wkmac
Well-Known Member
Regardless who is elected in November, are we about to see a shift in the War on Terror? This is a true question on my part and not a rhetorical one. The reason I wonder this is as follows.
Yesterday I saw 2 news stories that truly does effect our ability to wage war, secure the peace or whatever nametag you like but it's not always an obvious effect to the causal observer. The first story concerns the budget deficit for 2009' will be nearly half a trillion dollars.
The 2nd story concerns a report that 1 in 4 highway bridges across the US is in need of major repair or upgrade at a cost of $140 billion.
The state and local governments may be looking to Washington because most people would point out that States have a balanced budget requirement in their law and at present these states are cutting costs in order to balance the budget. This will increase pressure towards Washington for more federal dollars to cover shortfalls for state and local needs. Case in point.
Now all this said, what has the last 10 years been like in relation to the growth of the federal budget itself? The 1999' budget submitted by Clinton in 1998' was $1.7 trillion. The recent 2009' budget submitted by Bush is at $3.10 trillion which means in 10 years the cost of gov't if you will has doubled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Total_Outlays_in_Recent_Budget_Submissions
OK, you're asking how this relates to the War and Terror and I'm about to drop that other shoe but the economics are important to this picture.
The deficit and US debt is a growing problem and I only listed the bridge study just as a small window to a bigger problem. And don't go on the welfare/liberal binge as I'm the resident radical who believes all roads should be privately owned anyway. LOL! And no AV, I'm not saying the war is the cause but rather it is a part of the bigger pie. Even the article on the budget deficit points out the problem is over many fronts and not one lone source, so sit back and relax.
If worse case, 20% of bridges in America become impassable, that economic impact will trickle down in many forms which will ultimately hit the dollar and cents means of our ability to wage war in the first place. We no longer wage war to plunder for gold and slaves like the dominate world powers of old so until those lands under warfare join the global economic community and begin to expand the marketplace which absorbs the inflation of the currency to stablize, we'll have these type problems.
OK, where is this going. Rand Corp. is a federally funded think tank if you will that is commissioned with the job of forward thought and providing insight into forward strategic thinking whether military or even domestic issues like highway bridges for example. Rand Corp. well before the troop surge in Iraq showed historical detailed study of the manning requirements to suppress violence and secure Iraq and finally when Bush & Co. jettisoned Rumsfeld and followed the Rand thinking "the surge" you now see the results.
BTW: well before all that surge went down I posted links to those Rand studies (couple of years back but don't remember the thread)http://www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/summer2003/nation5.html
and the success in Iraq if you will really came as no surprise to me at all. It only proved what was already historically a known fact. So much for the need of history, right? Ah, yes, you are gonna remind me that we never got to the levels suggested by Rand of 500k plus troops. Well, yeah we kinda did. What you have to take into account is also the pirvate contractors and also add in any non-US troops and then we might be getting into tha ballpark of Rand's number. http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/04/nation/na-private4
This morning in the news I saw this report and I have to admit I was a bit surprised. http://www.rand.org/news/press/2008/07/29/ This is out in the news cycle and the various outlets are reporting this story as I first saw it in Yahoo news but went to Rand in order to see the report itself. Now from the press release:
I bolded the last sentence because to be honest I had to re-read it to make sure I was seeing it right.
OK, what's the point here. For several reasons, the economy is a big factor right now and added to that a major election year. The ability to maintain warfare by a nation-state is only achievable by it's means to pay for that action. Nation-states of old paid for warfare by taking the gold of the defeated and in many cases making the conquered population slaves in order to further pay for the process. We don't act in such overt ways any longer and thus it takes more time for these cost returns to pay out. In the shorterm (generally several decades) the nation-state population must absorb those costs either by direct taxation or massive borrowing which the latter is the course we've chosen. That course is not without it's own harmful repercussions so here's the bottomline.
Watch going forward as the political speak will begin to change as I believe this study will come into play. Obama will be more direct or overt if you will as he's not been in Washington long enough to learn how to change a position and then sell the spin to the public in such way as there was no change at all. McCain however like any longterm republican or democrat knows this artform very well. He will be better IMO at crafting a policy that seems to maintain the status quo but then at the same time adapt the new Rand policy in such a way as to make you think visionary or forward thinking and while not tipping his hand that he's just about doing the same as Obama.
McCain already has an upperhand that unlike Obama, he's not proposed a huge troop surge to Afghanistan to fight Al-Qaeda which seems the oppostie to some extent of the Rand report suggests should be done. I really have to wonder if McCain because of his long career in Washington wasn't aware already of the facts of this report to begin with. If so, brillant move on his part at poltical "rope a dope" to borrow an old boxing term. If McCain adapts the Rand approach, he can almost come across as a type of anti-war candidate while a the same time not really ending the war but shifting focus and if it shows success, how will the voter shift to in Novemeber?
Just watch the campaigns going forward and let's see just how this whole thing begins to work out.
Just a side note to consider. Recently Bush himself seems to have jettisoned the neo-conservative core that provided his strategic thinking and moved towards a more moderate approach. Makes the Rand study all the more interesting IMO. Recently talking with Iran just one small example, which BTW and IMO he deserves an "A" grade for doing. Sure it's only talks but there is a growing unrest in Iran against the ruling nutjob and anything to undermine him internally and give advantage to vastly more moderate Iranian voices is a good thing. But we will have to watch this situation for sure.
Yesterday I saw 2 news stories that truly does effect our ability to wage war, secure the peace or whatever nametag you like but it's not always an obvious effect to the causal observer. The first story concerns the budget deficit for 2009' will be nearly half a trillion dollars.
The 2nd story concerns a report that 1 in 4 highway bridges across the US is in need of major repair or upgrade at a cost of $140 billion.
The state and local governments may be looking to Washington because most people would point out that States have a balanced budget requirement in their law and at present these states are cutting costs in order to balance the budget. This will increase pressure towards Washington for more federal dollars to cover shortfalls for state and local needs. Case in point.
Now all this said, what has the last 10 years been like in relation to the growth of the federal budget itself? The 1999' budget submitted by Clinton in 1998' was $1.7 trillion. The recent 2009' budget submitted by Bush is at $3.10 trillion which means in 10 years the cost of gov't if you will has doubled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Total_Outlays_in_Recent_Budget_Submissions
OK, you're asking how this relates to the War and Terror and I'm about to drop that other shoe but the economics are important to this picture.
The deficit and US debt is a growing problem and I only listed the bridge study just as a small window to a bigger problem. And don't go on the welfare/liberal binge as I'm the resident radical who believes all roads should be privately owned anyway. LOL! And no AV, I'm not saying the war is the cause but rather it is a part of the bigger pie. Even the article on the budget deficit points out the problem is over many fronts and not one lone source, so sit back and relax.
If worse case, 20% of bridges in America become impassable, that economic impact will trickle down in many forms which will ultimately hit the dollar and cents means of our ability to wage war in the first place. We no longer wage war to plunder for gold and slaves like the dominate world powers of old so until those lands under warfare join the global economic community and begin to expand the marketplace which absorbs the inflation of the currency to stablize, we'll have these type problems.
OK, where is this going. Rand Corp. is a federally funded think tank if you will that is commissioned with the job of forward thought and providing insight into forward strategic thinking whether military or even domestic issues like highway bridges for example. Rand Corp. well before the troop surge in Iraq showed historical detailed study of the manning requirements to suppress violence and secure Iraq and finally when Bush & Co. jettisoned Rumsfeld and followed the Rand thinking "the surge" you now see the results.
BTW: well before all that surge went down I posted links to those Rand studies (couple of years back but don't remember the thread)http://www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/summer2003/nation5.html
and the success in Iraq if you will really came as no surprise to me at all. It only proved what was already historically a known fact. So much for the need of history, right? Ah, yes, you are gonna remind me that we never got to the levels suggested by Rand of 500k plus troops. Well, yeah we kinda did. What you have to take into account is also the pirvate contractors and also add in any non-US troops and then we might be getting into tha ballpark of Rand's number. http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/04/nation/na-private4
This morning in the news I saw this report and I have to admit I was a bit surprised. http://www.rand.org/news/press/2008/07/29/ This is out in the news cycle and the various outlets are reporting this story as I first saw it in Yahoo news but went to Rand in order to see the report itself. Now from the press release:
I bolded the last sentence because to be honest I had to re-read it to make sure I was seeing it right.
OK, what's the point here. For several reasons, the economy is a big factor right now and added to that a major election year. The ability to maintain warfare by a nation-state is only achievable by it's means to pay for that action. Nation-states of old paid for warfare by taking the gold of the defeated and in many cases making the conquered population slaves in order to further pay for the process. We don't act in such overt ways any longer and thus it takes more time for these cost returns to pay out. In the shorterm (generally several decades) the nation-state population must absorb those costs either by direct taxation or massive borrowing which the latter is the course we've chosen. That course is not without it's own harmful repercussions so here's the bottomline.
Watch going forward as the political speak will begin to change as I believe this study will come into play. Obama will be more direct or overt if you will as he's not been in Washington long enough to learn how to change a position and then sell the spin to the public in such way as there was no change at all. McCain however like any longterm republican or democrat knows this artform very well. He will be better IMO at crafting a policy that seems to maintain the status quo but then at the same time adapt the new Rand policy in such a way as to make you think visionary or forward thinking and while not tipping his hand that he's just about doing the same as Obama.
McCain already has an upperhand that unlike Obama, he's not proposed a huge troop surge to Afghanistan to fight Al-Qaeda which seems the oppostie to some extent of the Rand report suggests should be done. I really have to wonder if McCain because of his long career in Washington wasn't aware already of the facts of this report to begin with. If so, brillant move on his part at poltical "rope a dope" to borrow an old boxing term. If McCain adapts the Rand approach, he can almost come across as a type of anti-war candidate while a the same time not really ending the war but shifting focus and if it shows success, how will the voter shift to in Novemeber?
Just watch the campaigns going forward and let's see just how this whole thing begins to work out.
Just a side note to consider. Recently Bush himself seems to have jettisoned the neo-conservative core that provided his strategic thinking and moved towards a more moderate approach. Makes the Rand study all the more interesting IMO. Recently talking with Iran just one small example, which BTW and IMO he deserves an "A" grade for doing. Sure it's only talks but there is a growing unrest in Iran against the ruling nutjob and anything to undermine him internally and give advantage to vastly more moderate Iranian voices is a good thing. But we will have to watch this situation for sure.
) so I'd like to do something nice just for you. I know you and I are on vastly different plains of mental thinking so in that light and more in line with your skill sets, I give you the great, iconic, all American Duck!
wake up, where have you been?
