what he wrote, then.
Bonus points if he can explain why we shouldn’t simply go ahead with the reductions without wasting time on jawboning, and let our allies pick up the slack if they find farflung force commitments to be important to their interests.
[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
So why do you say Romney was “more wrong than Obama”? Obama was never the one suggesting that we count ships to evaluate our strength. He in fact very deftly illustrated why arguing otherwise is stupid.
[/QUOTE]
Because I felt that this:
Was not a great response, though I agree with it more than I did with Romney’s:
I agree. What I do see is a constant attempt by the left, however, to want to make substantial cuts in our defense spending because they DON’T seem to get this. If we make the large cuts I’ve seen some of my fellow 'dopers recommend then it’s possible we’d lose that tech edge…and the folks who would pay for that are the 18 year old men and women we send off to fight for us. I’m not saying we need to spend $2 trillion and build the military back up to some arbitrary level, simply that we need to realistically look at what we are spending in relation to what our global commitments actually are, and either change those commitments or spend appropriately.
It must be. My blood is red after all, and I think I have a red tie somewhere. Probably accounts for why I’m voting for Obama…
Yeah, why are we being so altruistic with our military?
Yes, I’d say that’s exactly what we need to do. But why do Republicans in election years always want to revise that spending number upwards? Or refuse to acknowledge any cuts to military spending that may actually make sense? Obama noted that defense spending increased every year during his term, but he is still willing to say that not all defense spending bills that come down the pike are justified. I’d love to hear a Republican say that at least once.
Saying you’ll increase military spending is generally a “safe” promise to keep, since arguing in favor of reducing it can be painted as unpatriotic or Un-American.
Well, yes, of course it’s political. I understand that. I guess expecting a Republican to make a refreshingly honest comment about the appropriateness of ever cutting defense spending is asking way too much.
Show me, please, the doper who has recommended drastic military cuts who also thinks we should engage in the same number and intensity of wars. Without that, your statement above is absurd.
Folks like me, who think we need to dramatically reduce military spending, do so because we think that " the folks who . . . pay for [our current levels of spending] are the 18 year old men and women we send off to fight for us." That is to say, when you build the biggest gun in the world, you’re just itching to fire it. Because we’ve got such an insanely huge military now, presidents are far too eager to send soldiers into harm’s way. We’ve got a giant hammer, and suddenly all foreign policy looks like a nail.
Lowering military expenditures has the potential to protect soldiers, if it’s accompanied by a shift in our foreign policy.
Of course, I’m wayyyyy out of the mainstream on this issue. I think the sequestration cuts would be a great beginning to solving the problem, for example, while our hawkish president thinks they’d be a disaster. So I’m only speaking for myself on this one.
No you’re not.
Taiwan is not defensible and everyone knows it. The reason Taiwan is not overran in a single day is because of the intermingling of Chinese/Taiwanese businesses.
There is no scenario where if China took back Taiwan we would go to an open shooting war with them. It’s a ridiculous proposition.
A couple of problems. First off, the military-industrial complex is rooted deep into our economy. That money is employing lots of people. Of course, it would be far far better for that money to be spent intelligently, and would have been far better for the last sixty years. But a sudden downward wrench would be disastrous. I don’t like it, never have liked it, but to try and fix it with one stroke… Bad idea.
Second, we are going to need to spend a metric buttload of money on our injured and returning vets. There is no moral way we can not do that.
Lastly, there isn’t a shadow of doubt in my mind that our Congressgits won’t find a way to make this problem go away. It will be lame, it will stink to high heaven, but they will stand there with straight faces and claim to have made a “compromise”. They have to, there is no choice here.
Ever read The Guns of August? Nobody wanted to go to war, but nobody could stop it. Everybody with two neurons to rub together knew that Japan could not win a war with the US. They attacked anyway.
When it comes to war, there are no “ridiculous propositions”. Alas.
Agreed with both of these. My ideal would be to find a way to slowly, as in turning-around-an-aircraft-carrier-slowly, revamp our military economy so that the manpower is retrained into humanitarian and educational and infrastructure workforce, and the tech research is reworked into space exploration, environmental, and medical research, and the manufacturing is reworked into sustainable energy sources. Or something along those lines. Don’t put everyone out of work; rather, figure out ways we can take this part of our economy dedicated toward being the world’s police and change it into mostly domestic spending with a minor component of humanitarian work. Keep only a military big enough to equal the next two biggest militaries combined, participate in global military ventures only as a proportionate part of coalitions, and spend the peace dividend at home.
I agree that China doesn’t take Taiwan by force largely because they don’t want to damage Taiwan’s economy. But it doesn’t therefore follow that the West thinks that U.S. military bases in the area are irrelevant to deterrence of China.
It’s a fallacy of the excluded middle. Obviously, Taiwan will seek to defend itself against invasion, and it’s ability to do so marginally affects the likelihood of it happening. And Taiwan’s defense of itself is helped by U.S. presence (for example, by monitoring Chinese military activity with U.S. spy planes).
While this might not be a great response:
It improves dramatically if you include his next sentence:
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
Show me, please, the doper who has recommended drastic military cuts who also thinks we should engage in the same number and intensity of wars. Without that, your statement above is absurd.
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I’m sorry, but it’s your statement that’s absurd. I never said anything about 'dopers wanting drastic cuts and to engage in wars, intense or otherwise. Quite the opposite…most of the 'dopers who want drastic cuts in the military want us to pull out our military and bring it all home because we don’t need it anymore, the world is now a safe place, we just use it as a tool of oppression, the world can take care of itself without us, why feed the dreaded Military and Industrial Complex™ when it’s not needed, etc etc. Take your pick. The result of this short sighted and ignorant position, IMHO, is that the US won’t be able to adequately protect our global interests or the interests of our numerous allies, trading partners or associated nations, we will lose our tech edge, and when (not if) we DO have to fight again sometime in the future we will sustain (and inflict) many more causalities while we ramp back up and figure things out again from scratch. For examples of this, see just about every war the US was ever involved in up to the First Gulf War.
I see it differently. If you build the biggest gun in the world then folks with smaller guns might have pause to want to use their own, even against someone else, if they think you might decide to pull it out and start using it. The US uses it’s military not because we have it and it’s nice and shinny and burning a hole in our pockets but because we are a major superpower with global commitments, who is the main water carrier, militarily speaking for pretty much the entire Western world. See Libya as a recent example.
Totally disagree that it will have that effect. I don’t see us being able to shift our foreign policy any time soon, and so what lowering military expenditures (devil, detail) would actually mean is trying do more (or even the same) with less. It would cut into our technological edge, and spread our already strapped forces even thinner IMHO. Have you noticed that even during an Obama administration our military has been used pretty hard? Or do you accuse Obama et al of just wanting to play with all those shinning military toys as well?
You just ignored everything that I said was ignorant about his response. There’s certainly a reasonable argument to be had over what the ‘correct’ number of ships should be. But analogies to bayonets and horses is idiotic, as was Obama’s weird aside about aircraft carriers. There’s this new thing called aircraft carriers? And planes land on them? Is there a single person in America who doesn’t know this, and who hasn’t known it since at least the 1930’s? He might as well have said, “We have this thing called the helicopter now. It can actually go up and down vertically.” That would actually be more pertinent, since helicopters are at least newer than carriers, and the ability to use helicopters where conventional planes might have been used in the past could at least be plausibly connected to a plan to reduce the size of the carrier fleet.
In any event, it was extremely condescending and snarky, and if his point was simply that technology and geopolitical changes mean that the force composition of the future won’t be the same as in the past, he could have made that point a lot more clearly and credibly by dropping the snark and just saying what he meant.
Ohhhhhh, so you actually did understand his greater point, and you’re just pissed and frustrated that he managed to deliver it so effectively.
Can’t have Dems making effective soundbites, after all. It might actually get people to vote for them.
The definition of insanity is to repeat something and expect a different result. Obama isn’t insane, ergo, he didn’t repeat his performance in the first debate expecting it to work this time. I understand why you might find that disappointing.
But that wasn’t Obama’s point. his point was, I guess, that the existence of American submarines means that the American fleet of ships and subs can be smaller. In fact, a good percentage of the total count of American Naval vessels IS submarines. And all the other vessels fill specific roles that have nothing to do with the role of subs.
But since Obama apparently wasn’t capable of making this point clearly, why don’t you have a go at it? Explain how the existence of the current sub fleet allows an overall reduction in the size of the naval force from where it’s at today.
It’s funny you should say that. Clearly you, too, are too caught up in the funny line, or you would have listened to/read the whole comment Obama actually said:
http://www.npr.org/2012/10/22/163436694/transcript-3rd-obama-romney-presidential-debate
I searched in page for “bayonets” to find the section quickly.
Sure, he had the snarky lines about horses and bayonets, and aircraft carriers and submarines. Then he had a sentence where he explicitly says the point you are trying to make, that the issue is about capabilities. Then he has a whole paragraph expounding exactly the point you are making - that he already has sat down with the Joint Chiefs and determined what our commitments are and what we need to fulfill them.
Why are you overlooking those two paragraphs?
Now the interesting thing to me is that in all the snark and banter and whining over the value of aircraft carriers and submarines and how ship number counts are or are not important, everyone is overlooking the actual points that Romney tried to make. And by everyone, I include the Republicans.
These are the substantial allegations that should be discussed. When did the Navy say they needed 313 ships? What is he citing here? What does he mean? Where does he get the basis for the claim that the Obama administration is changing the policy from covering two conflicts to only being able to cover one conflict?
If those two issues can be substantiated, then Romney has a valid issue and Obama’s snark about naval capabilities is not a valid response. But if the point is that we don’t need as many numbers, because the capabilities of the newer vessels is larger and is sufficient to cover all the commitments, then Obama’s comment is directly on point. Worrying about ship counts from 1917 or a lack of Battleships is like caring that we have sailors who actually know how to rig sails.
(Can you imagine the masts you’d need on an aircraft carrier? The rigging? Talk about a Tall Ship. And don’t get me started on submarines.)