The current president will leave a lengthy legacy, it seems. Aside from (but definitely related to) the foolishness of Iraq, will he also be remembered as one who broke the military? Has there ever been a time when Reserve and Guard commanders made so many public statements about how severely stressed their commands were due to a war? Has there ever been a time when so many former generals have publicly spoken out against the continuation of a war? Has there ever been a time in recent history that the military has lowered its requirements to join and still failed to recruit enough to relieve the stressed-out forces? (I know that requirements were lowered during the Vietnam War, but that lowering may have just been for drafees.)

Will a broken military be his final legacy? How long will it take the military to recover from what he has done?

It's particularly galling, given his "help is on the way" declaration during the 2000 campaign. The stress on the military will be just a sidebar to the main legacy, however: having embarked on the most disastrous foreign policy gambit in our history, the damage from which, not only to the military, but to our future, is so far-reaching as to be possibly insurmountable. If his legacy, now and forever, isn't that of the worst president to date -- the most dangerous, the most damaging, the most anti-American -- then there is in fact no hope. It seems as obvious as the sunset.

I think the military will soon recover when we sort things out regarding Iraq. But the invasion of Iraq will cause trouble for generations to come, and in ways that we probably can't foresee right now.

Domestically, the bushie legacy will haunt us for a long long time, in areas such as the environment, and civil rights. "Attorneygate" has shown us something we all probably knew, we just didn't know the magnitude. Bushie's political appointees have broken the Justice Department - it has been completely politicized. I suspect the situation is the same in many other government agencies. Throughout our government there are hundreds and hundreds of incompetent wingnut idealogues in high positions - thanks to BushCo.

I mean think about it - Monica Goodling is a 33 year old graduate of a 'tier 4' law school who had tried only 3 cases in her career, yet she was counsel to the Attorney General! Her only qualification was that she was a Repuglican Party loyalist. That's the scandal, just as much as the firings.

Hi sid1114 - that "help is on the way" thing, that was Kerry in '04

Transcript from Candidate George W. Bush during his 2000 presidential run: "Dick Cheney, my good running mate Dick Cheney and I, have a message to all of our men and women in uniform and to their parents and to their families: Help is on the way"

Bush Campaign Promise

To find the quote, do a Edit/Find on this page for the text: Help is on the way

Go to the second result.

Other comments at this same 2000 campaign event:
Bush: Eight years ago, the Clinton-Gore administration inherited a military ready for dangers and challenges facing our nation. The next president will inherit a military in decline. But if the next president is George W. Bush, the days of decline will be over.

(APPLAUSE)

AUDIENCE: We want Bush. We want Bush. We want Bush. We want Bush.

BUSH: America's military is the strongest in the world, confident, proud and willing to carry out every mission we give them. But we've got a serious problem in our military today. And that problem is not with our men and women in uniform; it is a problem of leadership at the very top of the chain of command.

The Clinton-Gore administration has used our military too much and supported it too little. Defense spending is lower as a share of our economy than at any time since 1940, the year before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet rarely has our military been used so freely -- more commitments, less resources. It is a short-sighted policy with long- term consequences.

In the Air Force, combat readiness is down. In the Army, 40 percent of the helicopter fleet was reported not up to performing its mission. In the Navy, some missions have been cut short, because they do not have the money to pay for fuel.

One retired general, a former commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf said this, he says: Our nation would have trouble today mounting another operation the size of Desert Storm.

With all these problems in our military, we've learned something else: When you don't keep faith with the men and women of our military, it's hard to keep them at all.

In a survey last year, more than half of officers and enlisted people said they were dissatisfied and intended to leave as soon as they could.

This is no way to treat young men and women giving their country the best years of their lives.

(APPLAUSE)

Those men and women have never failed us, and we must never fail them. The vice president doesn't even want a discussion on the state of our military. He says that just stating these facts is somehow running down America's military. Those are his words, "run down America's military."

So let's get something straight right now. To point out that our military has been overextended, taken for granted and neglected, that's no criticism of the military. That is criticism of a president and vice president and their record of neglect.

(APPLAUSE)

Dick Cheney, my good running mate Dick Cheney and I, have a message to all of our men and women in uniform and to their parents and to their families: Help is on the way.

(APPLAUSE)

We can never take our military for granted.

We have to remember that our country is defended by volunteers; every one of them wears the uniform by choice. Should I become the commander in chief, our country's defenders will get the support they need and the respect they have earned.

(APPLAUSE)

First, we will treat the people of our military better, so we can recruit and retain the best our nation has to offer. We will add a billion dollars in salary increases. We will improve military housing. We will improve the quality of training at our bases and national training centers, because shortfalls in training can become disasters on the battlefield.

And whenever America uses forces in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear and the victory must be overwhelming."



Dwight

Well excuse me!

Perhaps someone with the time and interest could look up the comparison values sited by President Bush for military readiness;
Then (2000) versus current (2007):

"In the Air Force, combat readiness is down. In the Army, 40 percent of the helicopter fleet was reported not up to performing its mission. In the Navy, some missions have been cut short, because they do not have the money to pay for fuel." George W. Bush, Nov. 3, 2000"

In light of how poorly the military was being financed and its overall state of unreadiness and need of new or better maintained equipment then (according to bush), did tax cuts make sense at that time? Do they make sense now, with a war costing almost a billion dollars a week? (A comparison - During WWII, the highest tax rate in the US was about 77%; only those making millions per year paid it, and they still masnaged to prosper.

'...Meyer, the general who pronounced the army “hollow” in 1980, agrees that the army appears headed down the same path as after Vietnam.

“I absolutely see similar challenges confronting the Army today as we faced then in terms of stresses being placed on the force,” he told Journal. “I think the Army is stressed at this point more than in all the time I’ve watched it since at least the end of the Cold War.”' Retired Generals: Bush is ‘Breaking the Army’

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
In light of how poorly the military was being financed and its overall state of unreadiness and need of new or better maintained equipment then (according to bush), did tax cuts make sense at that time? Do they make sense now, with a war costing almost a billion dollars a week? (A comparison - During WWII, the highest tax rate in the US was about 77%; only those making millions per year paid it, and they still masnaged to prosper.

Of course they make sense. Raise taxes and you kill the economy. If the Bush tax cuts have shown us anything, they show the concept works by lower them. Every time it has been tried. JFK, Reagan & now Bush.

Seems the Democrat spin machine just can't get this one right.

Economists don't agree on anything, of course. It's far from certain what net effect tax cuts have on the economy.

'The Bush tax cuts have contributed to revenues dropping in 2004 to the lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950, and have been a major contributor to the dramatic shift from large projected budget surpluses to projected deficits as far as the eye can see.

The tax cuts have conferred the most benefits, by far, on the highest-income households — those least in need of additional resources — at a time when income already is exceptionally concentrated at the top of the income spectrum.

The design of these tax cuts was ill-conceived, resulting in significantly less economic stimulus than could have been accomplished for the same budgetary cost. In part because the tax cuts were not as effective as alternative measures would have been, job creation during this recovery has been notably worse than in any other recovery since the end of World War II.' A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration’s Record on Cutting Taxes

'"It's not a popular thing to say, but my suspicion is that it is upper income groups who tend to invest, and it's really investment that leads to stronger future growth, not consumption," said Paul Kasriel, director of economic research at Northern Trust in Chicago. "If the tax code were skewed more in favor of middle-income groups, it's not clear to me that we would have a positive long-run impact on the economy."

1993 all over again?
If, on the other hand, the economy is roaring by 2005, some economists believe it might be strong enough to absorb rolling back tax cuts. Some note that a tax hike in 1993 didn't sink the economy, as many Republicans thought it would.

"In 1993 we had an economy coming out of recession, we had unsustainable budget deficits in the projections and we had a budget package which people were afraid would dampen the recovery -- but it didn't. It had the opposite effect," said Max Sawicky, economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C.' cnn.com (Er... was the US economy roaring in 2005?)

The non-partisan view?

'The Treasury report did not openly address the much-debated contention of many conservative analysts that the tax cuts will boost economic growth so much over time that the resulting increase in taxes paid will offset much or all of the initial loss in government revenue -- that tax cuts can essentially pay for themselves.

The report acknowledged the debate delicately, saying "the issue of how, or even if, these policies need to be financed remains a source of discussion among economists."' www.washingtonpost.com