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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices

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To: tejek who wrote (175703)	10/2/2003 3:43:45 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) of 1578609

How can I answer that question without serious analysis. However, without being specific, the answer is much less than we have now. Enough to defend our country without having to be policeman to the world. OK I can see that the actual level would require a lot of analysis but what broad general principles would you apply to that analysis. You've made a start on that. "Enough to defend out country", and not enough to "be policeman to the world". I would include missile defense as part of "enough to defend our country", but from past conversations I'm fairly sure you would not. What about "enough to protect our interests", or to retaliate against those who attack us (rather then just providing a direct defense)? Another consideration is that having more then enough to get the job done usually allows the job to be done quicker and with fewer casualties on your side and frequently even on the enemy side. How much extra is that worth to you? When I say minimal, I saw in some article where our defense budget was larger than the rest of the world's. There is no reasonableness when it comes to our defense spending. I've explained before how the statement in the article is misleading, but also we have over 1/5th of worlds economy and interests all over the world. Its true that many other countries get a partial free ride on our defense spending because they know that if things really go to hell somewhere in a way that threatens important shared interests that we will be there to take control of the situation. This might be unfair but we don't have anyone bigger then us to pass the problem along to. If we don't assume the burden I'm not sure anyone will. The money we are providing Iraq to help rebuild Iraq is not foreign aid....its part of the cost of doing war Its both. Just like the Marshall plan was foreign aid but would not have happened if we didn't fight in WWII. because of the way we did this war......attacking pre-emptively. "Pre-emptively" isn't relevant to this specific point. If Saddam had declared war on us with no provocation on our part and then we invaded Iraq and kicked him out of power the aid will still be related to the fact that we went to war. It would still be part of the cost of the war. Tim

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