Letters to the Editor
tallil2long
Published Letters: 3
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Hope is a fine thing
[Read the article: Barack Obama's nouvelle vague]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But, as my brigade commander is fond of saying, "Hope is not a method".
I'd really prefer to hear candidates proposing methods and plausible solutions.
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Some questions
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The United States has around 1,426,700 people on active duty and roughly 1,458,500 in all the reserve components. This is a total of 2,885,200, or roughly 0.95% of our total population.
Let's look at that list of rogue states: Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
Cuba: 1,231,500 servicemembers, including over one million paramilitary. The Active force is down to around 49,000 as opposed to around 235,000 in 1994, when they were still being funded largely by the Soviet bloc. 11% of the total population of 11,177,743.
Iran: 895,000 active and reserve, 70,472,846. That's 1.2% of the total population. If we include the paramilitary forces (11,390,000) we get 17.4% of the total population.
Libya: around 119,000 troops. Approximately 1.9% of the population.
North Korea: 5,995,000 troops including reserve components. 25.7% of the population; or 4.7% of the population if only the active forces are counted.
Sudan: 199,500 troops -- 0.5% of the estimated population of 39mil. Pretty small -- until you recognize the vast number of local militia constantly raiding one another, which have never been counted.
Syria: 536,500 servicemembers, or 2.6% of the population.
Then we might look at the percentages for other states such as Vietnam: 1.09%
Egypt: 1.3%
China: only 0.53%, but that still makes over 7 MILLION
Paraguay: 3.2%
Cyprus: 8.9% and this does not include various Turkish militias
Brazil: 0.91%
Georgia: 5.9%
Oman: 1.6%
Fiji: 1.1%
The unbelievably large military spending of the U.S. doesn't prove we are highly militarized -- in terms of percentage of population under arms, many nations are far more militarized -- only that we insist on providing our servicemembers with competitive living wages (and the U.S. cost of living is much higher than in many nations), the best high-tech equipment in the world, as well as the sort of medical, retirement and educational benefits that most nations don't even bother with. Would anyone here advise doing less?
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SGT Rock
[Read the article: The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"The US has 730 Military Installations & Bases in Over 50 Country
http://www.ppu.org.uk/pm/usbases.html
Including Japan, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, and England.
Can't they defend themselves?"
A large part of the reason that we have bases in other nations is to support potential deployment to distant theaters. For example, Moron airbase in Spain was originally intended for B-52 bombers during the Cold War, but now provides a refueling and stopover point for flights headed in-theater. If we need the ability to project power thousands of miles from our shores (and we do), then we need bases to support that effort. Needless to say, I do not claim that *all* or even most bases exist to fulfill this purpose.