Devastating Debate Moment #2: Horses, Bayonets And Battleships, Oh My!
on October 23, 2012 at 4:07 pmJoe Klein from Time has suggested that this was a canned response, that is, Obama had rehearsed it previously. If that’s the case, Romney was even more predictable than I can conceive of. I haven’t heard anyone mention 1916 as an attack on Obama this entire election season. But whatever! Here it is via The New York Times:
But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You — you mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets — (laughter) — because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.
And so the question is not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships. It’s — it’s what are our capabilities.
And so when I sit down with the secretary of the Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we determine how are we going to be best able to meet all of our defense needs in a way that also keeps faith with our troops, that also makes sure that our veterans have the kind of support that they need when they come home. And that is not reflected in the kind of budget that you’re putting forward, because it just don’t work.
For you Romnesiacs out there, a single aircraft carrier and its attendant fleet has the firepower to assault any Middle Eastern country and reduce it to a parking lot. We have 11 of these in service. One aircraft carrier can carry 1/3 the number of planes of the entire Iranian air force and let’s not forget that our planes are at least three generations more advanced than their best. The newest planes they have date back to the early 90s. Most are from the 60s and 70s. Few of us have cars that old. Some of you reading this weren’t even born yet.
By way of comparison, in the entire world, there are 22 active aircraft carriers. Half of them are ours. Yeah, our Navy is dangerously small.
Romney wants to bloat the military’s budget because it drains resources into a bottomless sinkhole of nothing, thus depriving the country of money that could be spent on improving the economy. It does not flow back into the economy the way infrastructure spending does and only enriches a very few select companies (like Halliburton). It’s also easier to “defend” by claiming it’s “to keep America safe!” Which precisely what Romney tried to do last night. This is just another form of “Starve The Beast,” the GOP’s preferred method of “proving” that government does not work by actively sabotaging it.
Too bad Obama flipped it around and made Romney look like the amateur he really is.
Here’s a few tasty memes to pass the time!
I agree with everything you say.
The problem is that when anyone says let’s reduce the Defence Budget, the standard come back is, “What? And deprive our fighting troops of food and ammunition!”
People must remember that the biggest expenditures in the Defence Budget go to the defence industry for weapon systems. salaries and profits. The actual amount spent on stuff put directly in the hands of our fighting troops (and wages for them) is a miniscule portion of the total.
Agree with both of you. Thanks for the info on the actual number of ships we have compared to global total, and how many planes they carry. These are the kinds of numbers noone talks about. I also agree with above poster about the increased budget not helping the actual fighting members of our military. Just as with Clinton, Obama gets accused of cutting their pay etc., when no such thing has happened. The military always asks for more, to pad their budget, then our reps are supposed to ‘balance’ their request and usually approve a lower amount, don’t they? I’d like to see a chart on military annual budget request vs. actual budget granted, per president. I think the biggest problem is people don’t understand the meaning of discretionary spending in our budget, vs. other kinds, and how much our military budget sucks out of the budget.