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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (126048)	12/2/2009 11:12:12 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542139

y now I, perhaps unreasonably, expected Obama to have been making the case to the public for a significant military downsizing. I find myself in the somewhat odd position of defending decisions I'm not happy about but here goes, nonetheless. On Obama and Afghanistan, I don't think any of us should be surprised, however disappointed we might be. He campaigned on increasing troop strength (implicit but barely so) in Afghanistan, and kept saying it during the early months. The best we can hope for is (a) a withdrawal beginning in 2011 and (b) that he's not damaged too much politically by all this.

To: Katelew who wrote (126048)	12/2/2009 11:13:55 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542139

When did Obama ever say anything in the campaign about reducing the number of active duty US troops? I don't get people being disappointed with Obama because he didn't do stuff that he never said he supported or would do. Everyone is turning him into a personal Rorschach test and projecting their own wants on his actions. The end result is the majority being disappointed, of course, since everyone can find something they wanted to happen that Obama never campaigned on. It's a very peculiar trend among the electorate. But after being overseas for so long and not being in touch with the pulse of the US electorate, I really understand now why this country has not accomplished squat in the last couple of decades.

To: Katelew who wrote (126048)	12/2/2009 11:18:27 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542139

Of course, Bush reversed that and the numbers of personnel have steadily increased back up. Actually, Bush did not increase the number of military personnel. That number has remained flat. infoplease.com Bush was actually under pressure from some Democrats to increase the number of military personnel. Would Clinton have scaled back the military if the Cold War had not ended? I doubt it.

To: Katelew who wrote (126048)	12/2/2009 11:23:41 AM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 542139

I think Clinton reduced the number of military personnel by close to a third. Of course, Bush reversed that and the numbers of personnel have steadily increased back up. Well, I looked that up. According to infoplease.com total active duty military has been pretty constant since about 1998; force levels went down about 400k (out of 1.8 million ) during the Clinton years but they seem to have already gone down 300k+ during GHWB's term. So the end of the cold war counted for something, but the end of Vietnam counted for a lot more. The scary thing about the military is that it has been pretty much stretched to the limit maintaining maybe 150k total troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though that makes a lot more sense if you look at just the army number; the army is pretty much condemned to providing most of the boots on the ground. (edit: I see Glen beat me to the first google hit.)