by Oui
Sun Apr 28th, 2019 at 09:07:43 PM EST
Excellent diaries by Jeff Huber for a timely reread ...
○ Neocon Bunker Hunker (Continued)
Part I outlined the neocons' "resurgence" strategy. Part II discusses how Barack Obama may be steering us toward a neo-neoconservativism.
More below the fold ...
His last paragraph ...
And if President Obama ever gets annoyed with something stupid Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says, he needs an adviser to remind him how many stupid things his predecessor said over the course of eight years, and to remind him to make sure Joe Biden is still bound and gagged and guarded.
Obama needs an adviser who will nudge him the next time he says that he wants to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps because "the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now face," and remind him of the recent report from the Rand Corporation that concludes the best approach to combating terrorism is "a light U.S. military footprint or none at all."
When Obama says, "We must maintain the strongest, best-equipped military in the world in order to defeat and deter conventional threats," he needs an advisor to tell him that America already spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined, and that the nearest things we have to military competitors, Russia and China, spend a tenth as much on defense as we do at most, and that if Obama continues to pay heed to advisers who talk like they're reading from the neocon play book, he'll find himself arming America into abject penury to repel an invasion from a force that exists somewhere beyond the Van Allen radiation belt.
Related reading ...
○ 'Light Footprint' Operations Keep US Troops in the Dark | Defense One |
○ AFRICOM: counterterrorism and the fight against Al-Qaeda | IRSEM |
○ Understanding the G5 Sahel Joint Force: Fighting Terror, Building Regional Security?
PS Martin Longman @BooMan will be migrating to a new site soon. Diaries and comments will be preserved.
