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Pentagon reload: ‘US army loses to military contractors’
Published: 06 January, 2012, 19:08
US soldiers from HHB 3-7 Field Artillery Regiment 3rd Bct 25th ID peer through their rifle scopes as an Afghan child walks past during a mission in Turkham Nangarhar (AFP Photo / Tauseef Mustafa)
(30.2Mb) embed videoTAGS: Military, Obama, Politics, Budget, China, USA, Anissa Naouai, Government Spending
The US military is to shift its focus from troops to technologies, Barack Obama has declared. The return of Cold War priorities clearly shows who the winner was in the fight for the shrinking US budget, says RT’s military analyst, Evgeny Khrushchev.
President Obama’s plan for the Department of Defense, announced on Thursday, calls for a reduction in ground forces now that al-Qaeda’s leadership has been decimated. The new priorities will be improved surveillance and cyber warfare capability, alongside enhanced special forces operations.
The new strategy is not driven by the White House’s vision of national security, argues RT’s Evgeny Khrushchev. It is a result of ferocious and intense lobbying by the US military industrial complex.
“There are two losers: the US army and Marine Corps. US military contractors are the main winners in this new war for the shrinking US budget. The military industrial complex will be the main beneficiary of the troops downsizing and extension of the military’s big ticket high tech items,” says the military analyst.
Forget Afghanistan, it’s China now
In other words, this new scenario means no more and no less than “a classic Cold War arms race” which will cost zillions of dollars, says Khrushchev. But this time it will be waged against an “imaginary, perceived threat” from China.
America’s so called “soft power” strategy failed in Iraq, where the situation deteriorated within 24 hours of the last American troops being withdrawn. The US officially agreeing to allow the Taliban to set up an office in Qatar is by default an admission of its failure in Afghanistan – and Pakistan as well, according to Khrushchev.
This explains the new strategy’s shift from Central and South-East Asia to the Asia Pacific region, continues the analyst. This is why Iraq and Afghanistan’s low-intensity counter-insurgency will be replaced by a China-focused high-tech military threat projection.
But at the end of the day, the new policy will emerge as all too familiar, points out Khrushchev. It was the same low-footprint, high-tech strategy with which the US opened up hostilities in Afghanistan in an operation entitled “Enduring Freedom” more than 10 years ago.
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>>US military contractors are the main winners in this new war for the shrinking US budget.<<
This is the upshot you risk when so many people spend so many years insisting that private industry can always do things better than the government...
John Ellis seems to be suffering from a brain gas phenomenon of anal origin, and several others are in close competition for the gas infected honors. I am a native born American, and let me tell you foreigners that many of us European derived Americans inherited from the Native Americans a very warrior based mentality. Before the Europeans arrived, the Native Americans were waging a very devastating war against each other. This is why they could not withstand the onslaught of the Europeans, because they were waging war against each other. Had they stood together, the Europeans would have been wiped off the face of their continent. But they would have none of that, such was their hatred of each other. While it seems the White Europeans have won the war against the Native Americans....it might not be as it seems. Us White European Americans now have this mentality of the former Native Americans, and we wage war against those that common sense says to leave in peace. Unless we change, it will go badly against us just as it did against the Native Americans.
To answer Rottweiller, what complete and total rubbish:
"let me tell you foreigners that many of us European derived Americans inherited from the Native Americans a very warrior based mentality. Before the Europeans arrived, the Native Americans were waging a very devastating war against each other."
--There is very little evidence for this. Compared to the wars of Europe. 'wars' in the Americas rarely went beyond the levels of skirmishes and this itself was a rarity when contact between native tribes occured. When in recent times North American Natives have attempted to join together politically and culturally including the uniting of warrior societies. What was found was that many First Nations had no history or need for warrior societies particularly before the advent of European colonization. To the contrary, in some of the First Nations that did engage in battle, it was part of the culture to remove those who engaged in drawing blood or killing, to have them exclude themselves from the life of the community until the emotional scarring caused by violence had been healed.
It's disgusting to blame the victims of the biggest genocide in history for the
war-crimes of modern corporate America.
But what would you expect from a human rottweiller.