Bush: More troops needed for 'long struggle'
December 20, 2006 (CNN)
The White House is considering an expansion of the U.S. Army and Marines for "the long struggle against radicals and extremists," President Bush said during a Wednesday news conference.
Bush would not elaborate on where that struggle would take place, only that he wanted to ensure that the U.S. military "stays in the fight for a long period of time."
"I'm not predicting any particular theater, but I am predicting that it's going to take a while for the ideology of liberty to finally triumph over the ideology of hate," he said.
AntiSpin: For readers who are expecting an imminent crash in the U.S. economy with no source of employment in sight to fill the gap left open by the collapsing housing bubble, consider that since 9/11 government spending on defense has provided most of the jobs lost since the 2001 recession. Might even more defense spending be the policy answer to a post housing bubble recession?
The Economic Policy Institute report Without defense-related spending, private sector would still be in a jobs hole states:
Source: Economic Policy Institute
A post-stock market bubble, war-based economy may keep more people employed than a depressed economy, but the negative long term impact on the engine of the U.S. economy–it's most educated and productive citizens–may be starting to show. Speaking with a reader on the phone last night, he mentioned several friends of his with boys in their early teens who are scouting out countries to move to in order to keep their kids safe from what they see as a steady drift toward a military draft. Top of the list are Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. I have also spoken with a dozen parents over the past few months–these are high net worth families–who investigating alternative locations, not so much to keep their kids out of some future war in "any particular theater," as Bush stated, but to avoid the social fallout from the decimation of the U.S. middle class they are expecting to occur after the credit bubble collapses.
Now, iTulip is critical of Wall Street, the Fed, the national leadership, Congress, and many institutions of the United States that have taken this country away from its mission and ideals, especially over the past ten years. But readers probably sense that this criticism is borne of a deep-rooted love of the country. I subscribe to Sir Winston Churchill's observation that "America always does the right thing, but only after exhausting all other options." This is what passes for optimism these days. But for all its errors, if I put the U.S. to the Russell Baker test, as he described in a column more than 30 years ago when the U.S. was making a mess of Vietnam, the U.S. is still doing relatively well: the ultimate measure of a country's policies is determined by the net gain and loss of citizens–more people still trying to get in to the U.S. than trying to get out.
I know several recent immigrants to the U.S. ,so I don't yet see anything I'd call a net loss trend. But even a modest change in the trend is significant; it's a big deal to decide to leave your home country, so I take note of the few who have made the move and many who are actively investigating taking such a drastic step in the future, should things go from bad to worse. Only time will tell whether the people I'm hearing from are the "early adopters" of the idea of leaving the USA, an idea that may increase in popularity over time. We shall see if these are snowflakes on a hillside that collect into large, fast moving snowballs, or not. We watch this development together.
December 20, 2006 (CNN)
The White House is considering an expansion of the U.S. Army and Marines for "the long struggle against radicals and extremists," President Bush said during a Wednesday news conference.
Bush would not elaborate on where that struggle would take place, only that he wanted to ensure that the U.S. military "stays in the fight for a long period of time."
"I'm not predicting any particular theater, but I am predicting that it's going to take a while for the ideology of liberty to finally triumph over the ideology of hate," he said.
AntiSpin: For readers who are expecting an imminent crash in the U.S. economy with no source of employment in sight to fill the gap left open by the collapsing housing bubble, consider that since 9/11 government spending on defense has provided most of the jobs lost since the 2001 recession. Might even more defense spending be the policy answer to a post housing bubble recession?
The Economic Policy Institute report Without defense-related spending, private sector would still be in a jobs hole states:
"The private sector has 1.2 million fewer non-defense-related jobs today than it had four years ago. Only as a result of increases in government spending over the past four years, mostly on defense, does the private sector have more jobs now than it did before the recession."
Source: Economic Policy Institute
A post-stock market bubble, war-based economy may keep more people employed than a depressed economy, but the negative long term impact on the engine of the U.S. economy–it's most educated and productive citizens–may be starting to show. Speaking with a reader on the phone last night, he mentioned several friends of his with boys in their early teens who are scouting out countries to move to in order to keep their kids safe from what they see as a steady drift toward a military draft. Top of the list are Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. I have also spoken with a dozen parents over the past few months–these are high net worth families–who investigating alternative locations, not so much to keep their kids out of some future war in "any particular theater," as Bush stated, but to avoid the social fallout from the decimation of the U.S. middle class they are expecting to occur after the credit bubble collapses.
Now, iTulip is critical of Wall Street, the Fed, the national leadership, Congress, and many institutions of the United States that have taken this country away from its mission and ideals, especially over the past ten years. But readers probably sense that this criticism is borne of a deep-rooted love of the country. I subscribe to Sir Winston Churchill's observation that "America always does the right thing, but only after exhausting all other options." This is what passes for optimism these days. But for all its errors, if I put the U.S. to the Russell Baker test, as he described in a column more than 30 years ago when the U.S. was making a mess of Vietnam, the U.S. is still doing relatively well: the ultimate measure of a country's policies is determined by the net gain and loss of citizens–more people still trying to get in to the U.S. than trying to get out.
I know several recent immigrants to the U.S. ,so I don't yet see anything I'd call a net loss trend. But even a modest change in the trend is significant; it's a big deal to decide to leave your home country, so I take note of the few who have made the move and many who are actively investigating taking such a drastic step in the future, should things go from bad to worse. Only time will tell whether the people I'm hearing from are the "early adopters" of the idea of leaving the USA, an idea that may increase in popularity over time. We shall see if these are snowflakes on a hillside that collect into large, fast moving snowballs, or not. We watch this development together.
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