Cross posted at the Progressive Zionist (www.progressivezionist.com)
Hat Tip to Jed Lewiston and his Front Page Diary at Daily Kos: Remember when Paul Ryan blamed the attack in Benghazi on the sequester?
In reading Jed’s diary something struck me in one of Paul Ryans quotes:
We should always stand up for peace, for democracy, for individual rights.
Ok… on it’s own sounds fine.
Then Ryan goes on to say:
And we should not be imposing these devastating defense cuts, because what that does when we equivocate on our values, when we show that we’re cutting down on defense, it makes us more weak. It projects weakness. And when we look weak, our adversaries are much more willing to test us.
And this is where Ryan channels Big Brother. Allow me quote from George Orwell’s Masterpiece 1984:
WAR IS PEACE
So… what Ryan here is directly saying is… (In my words): “Let’s stand for PEACE and the way we stand for PEACE is to build up our WAR machine to a point where no one will be able to challenge us, because if they do, we will utterly destroy them.”
Now, aside from the facts that Guerilla movements in SouthEastern and Central Asia give lie to his commentary (after all, we outgunned the Viet Cong and Taliban 10,000 to one and we were able to wreck complete destruction upon their relative nations and yet that didn’t stop them). This is a dangerous fallacy that has infected the American Polity in a number of ways.
OH, and before we go on I want to make it clear that I am not an isolationist, I am not a Green, and I have no issue with the United States having a presence around the Globe (though I am certainly not a supporter of “Empire Building”). Further, I fully support the notion that the U.S. and our allies should have what I term a “Stout Defense”. But, that said, I also support an honest commentary on what that means and NOT use of Orwellian terminology to create a false meme.
But here… Here is a chart of our Defense Spending relative to the rest of the world
1. United States 711.0
2. China 143.0
3. Russia 71.9
4. United Kingdom 62.7
5. France 62.5
6. Japan 59.3
Now, notice… IF the U.S. Cut it’s military spending by over $ 400 BILLION per year. That’s right… you saw it $ 400 BILLION PER YEAR, we would STILL outspend the next five countries on the list added up together.
Let’s break that down even further. IF we cut our Defense budget by $ 500 Billion for one year we would still almost outspend our main rivals Russia and China together (they would have us by $ 3 billion).
NOW, does anyone in their right mind think that Al Qaeda for one second looks at our defense spending and says: “HOHOHO America cut it’s spending – well they must be weak” and further does anyone even further out really think that our main allies, Britain, France, Israel, Australia, etc… think that we are somehow “weak” even though we are outspending the next five nations (Nations 3 2-#6) collectively???
No.. What this is, is a blatant Orwellian Chant of “War is Peace”, “We destroyed that village to save the village”.
Paul Ryan’s words are hypocritical. His party stands firmly against Democracy (look at his party’s efforts to not count the popular vote), his party party stands firmly against individual rights (Marriage Equality, voting rights, civil rights). Ryan talks about Peace but in this, he is only talking about the Peace that comes from utter destruction left in the wake of War.