Republicans Need More Than Rhetoric on Defense
10th February 2012
George Will nails it.
The U.S. defense budget is about 43 percent of the world’s total military spending — more than the combined defense spending of the next 17 nations, many of which are U.S. allies. Are Republicans really going to warn voters that America will be imperiled if the defense budget is cut 8 percent from projections over the next decade? In 2017, defense spending would still be more than that of the next 10 countries combined.
Do Republicans think it is premature to withdraw as many as 7,000 troops from Europe two decades after the Soviet Union’s death? About 73,000 will remain, most of them in prosperous, pacific, largely unarmed and utterly unthreatened Germany. Why do so many remain?
The American message to the world: We spend all this money so you don’t have to!
February 10th, 2012 at 07:52
The U.S. military: the nation’s largest and longest-running jobs program.