Colin Powell endorsed Obama

[beth_leonard]

Colin Powell endorsed Obama. I may have to re-think my position.

I've always said that I wanted Powell to run for president, and that he could have gone well as either ticket's VP.

McCain is the best Republican we've had in a while so I'd like to support those leanings within the party, but the pickings have been pretty thin and I've been quite disgusted with the Republicans for some time. I've been most concerned about Obama's foreign policy, and worried that he'll decimate our military as Clinton unwisely did, but I have tremendous respect for Colin Powell and his ability to negotiate foreign relations. If Powell thinks he'll do a good job, who am I to disagree?

--Beth
PS. Congrats to steuard for calling the election for Obama back in July 2006.

Comments

[querldox.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, why do you think it'd be a bad idea to decimate the military, assuming that means "reduce by 10%" rather than "kill one in every ten people in the military" : -)

Seriously, it's not at all clear to me why we need to be spending 45% of the entire world's military budget, and more than twice as much as the entire European Union does. Figures admittedly per Wikipedia, but that's in line with my rough memories from standard news sources. And even with the caveats given in the article about Russia and China's budgets, it'd seem we're spending at least 5x that of any other single country.

I suspect there's both a fair amount of geographical and service-related pork in the budget (again, from memory, I seem to recall that individual service budgets are based on long-established percentages of the total budget, rather than what each one actually needs in any given year), and we've shown that we can easily defeat any non-nuclear country, and if nukes don't come into play any but, say, Russia, China, and India, in our initial military strike. What we're not good at, and which the military doesn't seem designed to do, is win the peace or handle guerrilla forces after the initial victory.

So, unless we plan to get into wars for the heck of it, I don't really see why we couldn't get by with 90% of our current overwhelming relative to everywhere else on the planet budget for the military.

[jon-leonard.livejournal.com]

As I understand Beth's position (and I cheated by asking her some of this directly), she mostly objects to the manner that the military was downsized under Clinton. Things like using lots of cruise missiles (politically looks decisive, doesn't risk troops, but unfortunately not very effective) without replacing them, and downsizing the middle ranks of officers: Given the structure of the military, you can't import new middle management, you have to promote from within, and we're still replacing that cohort. (Beth's brother is being rapidly promoted through that vacuum, faster than would normally be permitted.) That is, reduction in military preparedness was disproportionately bad when compared to cost savings.

A size reduction in general is problematic: We're certainly now in a situation where a larger military would be useful, either in reducing the length of deployments or use of more troops. (That without contesting that how we got into the current mess was execrable.) I'd much prefer overwhelming diplomatic competence to the use of overwhelming military force, but the latter beats having neither.

Finding a way to have a less expensive military is probably a good idea, but it's necessary to get to place where we're not in a "World's policeman" role before doing that. That opportunity didn't arise until after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and neither the Clinton nor (current) Bush administrations managed to improve that situation.

[zogathon.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping that whoever's next realizes that we need to shift our spending focus somewhat in favor of actual men on the ground vs. technology. We need enrollment up, because the wars we're likely to fight are going to require a lot more men and a lot less of the old-style tech.

Sigh.

[corpsefairy.livejournal.com]

Interesting. If I'm reading your description of Beth's objections correctly (hi Beth!), she's concerned about the reduction of personnel. I think a useful statistic he would be how much of the military budget is spent on people and how much is spent on equipment and no-bid contracts. I suspect that the equipment is a hell of a lot more expensive, and I further suspect that there's quite a lot of stuff that we don't need, of the big impressive technology that no one else in the world bothers to use variety. The military budget is unquestionably huge, but I don't know how it's apportioned out. I think taking a good look at it would be very useful, but it's culturally difficult for anyone in government to suggest that. Which is frustrating.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

I think my take on it is that it's not clear to me, nor does it seem clear to either the policy makers or the military, what "being the world's policeman" means, or what's needed to accomplish it. Post-Soviet Union, it seems that we've used it to attack Afghanistan successfully (again, initially), serve as a deterrent against the crazy guy in North Korea, and do what seems to have been a personal whim attack on Iraq. If you take out Iraq, and it's extremely poor post-initial attack planning which turned it into a resource draining quagmire, we don't really seem to have defined why we need such extremely overwhelming force or how we think we might need to use such.

I mean, we don't seem to actually want to be the world's policeman; we're not deploying in Darfur or the like. I suppose we may also be something of a deterrent with respect to the Middle East, but that's not working that well either. So while it may not have been done in the correct way previously, I don't think, post-Iraq, we need to be in such an extreme position in terms of military spending relative to everyone else. Isn't that part of what toppled the SU?

But we do need to evaluate just what our role is and should be, and what reasonable spending for such is. It's probably close to Social Security/Medicaid in terms of a political third rail though, especially if done by a Democratic administration given the current public rancor between the parties.

Military

[singerji.livejournal.com]

I've heard from several pundits that the most likely change to the military budget under the next administration will be the closure of some of the European and South Korean bases. Under the theory that "they can take care of themselves; we've got our own problems". Plusses and minuses to that, of course.

Re: Military

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

yay! the more base closures, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

[zogathon.livejournal.com]

Well, not that you asked, but:

I was a big McCain supporter in 2000, and have historically liked him. But his choice of Palin for VP scares the crap out of me and ended my view that a McCain presidency would be a fine alternative to an Obama presidency. Actuarial tables give McCain between a 10 and 15% chance of not making it through his term, and I think Palin is not only far more radical in her social views than I want in someone who will nominate a justice or two, but also hideously unprepared for such a responsibility. I think it showed extremely poor judgment on McCain's part, and makes me worry about his judgment in other areas (like how he'll deploy our military in the next 4 years).

I think I understand your worry about the effect of a democratic presidency on our military--Clinton did a very poor job with his cuts. But in case it makes you feel any better, Obama seems to be a very thoughtful and intellectually curious man who surrounds himself with domain experts, thinks about and takes their advice. I'm betting a military re-structuring will happen with either administration, given the way the next president will need to cut costs. I'd hope that McCain's military service would mean that he'd make smart cuts, but he didn't choose a very effective commander-in-chief to replace himself, so I worry. I'm sure I won't agree with all of the changes Obama will make (I'm far from a democrat), but I at least have hope that he'll make them thoughtfully and after consideration.

Okay, that's enough soap-box for this election season.

[zogathon.livejournal.com]

Hey, by the way, is it okay for me to join that mudd parents group even though I'm a spy from Pomona? ;-)

[beth_leonard]

Of course!! You are certainly included under the "and their friends" clause, but also specifically under "and their spouses" as well, due to Jon being a Mudder. I haven't been reading any of my friends pages lately because I have waaaay too much work to do. Soon I'll be returning to blogging. I've got 2 articles I want to post to the group saved up for when I've got time to reply.
--Beth

[motleypolitico.livejournal.com]

McCain. Maverick. Who during primary season in an effort to win, said he didn't have any significant disagreements with Bush policy. I thought mavericks went their own way? Maybe I failed English or something.

As for the military, I can certainly see the problem with ill-considered force reductions and the like. There are, however, stunningly large programs inside the military which do not show a good return on investment, either in terms of effectiveness in results, or effectiveness in avoiding loss of life. There's fat to be trimmed, and it's not so much the people that are fat where the military is concerned, although there is some there - military base closures and consolidations have always been a political hot potato, rather than doing what's most efficient.

At this point, it looks to me like we're in significant danger (long term, not immediate) of spending ourselves into oblivion, much like Russia did. I'd rather get a handle on things where we don't require such an enormous military expenditure (how many hundreds of billions so far for the Iraqi war so far?) in a conflict that at its outset had no specific victory condition. And it still doesn't have a viable exit strategy, much less a coherent victory condition. That's not necessarily a knock on McCain, or even Bush, but if you're going to get involved in a war, please at least try to know what victory looks like first?

Also, on the subject of Palin, the supposed energy-expert in the McCain camp, doesn't know about current policy of Alaskan oil exports. Didn't even address reasonable questions in the debate, instead returning to stump. Her interviews have generally been graded from 'poor' to 'she said what?!', and her exposure to the press outside of stump has been shamefully small. I don't think she's prepared and as VP/President (realistic fear here), inability to handle the press is a major detriment to foreign and domestic policy. I think a pregnant, unwed teenage daughter when she supports abstinence-only sex-ed is laughable, and her husband's prior membership in a radical Alaska-separatist party is a lot more concerning to me than Obama's "palling around" with a 60's era domestic "terrorist" figure (term used loosely). I don't think either one is a huge deal, for what that's worth. Opinions and beliefs shift over time, and I'm fine with that, when it isn't transparent pandering to the left or the right specifically during election season.

That said, I did rather enjoy McCain's thing at the Alfred E. Smith dinner - if I didn't have enough other issues, it would've made me pay attention enough to think closely about how well he can put a public face on the administration.

Verdict: Obama looks less capable of causing us a massive foreign policy problem, than McCain is of screwing up domestic policy (warrantless searches, FISA courts, etc., and economic policy).

I do agree, that McCain in his own right, is the most appealing Republican to come up for a while. His running mate sucks, and I think I liked him better 8 years ago when he wasn't pandering quite so hard to the far right.

[singerji.livejournal.com]

Both Obama and McCain are pandering somewhat -- attempting to say the right things to get elected, and avoiding any specifics on any policies that might cause someone pain. This is typical, and we won't see anything substantive out of the winner until after the election.

As an economist, McCain's history scares the crap out of me. He and his advisors and staff have strong ties to the three biggest economic meltdowns of recent years:
The S&L scandal (the Keating Five)
The Enron debacle (deregulation of energy trading markets)
The recent housing mess (deregulation of banks and insurance companies)

Others have culpability for those events, certainly. But three times is more than coincidence. Free-market capitalism is an outstanding mechanism, but has to be reined in by judicious and carefully-applied regulations.