Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Even after one considers the source ...
Pat Buchanan has written an excellent essay,
Is [America] really willing to pay indefinitely in blood and treasure to realize the ambitious agenda George W. Bush has set out? Consider:
Though our 2,150 war dead are not 4 percent of the men we lost in Vietnam, our home front has buckled. Half the nation wants out. Is this how a mighty empire reacts to a little adversity?
Today, we field armed forces one-tenth the size of U.S. forces in 1945, and not half as large as the forces commanded by Ike and JFK. Yet, the very suggestion of a return to the draft, which we all readily accepted in the 1950s, causes a firestorm of indignation and protest.
Apparently, few of our future leaders wish to risk their lives in the "global democratic revolution."
Nor have the rest of us been called on to sacrifice. Today, we spend 4 percent of our GDP on the military. In Ike's day, it was 9 percent; in Reagan's, 6 percent. But any proposal to raise taxes to expand U.S. armed forces to enforce the Bush Doctrine against Iran or North Korea would have Republican supply-siders digging the cobblestones out of the streets of Georgetown.
When it comes to empire, we are - in a phrase Bush used to hear often growing up in West Texas - "all hat and no cattle."
// posted by Erik @ 12/27/2005 11:17:00 PM
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