Red River Sage: Political

Having served in the US Army for several years during and
after the Viet Nam era and spending my career in the defense industry, I am one
of the first to support adequate funding for the DoD to support the men and
women we send to do our bidding in foreign lands as well as to stand ready to
defend our borders if and when our leaders (I use the term loosely} should
attempt to defend us from aggression at home.
However, accepting that our last two presidents and our representatives
during that period have acted so irresponsible and piled up a debit that we
will never be able to repay, I am ready for some regrettable but necessary
changes. My first recommendation is that
we close most of our foreign bases.
Maybe Ron Paul finally got through to me. While our efforts to maintain a strong
military presence in Korea for instance is noble and probably has limited North
Korea’s irresponsible leader’s interest in physically invading the South, I am
coming to the realization that we just can’t afford it anymore. Given the current state in our military
technology, I suspect we might actually be in a better position to respond by
having our personnel and assets outside South Korea. We could reinvest a portion of what we spend
on keeping a force in foreign bases each year in additional standoff capability
such as aircraft carriers, in-flight refueling, armed drones, combat airlift
capability, etc. This would improve our already pretty good ability to project
strength anywhere in the world. I am not
for isolation but I am willing to face reality.
Following WW II the world was in disarray and supporting people who
tried to rise up against abusive dictators to improve their standard of living
was a noble cause we could afford. We
got used to being the avenging force around the world righting wrong as we saw
it. We have left fighting forces in
previously hot spots across the globe.
So much so, that we are disliked worldwide in spite of our efforts to
rescue the oppressed, feed the hungry and provide aid to almost anyone who
would seek it. If we take a fresh look
at what we are doing without the burden of the knowledge of how we got here, it
makes no real sense. Does Japan need
such a large force of US military personnel to protect them? Their economy is one of the strongest in the world;
can’t they afford to protect themselves now? Germany is another good example. After all, Germany had threatened the security
of the entire European and African continents and we were called upon to beat
them back into their borders and then to dismantle their military
capability. We did it, but why are we
now responsible for defending Germany against any future aggressor? At one time there was a real threat that
Russia might invade Germany and we needed heavy equipment on the ground to
counter that potential. Even if it is our role to protect them which I don’t
agree with, do we think this threat is still real and is keeping a heavy force
in the way the best way to counter the threat?
I don’t think so. I believe we
became wasteful in this as well as many uses of our resources. Having done the work to establish and build
bases in these areas we felt compelled to keep them. Nice if you can afford, it but sadly we can
no longer afford this. Our financial
situation requires that we face reality, sad we got here but we can no longer
be the police force for the world.

We must focus or now limited resources instead on setting
better examples for people around the world to see what free people can
accomplish using free market principles and smaller government designed to meet
specific missions in support of the citizens vs “managing” citizens to force
compliance to shifting ideologies. Lets
pull back our presence but maintain the capability to defend our interests
around the world. Let the mission of
suppressing the bad actors fall to someone else for a while.

Take a look at the facilities we built and now are paying
to man and maintain, including local national staff and support
contracts for food, cleaning, facilities work, etc.: (my source was Wikipedia)

United States Army

Bulgaria