U.S. Marines bombard through a live fire range using M1A1 Abrams tanks in Djibouti, March 30, 2010. The Marines are assigned to Alpha Company, Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Alex C. SaucedaThe U.S.'s Expanding Military Empire -- CBS
In my 1950s childhood, Ripley’s Believe It or Not was part of everyday life, a syndicated comics page feature where you could stumble upon such mind-boggling facts as: "If all the Chinese in the world were to march four abreast past a given point, they would never finish passing though they marched forever and forever.” Or if you were young and iconoclastic, you could chuckle over Mad magazine’s parody, “Ripup’s Believe It or Don’t!”
With our Afghan and Iraq wars on my mind, I’ve been wondering whether Ripley’s moment hasn’t returned. Here, for instance, are some figures offered in a Washington Post piece by Lieutenant General James H. Pillsbury, deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, who is deeply involved in the “drawdown of the logistics operation in Iraq”: “There are... more than 341 facilities; 263,000 soldiers, Defense Department civilians and contractor employees; 83,000 containers; 42,000 vehicles; 3 million equipment items; and roughly $54 billion in assets that will ultimately be removed from Iraq.”
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My Comment: The growth of US military power is a topic of discussion that can go on .... and on .... and on. But while there is still validity in this argument, there are also many who are voicing the opposite point of view.
What is my take .... experiencing $2 trillion dollar deficits will eventually impact every department in the US Government .... the military included.
Spending as much as the rest of the world combined and the accumulated debt of our cold war arms races and wars added to our cureent wars, increasing number of bases, intelligence agencies, and an extensive homeland security network is going to drag us down to the status of a banana republic soon. That is not good for our national security.
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