The Military Myth: A Response to Name This Country
by Kerry A. Swift

NAME THIS COUNTRY:

709,000 regular (active duty) service personnel
293,000 reserve troops
Eight standing Army divisions
20 Air Force and Navy air wings with 2,000 combat aircraft
232 strategic bombers
13 strategic ballistic missile submarines with 3,114 nuclear warheads on 232 missiles
500 ICBMs with 1,950 warheads
Four aircraft carriers, and 121 surface combat ships and submarines, plus all the support bases,
shipyards and logistical assets needed to sustain such a naval force.

Is this country Russia?. . . No
Red China ? . . . No
Great Britain ? . . Wrong Again
France?....Nope..
USA? . . . You are still wrong

Give up??

Well, don't feel too bad if you are unable to identify this global superpower, because this country no
longer exists. It has vanished.  These are the American military forces that HAVE DISAPPEARED since the1992 election of Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

Sleep well America, (and VOTE!).
 

Thanks for your very interesting forward about the condition of the U.S. military.  I found it very striking, for two reasons.

First, the person who sent you this information neglected to tell you that these are the defense cuts of the Clinton (FY94-FY00) and Bush (FY89-FY93) administrations combined.  In fact, the bulk of these cuts occurred under Bush senior:  4 of the 8 standing army divisions; 425,000 of the 745,000 active duty personnel; 213 of the 450 ICBMs; most of the heavy bombers, and so on.  Cuts in reserve troops were steeper under Clinton, but our SLBM capabilities actually increased.  (All of this info is available in the Pentagon's annual reports at http://www.dtic.mil/execsec/adr_intro.html).  Not only did Clinton not initiate these cuts, but most of them he couldn't have prevented, since they were mandated under international treaties that Bush signed, such as START I, START II, and the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaties.  Since the Bush people were at the time arguing that governors lack the foreign
policy experience to be president (ironic, huh!), Clinton wisely supported Bush's treaties in the 1992 campaign and subsequently implemented them.

Second, if you're concerned about the current condition of the U.S. military, I'm not sure that Bush is your man.  If you examine the candidates' respective economic plans (www.georgewbush.com and www.algore2000.com), you'll find that Gore has budgeted more than twice as much of an increase in military spending:  $100 billion (Gore) versus $45 billion (Bush) over the next 10 years.  Of Bush's $45 billion defense increase, nearly half ($20 billion) is earmarked for R&D for the next generation of weapons systems.  So it isn't clear how the remaining $25 billion - 0.8% of total defense spending over the next decade - will support a larger military with better pay and equipment.  Moreover, Bush has proposed unilaterally cutting our ICBMs below the 6,000 ceiling set by the START treaty - a measure the GOP Congress opposes - and skipping a generation of weapons systems to save money.  ("Bush Nuclear Plan Could Face Hurdles: GOP-Backed Law Bars Proposed Steps," Washington Post, June 4 2000.)

So why is W so soft on defense?  Well, if you want a truly hair-raising experience, check out the GwB tax calculator on Bush's home page.  Compare your expected tax cut to that of a millionaire; the Bush page won't tell what this cut is (it doesn't go past $100K; the biggest cuts kick in at $200K), but the New York Times calculated that a couple making $915,000 would receive a cut of $58,898 under his plan.  Suppose you're doing ok and making $91,000; well, your taxes will be cut $1,627 - somebody making 10 times more gets a tax cut 36.2 times greater.  The inequities are even more dramatic as you move along the pay ladder.  So somebody making $18 million - as Bush did in 1998, when his stake in the Texas Rangers appreciated dramatically after he convinced citizens to use $200 million of taxpayer funds to build a new stadium - can expect a tax cut, "big-time."  Your children, however, won't get
enough to cover the higher cost of financing a car or a mortgage when interest rates inevitably skyrocket (because W doesn't think we need to pay down the national debt).  And that tax cut isn't going to help much to supplement your retirement when the social security trust fund
becomes insolvent (in 2012, under Bush's plan) - right around the time you'll be looking to draw on those benefits.

Personally, I'd like to see the U.S. military armed with more than rhetoric when it's deployed abroad and I don't think we should return to the days of ballooning budget deficits to benefit the extravagantly wealthy.  Since you're apparently in favor of growing the size of the biggest bureaucracy of the U.S. government - the military - perhaps it's time to embrace those innate liberal tendencies and consider voting for Al yourself.

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