SUPPORT FOR “DEFENSE” SPENDING ON THE RISE
|| By FITSNEWS || Thirty-four percent of Americans believe their government is spending “too little” on the national defense – which marks the highest level of support for that particular view since 2001. Meanwhile thirty-two percent correctly say the government is spending “too much.”
That’s according to the latest data from Gallup (which we’re guessing came out before this report).
And no, the pollsters made no distinction between the actual “defense of the nation” and the mindless global interventionism championed by the administration of Barack Obama and war hawks like U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham and John McCain.
All of it is “defense,” it would seem.
“Americans’ views on the size of the defense budget have fluctuated greatly over time, but the public has generally been more likely to say the government spends too much,” Gallup’s pollsters noted. “As many as 50 percent or more shared this view in the Vietnam War era of the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as in 1990, after the end of the Cold War and a long military buildup under President Ronald Reagan.”
As recently as two years ago – before the massive ramp-up in pro-war propaganda – those who believed government was spending too much topped 40 percent while support for the “too little” view was in the low twenties.
Clearly the incessant fear-mongering has worked …
In fact here are the trend lines …
(Click to enlarge)
(Chart: Gallup)
And here’s the chart showing how the growth of the “too little” worldview is cutting across party lines (and especially resonating with political independents).
(Click to enlarge)
(Chart: Gallup)
Terrible, terrible news …
America’s third crusade in the Middle East – this time against the newly minted Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – isn’t going to make America safer. Nor is it going to make us more prosperous or more free.
Also, it isn’t “national defense.” It’s needless provocation.
“We’ve been fighting this war for the last 25 years,” we wrote last fall. “And for what? What has this massive investment in blood and treasure wrought? According to the politicians now clamoring for all-out war with ISIS, radical Islam is more dangerous today than it’s ever been – and Americans are more exposed to potential acts of terror than ever before.”
In other words rather than making us safer, our warmongering leaders have achieved the opposite …
But hey let’s keep spending … you know … on the “national defense.” And let’s keep perpetuating the myth that our soldiers are “fighting for freedom.”
RAPID REACTION
@fitsnews Neocons and militarists love head choppings like gun grabbers LOVE schoolhouse massacres.
— Robert Morrow (@RobMorroLiberty) February 20, 2015
45 comments
We don’t need new tanks and planes to fight ISIL. We need Arab armies from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to use their tanks and troops to go fight ISIL, and to stabilize failed nation states like Lybia and Iraq and Syria. Is that going to happen – when a dozen more pilots are BBQed and another 200 Egyptians are beheaded (or ISIL begins to attack tourist stops). And even then the Saudi’s won’t join. The oil states are all looking around and calling to Texas to ask the Bush family – “If we help you win the election, can you come back and do our fighting for us again?” And the Bush family says “Well of course we will.”
It appears Hillary is taking money from the ‘oil states’…
Foreign Government Gifts to Clinton Foundation on the Rise …
http://www.wsj.com/…/foreign-government-gifts-to-clinto...
The Wall Street Journal
3 days ago – The Clinton Foundation has dropped its self-imposed ban on collectingfunds from foreign governments and is winning contributions at an …
And they asked Hillary:
Will you offer yourself as a F*#k up and a failure like Obama and the Democrats before you…going back to Cater’s BIG F*#k Up w/ destabilizing the WHOLE Region by overthrowing Iran to give Jihad a foothold…???…
And she said: But of course I will. F*#k Up…that’s what Democrats do to everything we touch…
You do realize Chop that nearly all Americans are ardently opposed to re-introducing US ground troops into the Middle East. But hey, maybe Israel – because they’re a huge ally – will send say 50,000 Israeli troops into western Iraq on our behalf? Thought so. Here’s a test o-great-one – how many ISIL fighters would there be today if a) Saddam was still in power b) we didn’t waster 4 trillion on that war, and b) there were still 5,000 American kids still alive?
So carter overthrew Iran..LOLOLOLOLOL shit you really don’t know anything about politics do you? Hard to believe that blog failed so quickly..said no one ever. You honestly think we overthrew Iran? LOLOLOL You dont even know basic history? You dont have a clue do you, the whole Shah, hostage thing? My God you are stupid as shit Emily.
he doesn’t know anything about anything, except for maybe how to be a loud obnoxious twat
So, how about we give the Jordanians the flock of A-10s parked in Q8? … And a few spy drones, too?
IMOP, several big piles of grenades in the middle of the Iraqi desert would solve some questions there as well.
War By Head-up-your-A$$ Liberals and Liberal-Tarians is FAILING…like everything else you touch…
Yeah, I wish Obama had never invaded Iraq back in 2003.
lol…I wish he hadn’t invaded America in 2008.
Now you are upvoting your own posts and not even attempting to hide it? What a POS you are.
lol…have you apologized yet?
southmauldin • 4 months ago
Any time a “rising conservative star in the Upstate” gets derailed, I am delighted. These self important SOBs can’t wait to get some Columbia or Potomac fever. And since he is such a bastion of family values, why the divorce? Til death do us part, right? Unless it is convenient, I guess.
just the other day he praised this flip character for upvoting his own posts too and defended doing it
When you think about the innocent men,women and children the USA has killed,it’s not supposed to be a big deal.’They’ are supposed to deal with it,Americans are not. ISIL is nothing compared to the USA…It’s seems to be endless,but the longer we keep on,humans might soon be gone.We’re ‘waist deep in the big muddy’…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXnJVkEX8O4
Will, It’s interesting that you chose a photo of Iraqi Army M-1 tanks to accompany a story about American’s thought on defense spending.
Logical: M-1 is American made
Even if the Iraqi Army “purchased” them, odds are we gave them the money to do such
Maybe the logic is do you want a M-1 rumbling through your neighborhood manned by a mullet haired teenager who will use it later to go mud bogging or would you rather send it thousands miles away to rust in some desert covered in camel shit
Nothing to do with whose it is or who made it, he goggled “tank photo” and cut and pasted the first one he found without bothering to look at the markings.
This speaks to my general position on Will and the military; he’s clueless.
If he really wanted a US version (the Iraqis were sold/given a downgraded M1A1M, no DU armor, degraded fire control capabilities) he should have pulled a still from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm6yYi-JugY
Having just moved into his new office, a colonel was sitting at his desk when a PFC knocked on the door.
Conscious of his new position, the colonel quickly picked up the phone, told the PFC to enter, then said into the phone, “Yes, General, I’ll be seeing him this afternoon and I’ll pass along your message. In the meantime, thank you for your good wishes, sir.”
Feeling as though he had sufficiently impressed the young enlisted man, he asked, “What do you want?”
“Nothing important, sir,” the PFC replied, “I’m just here to hook up your telephone.”
If I fuck Little Red Riding Hood, who then fucks your wife’s therapist who then fucks your wife who later fucks you, want to guess who fucked you first
Tanks that are likely now smoldering heaps after ISIL got them, we targeted them and bombed them. Yeah, the whole thing is a circle of logic that is just mind boggling. I say, either turn the place into a glass factory, of let’s arm both sides, and let ‘er rip.
What is lacking is a strategy to go after ISIL. They are cockroaches and must be crushed. At the rate we’re going, the world is going to end because of religion. And religions are incompatible with one another. We have too much religion. What ever happened to the Golden Rule and the idea we should all try to do the right thing, and do no harm.
Do no harm? Fuck that let’s blow more shit up, it’s the patriotic thing to do. Why is everyone mad at us?
I wonder how many of our finest we will give up to get back what we should have never left to start with ? Iraq was pretty much a done deal. Now thanks to “leading from behind” we get to start over. Lesson learned : NEVER ELECT A DEMOCRAT.
No shit. Bush declared Mission Accomplished in 2003.
http://www.thewire.com/national/2011/05/mission-accomplished-speech/37226/
No the actual lesson was never get into a ground war in the Middle east, unless you are prepared to leave a glass parking lot.
I love the thought of a glass parking lot…
That’s not a very Christian attitude, Corporal.
I’m thinkin’ that certain facilities in Iran need some bunker busters. But nuking the whole Iraqi and/or Syrian desert would miss too many mullahs.
I’m also thinkin’ that no one is truly targeting the ISIS/Ham-Ass/hezbulabula officer corp. yet …
(I know U R jus’ pipe dreaming there … But what would Jesus say?)
I didn’t suggest that we should do it, just that it was a “pleasant thought”.
That’s bullshit
Looks like you prefer the communist method of only having one party run the country
Better than having a radical Islamist run the country.
Take that back. Jeb Bush is not a radical Islamist.
We are making progress.You typically accuse people you disagree with of being a pedophile.
Has Joshua ‘served’ you yet?
Rogue, in all honesty, Iraq was a mess in the following years – 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014…………. Iraq was never a done deal. Unless you think having 100 people a day killed by car bombs as a quiet and lovely life. We broke in 2003, and we’re stuck with it to this day. Seems W should have listened to Colin Powell. His Daddy did.
Didn’t you mean, have to go back to a place we should have never been to in the first place, and that this is just a text book example why? Not related to 911, no WMD, removing Saddam destabilized the region, and we got a bunch of fine brave Americans killed and spent Trillions of dollars, and the overall result was we helped create ISIS and further allianate a group of wildy violent extremist.
Of course Americans are not currently returning in body bags.
Send thousands of combat troops,have hundreds being killed, and let the “war” go on for a year or so and the dime will turn.It always does.
Lesson?
Americans like to talk about war,plot it,debate,but when the shooting starts and the troops start being killed and the weeks stretch into months, then years,opinion starts to gradually but inexorably shift
Until the next “enemy” appears ,then the whole process starts all over again.
First of all, if fits would have superimposed the first chart over actual defense spending, he would see that support for more defense spending rises when spending is in decline , which is the case currently.
Second, there is a logical fallacy in fits argument. Here repeated is the core of his argument.
“We’ve been fighting this war for the last 25 years,” we wrote last fall. “And for what? What has this massive investment in blood and treasure wrought? According to the politicians now clamoring for all-out war with ISIS, radical Islam is more dangerous today than it’s ever been – and Americans are more exposed to potential acts of terror than ever before.”
Just because a problem has grown worse, does not mean efforts to combat it have made things worse or that if we had not combated it, that the situation would not be even worse today. We fought cancer for decades, but mortality rates got worse before they began to come down.
We are fighting an ideology that is still in its infancy. It is bound to continue to grow for some time before like communism it exhausts all it credibility and lure.
When the cold war started, communism continued to spread and grow in spite of our efforts against it. But our efforts were successful, none the less.
“America’s third crusade in the Middle East ” Sic Willie uses “crusade” just like Obama. Who copied who?
Fits will use Crusade, but he has never used Jihad.
I would like to think that before I incessantly quoted myself, I would become a writer and thinker worth quoting. But hey, that’s just me.
“The War Propaganda Is Working”…didn’t read past the headline because “Propaganda” know no bounds, right FITS?
Great Article:
We need a new party North or South of Center. This left / right nonsense is rigged.
Liberals have added ISIS to their list of Global Warming.
What sensational hype will they embrace next?
“… to protect the borders and provide for the common defense …”
How is that working out so far?
Yes, the propaganda is ramping up just in time for the diversion of public attention from the several real issues … The “Wag The Dog” scenario is not lost on the “progressive” Fascists, fur sure. … The only thing missing is some kind of WH sex scandal… Maybe Michelle and that former head of the IRS?
Well-designed war propaganda always works. Look at Goering’s testimony at the Nuremberg Trials.
U.S. dollar collapse is forthcoming and USA will become docile.
USA is like Rome in its last days.
LOLOLOLOL sure dude..sure. Why dont you go buy some gold and put it in your bunker….LOLOLOL