Do liberals support strong military?

Answer 1

Liberals support a military that is as strong as necessary. It's just a question of what liberals consider necessary compared to conservatives. Nobody has advocated having a military too weak to defend the US. But I think it is true that liberals have, since the end of Vietnam, been a lot more circumspect about what interests and situations around the globe should be factored into our determinations of military necessity.

Answer 2

I support a military structured to accomplish the appropriate missions. We must maintain the highest level of technical competence. To that end, we must always spend the money to ensure that we never cede air superiority to a potential enemy. We must reevaluate the need for more aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. These programs suck up so much of the available capital that could be used for so many other non-military needs.

We spend almost 500 billion on our defense. By any measure that is excessive to the point of absurdity. And this money is not necessarily spent in a way that ensures a strong and flexible military that can react to the evolving strategies of our enemies.

And look at our military. Despite the obscene amount of money we spend, we have a military that is stretched thin by our participation in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are doing something wrong for that to be prevailing reality.

Back in the 1980 election, John Anderson outlined the kind of military that I believe would have been the appropriate size and created to counter the threats we face today.

Unfortunately, he was never taken seriously and we entered the Reagan era of huge military expenditures designed to support the military industrial complex rather than the mission of defense.

Ask yourself why our troops lack body armor, humvee armor and are forced to rely on donated phone cards to call home, when their government is spending 500 billion annually on defense....

I can't go on....

Answer 3

My guess is that neither the question nor the answers you're pandering for are very intellectually honest. You have an opinion, no inconsistent yet well reasoned response will change your mind, nor those you are looking to for support. I'm neither liberal nor conservative (I can think for myself). That being said I'll take the bait (get ready on the thumbs down button).

It is the policies of the administration and former conservative majority that you support who seem to be in favor of a weak military. We were strong when W stole power. Today we are stretched thin, depleted, ill equipped and we are violating the sacred trust we owe the the men and women who put on the uniform when they come home. The liberals were complicit in your destruction of America. They (being liberals) didn't stand up to you when they should have.

At the end of the day the world is a more dangerous place. You saw to it that this would be the case. They let it happen. I think there is enough blame for the mess the world is in to go around.

Answer 4

Liberals, unlike many conservatives, question the need for a strong military. If the need for a strong military is self evident (in other words not just because some general or Rush Limbaugh says we do), then Liberals support it.

Answer 5

I'm a liberal and also a military brat. I'm proud of both associations. I also have close friends who are high ranking military, some of whom I have debates with still and some who now improbably share beliefs with me over the current situation.

A military is vital to our nation's defense. That's a given.

How we use our military is the big question though. The adventurism that Bush et al have gotten our military into, the rapid rush into the non-existent WMD situation, the apparent need to find a diversion from finding Osama after we first funded and trained the guy, as we did with Saddam, makes it seem that this administration is more involved with some bizarre ulterior motives rather than truly defending this nation.
Especially when you consider the giant holes in our border, the lack of inspection of shipping, the crazy politics we play in the mideast, our inability to make more efficient internal combustion engines (we managed to make a computer the size of a matchbox but cars have gone backward???) and what's up with welfare-queen Halliburton?

If this nation were attacked within our borders by an army we could see and defend against, do we have the peoplepower and eqpt to even respond? I certainly hope so. However, our national guards are complaining all of their gear is leaving the country faster than they can order it.
The logistics problem also is not so much with our military command as it is with the non-military command who wield control. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and a few other characters seem like so many John Waynes . . . tough guys who play characters but were never the real thing.

I feel we're squandering our military and putting them in positions that lessen their respect and stature in the world. One friend of mine has lost men and women he trained to this war in Iraq and feels so demoralized . . . i see these photos on tv of my fellow citizens felled in a land far away for reasons that are not as they seem, and wonder why, as tears well up.

So don't give me this crap that liberals don't support our military.
Liberals just believe that our military is being ill used and ill-respected by this idiocy in Iraq, that the right level of diplomacy was never utilized in the situation, and that we got sidetracked looking for the real culprit of 9/11 by W's opportunism as he looked to avenge some imagined slight of his daddy by the man who, not a decade before, was being wined and dined and gifted with weapons of mass destruction (biological and chemical) and cowboy boots with gold spurs by the Reagan admin and Rummy himself!!

Next time, maybe fool politicians should get on the computer and Google something about the nations they try to artificially tinker with before they go off adventuring with real human lives. How on earth this administration never managed to make post-invasion plans and never knew about the various factions of Islam being kept in check only by a dictatorial, and by comparison, secular regime is a travesty of intelligence and common sense. AND 3100 lives on our side, countless on theirs. What a senseless quagmire that only history will sort out.

Further, don't you think that liberal AND conservatives alike should be looking toward the longgggg overdue genuine national defense that energy conservation, independence and security offer?

So, Go Navy and please, support our troops by bringing them back home to their families intact. Now.

Answer 6

What's a strong military?

Answer 7

I am liberal and my husband is in the Air Force, I just support him rather than what hes fighting for

Answer 8

Only if they can control it. See Murtha's bill & read comments from House during weeks of 2/10-2/24.

Answer 9

They support whatever is popular at the time.

Answer 10

absolutely not. the last democrat to occupy the white house, hollowed-out our military and trying to give the illusion of economic stability.