Lifeofthemind – The US needs to at least double the size of our armed forces. This provides two benefits.
First is the ability to fight two wars simultaneously. The second benefit of doubling the size of the Armed Forces and increasing the share of GDP devoted to defense is that doing so sucks resources away from the rest of government

But then you are left with the problems of the neocons and right wing reactionaries.

They don’t want to fight just 2 wars, but seven, and simultaneously with the 2 already underway. And they don’t want any tax increase, and they don’t want any Draft.

And they want trillions more in debt to fuel their imperial dreams. But they don’t want a government competent to deal with domestic problems like Katrina and the health insurance crisis…in fact, they are seen as distractions from the more important business of bringing freedom, sweet freedom and democracy – to noble 3rd Worlders in shitty little countries.. and the wonders of free trade..

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Wretchard – Admittedly the challenges are still in rinky-dink places, but that’s only because they’ve just gotten started. Although still based in these hick places, their targets are already downtown New York and DC. If the problems on the periphery were going to stay there, then fine. But they’re not. September 11 should have shown us they are not..

But perhaps we got the wrong lesson from 9/11 which somehow morphed into not defending ourselves and deterring the shitty little groups threatening us, but pronouncing them undeterrable and launching the Bush Crusade to borrow trillions from our larger enemies to bring freedom and Sharansky-style democracy to each and every shitty little country. All while the rest of the world thinks it is a stupid, futile project because we cannot recreate America or even the fantasy democracy of the right wing moron Sharansky in places like Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, N Korea, the Sudan.

The Bush Crusade to remake the world by endless war to bring the American way to shitty little countries with no expense spared to “save them from themselves” as our 9/11 response is an unsustainable strategy. We can’t afford it, half the country demands no new taxes for it, no one wants a Draft, and the only call to rally has been around the duty to shop more and buy more Chinese stuff and to beg other nations to send a few hundred or a few thousand troops to help us play terrorist whack-a-mole in shitty little countries that we say will take decades for our troops to “reshape hearts and minds in”.

Time we began thinking of Plan B, because the Plan A Bush has followed for 7 years after 9/11 isn’t working.