Hi, just curious how different presidents affect sea rotations? I.E. Obama wants to pull out of iraq, so will he feel our need for forward deployment has deminished?
I guess more vaguely, do the presidents control battle groups or does congress?
Yeah, I know this is a dead post but let's bring it back for some fun.
Not to out myself for being a complete crazy-pants here, but I think our deployment schedules COULD change. It would just take a major overhaul of perspective in the role of the United States in the world. I'm going to use 2007 numbers here, since they are in the history books already. And yes, to answer your question, I have way too much time on my hands.
I would also like to state at the beginning of this that I have not (yet) been selected for IA, and I cannot imagine the experience in the desert. My heart goes out to the people who served there, and people need to know that nukes get sent there. An ELT-gone-O-gang died within the last few weeks over there, and I don't know if I am okay with that. I must also state that I am proud to be in the Navy, and if asked to go to the desert in my remaining time I will go without argument. What I say here is not intended to disrespect anyone currently serving or who has served in the sand in the past. At risk of sounding entirely too cliche', that I humbly believe that anyone who has had to return fire on hostile people in the Middle East was not, at that point, fighting for Iraqi/Afghan freedom, but for the lives of himself and his buddies over there. Seems strange that our colleagues get sent over there in the name of one thing, and die defending
eachother. It saddens me to hear about a SEAL who dove on a grenade to save his team. I don't think he thought he was protecting America, I think he was saving his buddies' lives. Tragic.
To look at our military from an economic standpoint is alarming on a different level.
This is our government's freely posted picture of our GDP, updated quarterly for our enjoyment. 13.8 TRILLION in 2007. Prosperity feels good, doesn't it?
http://www.bea.gov/national/xls/gdplev.xlsHere is our government's proposed federal budget for FY2009. Not bad, I guess. Pretty thrifty for a bloated beaurocracy that provides all of the hopes, dreams and windfalls for 300 million people 'from womb to tomb.' Since this is
www.nukeworker.com and the question is about deployment schedules, let's look at the Department of Defense, to which all of us Navy folks proudly belong. Total discretionary budget authority for 2007 is over 600 billion dollars. Take a look at the footnote that says additional funding for our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan are not limited to DoD, meaning that money didn't make this list. If you watch the news, I am sure you heard about the (at least) two emergency spending packages, both about 200 billion dollars, that got sent to supplement the war effort. So if we go 200 + 200 + 600 billion dollars, we get about one trillion dollars spent on our military excursions across the globe. Take into account the fact that I didn't include Intelligence organization budgets here, since we are just talking about nuclear ship deployment schedules here.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2009/budget.htmlIf we take 1(trillion) divided by 13.8(trillion) we see that
we spend about 7.24 percent of our GDP on our military. (Yes, L-Ville people, 7.24).
Okay, what does that mean? It means that we really do have the best equipped, best trained military force in the history of humanity. Add to that the fact that it is an all-volunteer force (the whole stop-loss thing may make it a mostly-volunteer force), and we can proudly say that our military is the greatest ever to grace the planet. Do your homework and you will see, the VIRGINIA Class SSN's are awesome. The new CVN Class (which may just be another NIMITZ mod) is awesome. Take a look at the SSGN conversion for the OHIO through the GEORGIA, it is amazing. Nuclear powered submarines are finally a significant weapons delivery platform that we will actually use (SSGN's vs. SSBN's).
Anyone born after World War I knows of the United States as a military superpower, and we tend to take that for granted. It's true that OUR military intervention really saved the world at least once, and for that we owe our grandparents a huge debt -- which we will pay by spending up Social Security on our current military agenda. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
"A 2001 study by the General Accounting Office said the United States was paying $11.2 billion annually to finance its military presence in European NATO countries in spite of a post-Cold War drawdown that had reduced the number of U.S. military personnel in Europe from 300,000 in 1990 to 100,000."
100,000 US Troops in Europe? I understand the Cold War (any submariner had better recognize the glory days of the Nuclear fleet, when Nuclear power had more purpose than pushing a ship from ORSE to ORSE), and the necessity of preventing Communist expansion. While we can argue all day that communism would have failed any way had it spread over Europe, the cost would have been too extreme in the long run. Now, though, the USSR is no more (at least for now), and our containment garrisons are still in place. I'm sure anyone who's done a West Pac has stopped in Japan. Beautiful place, LOTS of US Military there. Slate Magazine's Phillip Carter said: (By the way, I don't know anything about slate magazine, just quoting it for the sake of my argument).
"Nearly all of the U.S. military presence in Asia remains concentrated in two countries—Japan and South Korea. The U.S. Pacific Command keeps about 37,500 troops in South Korea and 47,000 troops in Japan (including Okinawa). "
In fact, the United States military is stationed in 138 countries across the planet. It is true that many of these countries just have a small Marine Corps Detachment at the US Embassy, but US forces are also defending countries and borders that have nothing to do with our security. Remember Kosovo? US troops are still there. I went to DC for Memorial Day weekend (ahh, yes, to witness the Great American Tradition of completely missing the point), and ran into a friend who was stationed in Kosovo -- from '02 to '04! Apparently there is a two-story tall mural of William J. Clinton there. The guy is a rock star over there. I guess I am trying to say that, with my limited world perspective, I can't see why US troops are in Kosovo. Are they keeping us safe, or are we(DoD) just putting them in danger for some really crappy overseas duty.
We might also want to take an honest look at Iraq and Afghanistan. The people who planned the horrible attacks on American soil should not go un-punished. They need to be hunted down and made to answer for their horrible crimes against humanity. Does our military need to be in the desert/mountain wasteland building countries in our image? Does that make us safer? Did we truly free the Iraqis/Afghans by imposing martial law over there? Should we continue to hedge our bets in the Holy land by aiding both Israel and Palestine? Do these actions really make us safer, or do they just piss people off overseas? Is this really how we want the money that is taken from each of our pay checks spent?
As much respect as I have for John McCain, I don't think his so-called "small government" domestic policy is the answer here. I don't think electing a Liberal Democrat, like Obama, would really help us out here. To steal Ron Paul's words: While he may want us to withdraw from the needless conflict in Iraq, he no doubt has a laundry list of other countries he sees as justifiable US military action. It seems like we only have a choice this year between Big Government at home or Big Government abroad. I whole-heartedly believe that we are on an unsustainable path right now, and that we need to make some major changes here, and not just symbolic ones.
"What does this have to do with deployment schedules?" Nothing, for now. Maybe we should start to pay attention to world affairs and domestic affairs, though. Maybe if we actually thought about what is happening here we would get a bit angry. I am worried that our currency is going to be so de-valued by our military and domestic spending policies (saturating the money supply with money generated from thin air to create a symbolic drop in the Prime interest rate), that it won't matter if I stay Navy or pick a "recession proof" job like commercial nuke power. It doesn't matter if we don't get laid off if the money we get paid isn't worth anything. Sorry, back to deployment schedules. Let's reconsider our role in the world. Maybe we don't need two boats and a carrier in the Gulf at all times just to show the people how big our wee-wee is. Let's pressure our elected officials to at least take a look at a few pages of faded parchment for a minute. As corny as the phrase is, the Declaration of Independence literally spoke our nation into existance. The Constitution really gives us the basis of a successful Republic. If it needs to be a "living, breathing document" (like a divisional training binder), let's Amend it instead of interpreting it into non-existance. Long story short, if we revisit our founding documents and realize that they are really the basis of our country's greatness, designed to limit government and not to allow government to limit us/Iraqis/whomever-else-we-want, our deployment schedules will get easier. A Navy/Army/Air Force/Marine Corps controlled by a government that operates within its Constitutional guidelines won't go to sea so much, or spend a year in third-world countries as much.
Maybe I wanted to comment on how a President could affect sea duty, maybe I wanted to start this discussion at nukeworker.
