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Regarding strong national defense in his Contract for the American Dream Congressman Chaffetz reminds us:
The men and women serving in our armed forces are the best in the world. They can accomplish anything they are asked to do, if they are given the proper resources and clear rules of engagement.
He believes that we should be working towards:
Imagine the best equipped strategic strike forces rapidly deployed at a moment's notice to respond to the national security interests of the United States of America. Also, imagine a well compensated military that cares for the military families, now, in the future, and especially when wounded.
He thinks this will take us there:
- Dedicate at least 4% of our nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for national defense spending.
- Secure our borders, enforce our current immigration laws, and reject amnesty for those who are here illegally.
- Adopt a “Go Big or Go Home” approach to our overseas military presence. We must have the best foreign intelligence, human and electronic.
- Support an “all of the above” national energy policy that advocates rapid development of renewable energy, clean/green energy, and the use of our various natural resources and nuclear capabilities. Recognize that energy independence is vital to our national security.
- Keep Guantanamo Bay open and continue with military tribunals.
- Sustain the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms.
- Support Veterans by honoring all commitments made to them.
My reactions:
- Having a flat rate dedicated to defense might be better than our current what-can-we-get-away-with approach. Whether 4% is the right rate is up for debate.
- We need to secure our borders, but that will probably require a long discussion about what we believe about immigration and then a complete overhaul of our immigration laws. Then we would need to strictly enforce those immigration laws once they are in line with our immigration beliefs.
- “Go Big or Go Home” might help us be more careful about when and where we “go.”
- “All of the above” is definitely the right energy policy.
- Keeping Guantanamo Bay open is not helping our national security in any measurable way.
- We should sustain basic rights – obviously including the Second Amendment.
- We should honor all our commitments and our veterans have done the most to warrant making those commitments to them than any other group – certainly they have done more than most of our members of Congress.
2 replies on “Strong National Defense for the American Dream”
The first thing we have to do is realize that National Defense does not require “strategic strike forces rapidly deployed…to respond to the national security interests of the United States”. In fact, the so-called national security interest is little more than a cover for military adventurism overseas. The American people are here in America. America is the 50 states. Defending our people and our land does not require military strikes, invasions and occupations of foreign nations. In fact such actions are detrimental to our national security. That said, there will not be a reduction of any significance in the military budget regardless of which party is in power because too many powerful corporations are making too much money sucking at the Pentagon teat and they are not about to allow their servants in Washington to cut into their profit.
Securing our borders is another phony issue. The reason people come here across the border (and we are only talking about the Mexican border here – the one where the brown people come from) is to find employment so they can feed their families. If the government enforced the law on employers rather than workers, that would be over in a heartbeat. If a company can hire hundreds of undocumented workers and pay them below minimum wage then a fine of a few thousand is not going to deter them. When we enact a corporate death penalty that withdraws the charter of corporations that routinely break the law and sells their assets to others, then we will get their attention.
The “all of the above” energy policy means little more than a continued giveaway to the big oil, gas and coal companies coupled with handing the government responsibility to insure nuclear power stations so they can afford to operate. It is TARP on steroids. Meanwhile China, Japan and Europe are busy developing alternative energy sources with government subsidy and when our oil runs out, we will have to buy everything from them because we will not have an industry. This is the worst possible plan for America’s future, so it’s the most likely of these ideas to actually be enacted.
I have no problem with sustaining basic rights although I’d be much more likely to take conservatives seriously if they defending the other amendments of the Bill of Rights with the same zeal as they defend #2.
I agree that what politicians describe as national security interest is rarely anything but a cover for military adventurism overseas. We must continue to repeat that fact so that more people will begin to rethink their values despite the fact that no current party will actually push for a reduction in military spending.
As for the issue of securing our border – I think there is a real issue at the core there even if it is often used as a cover for the phony or racist issue of trying to keep “the brown people” out of the country. I’m not sure how to separate the real issue from the phony one, but I am sure that the phony one is not all there is to the issue.
Finally, I agree that too many self-described conservatives do nothing to defend any but the second amendment but if you look carefully you will find real conservatives who defend our other basic rights as well (and as vigorously) as they do the second amendment.