What Kind of Military Do We Want?
Posted at 9:45 a.m. on Jan. 23
Jill Lepore has a lengthy piece on the birth of the US military and the growth from temporary forces to address military needs to a standing military “engaged in a standing war.”
“In 2001, military spending, as a function of the over-all American economy, was, at six per cent, the lowest it had been since the Second World War. Then, for a decade, it rose… a peace dividend expected after the end of the Warsaw Pact, in 1991, came but didn’t last. Instead, after 9/11 the United States declared a ‘global war on terror,’ a fight against fear itself.”
” Nevertheless, six decades after V-J Day nearly three hundred thousand American troops are stationed overseas… Much of the money that the federal government spends on ‘defense’ involves neither securing the nation’s borders nor protecting its citizens. Instead, the U.S. military enforces American foreign policy.”
