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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (129999)	12/20/2000 6:32:16 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1570368

As I understand the problem its not so much people leaving as they are not entering. Its both. Many highly expierienced specialists are leaving and even if recuitment was fine it would be very hard to replace them. The economy is obviously a big reason, but it is not the only one. The military has greatly shrunk so it should not need as much rucruitment, but morale and readiness of our military are lower and this is making hard to keep people. Most people don't know this but we don't have a deployable Persian Gulf size force available any more. I don't understand why that's a problem. We usually are never fully deployable in any part of the world.....I don't think it would be economically feasible. I was not talking about deploying 100% of our foces in one place. I was talking about a major deployment that we were very capable of doing a few years back, but now could not longer handle. Currently I don't see the need for such a deployment coming up soon, but then I was surprised by the Iraqi invation of Kuwait. Other surpises could happen in the future. Its not so easy to rapidly build up military forces later if things change. We did in WWII but that took a full mobilization and it took place at a time when military equipment was less complex and easier to produce. At that time civilian plants where easier to convert to tank or fighter plants. We have come to the point where we can not be the world's policeman.....at least not single handedly. And as far as I know, he is the first president to recognize that fact. He didn't recognize that we would be overextended if we tried to go it alone. He brought in other countries out of an ideological belief that we should not go it alone. Depsite the contributions of other countries he greatly increased US deployments the other countries where more often added to the situation for appearences rather then to reduce the forces that the US would have deplyed in a crises situation. He increased the extent that the US was acting as the world's policman, even if he did try to do so under the unbrella of NATO and the UN. As for how much $$$ need to be spent on housing and food...in my view, when none of us go hungry or have to live on the street.....not a popular concept, I am afraid. I'm not sure this is possible without totalitarian intervention into our country's economy by the federal government. Esp. if you mean more then just having a bit of food and a bed in a homeless shelter. Tim