Bring the troops home.
Just imagine if we had a counter-insurgency strategy against gangs, one conceived with as much brainpower and lateral thinking as the military could generate. What if we actually had enough armed forces on watch in our troubled areas to stamp out crime? Not as killers, as peacekeepers. Coupled with the end of the Drug War and reliance on fully staffed rehabilitation services…the possibilities are endless. If nothing else, outposts keeping an eye out, enabled to do nothing more than alert police (and defend themselves). Or if you’re about to say “I knew you were a fascist!” just use them to patrol ports and borders. And we get the manpower by bringing back troops collecting dust in Germany, South Korea, et al. Keep a small gang abroad for specific hot spots and missions in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Collect scalps, stand back. And the defense budget is slashed.
The bottom line: nobody is a fiscal conservative today if they aren’t willing to take a big bite out of defense spending. The teabaggers have nothing to say about the military industrial complex, so they have nothing to say.
-jb
October 19th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
We are not about to send Iowa boys 2 or 3 thousand miles away from home to do what California boys ought to be doing for themselves.
October 19th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
I don’t get it. Who are “we”?
October 20th, 2009 at 12:20 am
Good god, let me try to count the ways that is wrong.
1. It’s 1700 miles, genius.
2. Last I checked, illegal immigrants are in Iowa.
3. I’m pretty sure illegal immigration is considered a national issue, not a California one.
4. You’ll send Iowa boys around the globe to get killed doing what Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis should be doing.
Am I missing something?
October 20th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
1. I thought that by parodying that great Democrat military genious Lyndon B. Johnson who famously said “We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves” I could comically highlight the absurdity of your premise without getting into all that messy Posse Comitatus stuff. Sorry you didn’t get it, but I might add that from your response it looks like the shallowness of your argument goes deeper than that.
2&3. I’m not eligible for the librul secret decoder ring but are you really saying that gangs = illegal immigrants? What about gangsters that aren’t illegals or illegals that aren’t gangsters? This is going to require some sort of profiling. It is also a police matter and not a military matter. Your argument is really rather illibrul. Wouldnt you agree?
4. Yes.
October 20th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Well, since I disregarded the use of the military in law enforcement and referred to using our military to patrol ports and borders, I figured that was enough to signal that I was talking about illegal immigrants. But I guess you didn’t get it.
You have to admit that you missing that was a way bigger fuck-up than me missing your “I’m going to make such a stupid rebuttal that it signals how stupid YOUR argument is!!!” technique.
Interesting note, President Bush got the Republican Congress to override Posse Comitatus briefly, as one of their last acts.
The subsequent Democratic Congress repealed it entirely.