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

To: tejek who wrote (226019)	3/23/2005 8:51:20 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572546

After all, our capability could be increased further simply by putting everyone on 'a diet'. Wouldn't even be much of a diet. During a large part of the cold war we might have spent twice as much as a % of our GDP on defense as we do now, or for a real "diet" you can look to WWII when we spent maybe 6 times as much. But there isn't the will to do that. Its speaks to growing corruption How? I don't really see growing corruption , but assuming its there how does the lack of "putting people on a diet" to "support increasing our capabilities" "speak to" such corruption? Its just as much of a factor when you are dealing with a powerful enemy as it is when you are dealing with a weak one. In fact its more likely to be a problem when you are dealing with a powerful enemy. Nonsense.....utter and complete nonsense. Think about it Ted. If you have to face a powerful enemy you have less margin for error. You might actually suffer grave consequences. If you spend to much against a week enemy than you waste a bit, if you spend too little you might suffer consequences that you don't like, but either way its small compared to spending too much or too little against a powerful enemy, where spending too much can really hurt your economy in a major way, and spending too little can potentially have devistating results. A week enemy can't really overstreach you. The capabilities of your enemies and potential enemies are relevant when you are deciding the question "are we putting more in to the military than we should", but they are not relevant to the question "are we putting more in to the military than we can sustain", which is the question that the concept of "imperial overstretch" deals with. The latter is relevant when the emperor is making up your enemies as he goes along. Which isn't the case here. And even if it was it would only become overstreach after we create a bunch of new enemies and increase the resources going to the military to well above the current level. Arguing that we could be overstreached if we take on Iran and Syria and/or invade North Korea, while still being involved in Iraq, is very different than arguing that we are currently overstreached. You could make a very solid case for the former but it doesn't demonstrate the latter. Tim