Other - Politics & Government - August 2006

2006-08-12 21:45:18 · 34 answers · asked by unknown u 3

This was not writen by an American...This comes from an european newspaper...I post this in lue of the recent uprising in "loosing confidence of the American Military. Our boys and girls, of the USAF, are the finest in the world...There is no question about it...Anyway...This is what people in Britain think of our military capability...

Armed to the teeth

Is Bush's awesome increase in military spending a reasonable response to the afermath of September 11, or is he creating a force almost too powerful for its own good? Peter Beaumont and Ed Vulliamy report

Is America too powerful for its own good?

You can have your say online here.

Observer Worldview

Sunday February 10, 2002
The Observer


There is a United States special forces dog-handler who meets journalists, diplomats and aid workers off the UN flight to Kabul. His job is to search luggage and ensure the security of US troops in Afghanistan. He is short, gingery and aggressive. His skills at persuasion are limited to shouting at the milling crowd: 'Stand back! Stand back! My dog will bite!'
Last week that phrase had become the defining motto and operating credo for the military and foreign policy of the Bush administration. Already President George W. Bush has put Iran, Iraq and North Korea on notice as terrorist-sponsoring nations at the centre of an international 'axis of evil', despite the CIA's recent evidence that none of them was in the business of threatening the United States at present.

Last Monday, to back that explicit threat, he announced an increase in US military spending of 15 per cent, the biggest in 20 years, more than double the military spending in all of the European Union. The rise will be $36 billion (£26.5bn) this year, $48 billion next year and $120 billion over the next five years, rising to a staggering two trillion over the next five years.

Even this is not enough for General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. They want the US defence budget to increase at an even faster rate.

What all this means is clear. Troubled by the 11 September attacks and buoyed by the ease of the war against Afghanistan, Bush's message to the 'evil doers' of the world is that he has a dog; that it is very big, getting bigger, and certainly it will bite.

The puzzle about the latest rise in defence spending is that America at the beginning of the 21st century is already not so much a superpower as a behemoth on the world stage. Economically dominant, it enjoys military and cultural power unrivalled since the days of the Roman emperors, as the American author Robert D. Kaplan reminds us in his new book, Warrior Politics.

Typically, it has been left to the French, traditionally suspicious of US global hegemony, to find the best words to describe it. Gigantisme militaire they call it, in a phrase that describes both the scale of America's ambitions and also a pathological condition: an organism grown so large it is sick.

The question the rest of the world is asking itself is: Who is the enemy America is arming itself so against? And why?

'Ostensibly,' says one European diplomat, 'this is about security. But quite how a massive increase in defence spending is supposed to prevent another terrorist attack remains unclear. Instead this seems to be about repairing the bruised American psyche after 11 September. America's powerlessness in the face of this attack requires big gestures and reassurances, even if they are counter-productive and meaningless.'

Indeed, some analysts say, if it is security that America seeks it is better sought in dialogue with potentially threatening states, rather than in reinforcing the idea already held by many anti-US groups that it is an evil empire bent on world domination.

Cynics have identified more overtly self-serving strands in the Republican obsession with America's defence. The 'war' rhetoric, as some US liberal commentators have pointed out, serves a purely domestic Republican agenda in the post-11 September mood of national paranoia: to win Bush a second presidential term and, in the shorter term, regain Congress.

The reality - even before the latest proposed increases in military spending - is that America could beat the rest of the world at war with one hand tied behind its back. The requirement that US armed forces be able to fight two fully fledged wars with two separate adversaries simultaneously may recently have been dropped, but only because it would be hard pushed to find two such equal foes to fight.

A single US nuclear-powered carrier group - which forms around the USS Enterprise, for example, with a flight deck almost a mile in length and a superstructure 20 storeys high - concentrates more military power in one naval group than most states can manage with all their armed forces. America has seven of these battle groups.

It is not just the scale and power of these weapons systems. The reach of US arms, too, is awesome. When the USS Kitty Hawk was sent with its accompanying warships from Yokohama to the Gulf for the war against Afghanistan, it covered 6,000 miles in just 12 days to be transformed into a vast floating forward attack station for thousands of US special forces.

Its B-52 bombers can fly and refuel across the world armed with cruise missiles that can be fired hundreds of miles away from hostile skies, the missiles themselves directed to their targets by satellites in orbit.

And America's supremacy in bombs, planes, satellites, tanks and real-time intelligence have made the prospect of US casualties remote, except in the event of ****-up or disaster. And, significantly, as the world's only economic hyper-power, it can afford this level of militarisation.

But against all this even the manufacturers of America's arms - like the aviation giant Lockheed-Martin - have been struggling for a decade or so to define the threat its top-shelf jets will be battling in the skies, being forced in one memorable presentation to show the European Eurofighter as a potential adversary.

So why the need for more and better military power? Even military analysts are baffled. 'The rise in US military spending,' says Dan Plesch, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, 'ought to be compared to the decision in the First World War to order up more cavalry when the first wave had been mown down by machine-guns.

'The US has no competitor in high-tech military equipment. And what it is spending its money on is mostly irrelevant against the knives used to carry out 11 September. The bombing of Afghanistan has created the illusion of victory.'

Professor Paul Kennedy at Yale University calculates that the US now spends more each year than the next nine largest national defence budgets combined. Indeed America is responsible for about 40 per cent of the world's military spending.

2006-08-12 21:25:34 · 26 answers · asked by quarterback 2

He attempted to make a citizens arrest on Mugabe whilst 'visiting' England. Maybe, with people like Peter around WE could do something about the Zimbabwe crisis.

2006-08-12 21:13:25 · 7 answers · asked by Baroness 1

Americans were only attacked on September 11, 2001
Actually they are the real Terrorists, aren't they?

2006-08-12 21:11:40 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous

2006-08-12 21:09:51 · 5 answers · asked by Wildflower 3

2006-08-12 20:37:04 · 3 answers · asked by Zan Don Lee 1

I attempted to vote at the last elections and even though my name was still on the electoral roll I was told 'you are white and not allowed to vote today'. The blacks are denied access to food and their families threatened with torture if they vote for opposition parties. Ballot boxes are sometimes full before voting starts and some boxes are exchanged before they get to counting points. The counry needs outside help as the people are powerless to help themselves, much as they would like to.

2006-08-12 20:36:24 · 6 answers · asked by Baroness 1

or would you do the whole "thou shalt not kill" thing? also, just to put your answer in context, what are your general stances on capital punishment and the llike?

2006-08-12 20:30:12 · 26 answers · asked by Anonymous

And what countries are there now besides Issrael.?

2006-08-12 20:29:53 · 3 answers · asked by ? 4

This man and his cohorts are terrorists in their own country. Law and order, health care and education are things of the past. Inflation and corruption are rampant. Terror camps exist! Is there nothing we can do to stop him?

2006-08-12 20:20:19 · 14 answers · asked by Baroness 1

I read a question earlier asking why everything fun seems to be illegal. I just don't understand. I want to know who you all think has it better.

2006-08-12 20:17:18 · 19 answers · asked by number 3 1

I want to secede my property from the United States. What would I have to do? I legally own the property and do not believe I should pay tyrannical property taxes. I have enough land to live off of. I have plenty of resources to live without american electricity or products. I do have this right don't I?

2006-08-12 20:11:08 · 10 answers · asked by Anonymous

If the Republican party once again control the Senate and Congress and lets say the President is again Republican, how screwed are we as a country?

What will happen to our laws and ethics?

And our right to vote?

What country will we invade next?

2006-08-12 20:10:36 · 12 answers · asked by Average Man 2

lets pray to god to forgive us all for any sins that we might have commited.
let us pray that we dont see war in any country
let us pray we dont see old, young and children suffering and dying
let us pray that we all understand each other and live in peace
let us pray we will abide to your saying and try to refrain from any thing that you will be unhappy with us
please help us to understand this world as its becoming more complecated for us to make correct judgements
please HELP us god and make this world a better place for us all
please god we all love you, we all love you , we all love you love love you. AMEN

2006-08-12 20:08:28 · 16 answers · asked by Anonymous

...yup. about anything (but not stupid stuff like gosh this is such a stupid question...please)

2006-08-12 20:04:28 · 10 answers · asked by strawberry22 1

Often times we hear that one country is 'freer' than another. I hear that the US is the 'freest' country on Earth.

Isn't saying that you are 'more free' the same as saying you are less enslaved? So you are still enslaved to a certain degree? And isn't saying you are 'freest' akin to saying you are least enslaved?



I would argue that free is qualitative, rather than quantitative. You either ARE, or ARE NOT, free. Merriam Webster contains some definitions of free to include:

not subject to the control or domination of another
not subject to government regulation
not subject to restriction or official control

and refers to a synomym, autonomous which;
stresses independence in matters pertaining to self-government

So are any of us actually 'free', or is our freedom simply a product of our own accepted reality? Reality being nothing more than an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

I have never experienced true Liberty or Freedom. Have you?
http://www.free-market.net/resources/introduction.swf

2006-08-12 20:03:36 · 5 answers · asked by libertyhasdied 2

Left a message on a friends phone the night before he shot himself. He told his friend that he believed through reliable sources that 9/11 was an inside job. Should that be investigated along with the other claims that have been made? Seems like possible important information, it was no secret that the good doctor had very important connections with the higher ups. And also, isn't it convenient that suddenly the biggest terrosr attack ever was foiled just a couple days after a group of people organized a council to publicly investigate the alleged coverup of 9/11? I hate to sound like a conspracy nut, but the evidence is just too thorough to be coincidence. I am a loyal Bush Republican, but I believe any doubt should be investigated. I mean, I don't want to be duped by the very person I voted for. I've come to be real concerned for our nation lately.

2006-08-12 19:59:53 · 2 answers · asked by Anonymous

2006-08-12 19:42:31 · 23 answers · asked by kodin 1

unfound collage students don't make it to Floroida and end up in places there not supposed to be? This is why Muslumems and all of you who should be kept in your own country should not be alloweled in at all. does anyone agree or am I and God alone?

2006-08-12 19:28:45 · 1 answers · asked by spacecadet 2

Is it for commemorative purposes or some other reason. Is there a method to the madness!

2006-08-12 19:14:00 · 6 answers · asked by gunslinger08 1

2006-08-12 19:11:33 · 31 answers · asked by Bostonboyo 1

2006-08-12 18:29:05 · 11 answers · asked by spaghetti-lo 3

Iran always was governing by some cruel people from long time ago like 2500 ago as i know, sometimes that they were powerful in the world and they just killed another people and nation like indian, sometimes they were governed by some king like Ghaja who were acting just for themself benefit and revelry and sometimes like now that just some illiterate people are governing this county and they are be hated all people around the world and also iranian people and i do not know what Iran has in its history to pride of. is it just a few scientist or poet a long time ago. have you ever thought if the west county did not have its tecnology like airplantes and car or many other things then iranina people is riding by donkey now. let me know about something in this county that i can satisfy with

2006-08-12 18:08:31 · 10 answers · asked by Anonymous

2006-08-12 18:08:27 · 19 answers · asked by misterbison13 2

The democratic party is the Republican Party. The Democrat Party is the socialistic party. Stop twisting the English language around and trying to confuse.

2006-08-12 18:02:00 · 5 answers · asked by MARIA 4

what do you think? was he right or wrong? stupid or smart ? i want feedback

2006-08-12 18:01:19 · 11 answers · asked by Anonymous

india looser only

2006-08-12 18:00:35 · 9 answers · asked by vino_whisky 1

2006-08-12 17:58:17 · 11 answers · asked by lester p 1

am i crazy or does it look like lie a rooster on the map?

also does anyone else love boyd rice?

2006-08-12 17:51:32 · 3 answers · asked by Level 3 3

Since we are gonna get called all sorts of names anyway, I say since the argument about if they should change the face on the coins, I say we just put an extended middle finger instead, lol. Anybody else with me? lol

2006-08-12 17:47:15 · 3 answers · asked by Chrissy 7