Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush is calling for a broad military buildup and says the U.S. armed forces have been left ill-prepared to defeat the Islamic State, blamed for the Paris attacks that killed at least 129 and wounded hundreds more.
The former Florida governor is projecting himself as a potential commander in chief able to handle such challenges, as his presidential bid tries to gain traction in a primary campaign likely to be shaken up after the Paris attacks.
“The brutal savagery is a reminder of what is at stake in this election,” Bush says in excerpts of a speech he plans to deliver Wednesday at The Military College of South Carolina, known as The Citadel.
“We are choosing the leader of the free world,” he said, according to passages provided to The Associated Press in advance. “And if these attacks remind us of anything, it’s that we are living in serious times that require serious leadership.”
The speech, which had been scheduled before Friday’s deadly attacks, initially was to be more focused on Pentagon policy and equipment procurement reform. But the attacks prompted a quick shift in focus.
Bush hinted at the themes while campaigning Tuesday in South Carolina, where many Republican primary voters are retired and active-duty military, and where support runs high for the U.S. armed forces.
Bush has long faulted President Barack Obama’s administration, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — the leading Democratic presidential candidate — for allowing wholesale federal spending cuts prompted by the 2013 budget reconciliation after Congress and the president were unable to craft more strategic cuts.
The cuts affected military and non-military spending alike, at a time when conflicts in Syria and Iraq “spiraled out of control as President Obama and Hillary Clinton failed to act,” Bush said.
Bush’s campaign Tuesday released a broad outline of his proposal, to restore the cuts and set goals to build up the military in several areas.
Many echoed points he has made over the past six months as a candidate, such as providing military training and support for allies in Eastern Europe and the Baltic region, where Russia has been applying pressure.
It also included some new points, including Bush’s desire to update the United States’ nuclear weapons capacity. Bush also calls for increasing production of next-generation stealth bombers.
And he also calls for doubling the U.S. Marine Corps’ battle-ready strength to 186,000.
“I believe in the principle that the greater our superiority in military power, the less likely it is that we will have to assert that power, or be provoked into using it,” Bush said in the excerpts.
Bush, a year ago viewed as the likely front-runner, has failed to move to the top tier of GOP White House hopefuls in a field where political outsiders Donald Trump and Ben Carson and charismatic young lawmakers Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have eclipsed him.
But Bush hinted Tuesday, campaigning in Columbia, that the Paris attacks could change the focus for choosing the next commander in chief.
Bush also appears to be anticipating criticism that he would wage war in Iraq, as his father and brother did when they were president.
“I think it’s important for the next president, whoever he or she may be, to learn from the lessons of the past and use those lessons to focus on the future,” Bush told an audience of more than 300 at Coastal Carolina University in Conway Tuesday.
On Thursday in New York, Clinton will deliver an address outlining her strategy for defeating ISIS as well as her overall plan for fighting radical jihadism.
(AP)
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4 Responses
When someone wants a new and expanded program, ask how he plans to pay for it. Does he favor raising rates on the income tax, or perhaps cutting the exemption amount? Does he want to introduce a national sales tax? Wars aren’t cheap. Since World War II the willingness to fight wars hasn’t been coupled with a willingness to pay for them, and the results have been highly suboptimal.
He sounds just like another Bush who lied to the American public and led us into 2 futile and costly wars.
I wonder if starting wars is a Bush family trait that is genetically inherited?
Moose613: We won in Iraq (both times) and Afghanistan. Obama lost both of them (the cliche is “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory”). Had we stayed the course, we wouldn’t be in the current mess.
Note that unlike his father and brother, Jeb never served in the military, and for all his militant talk hasn’t proposed how to pay for it.
@Moose613
“Samuel Bush [father of President George H. W. Bush and the grandfather of President George W. Bush] was a railroad middle manager, then a steel company president and, during World War I, also a federal government official in charge of coordination of and assistance to major weapons contractors.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush Therefore it is reasonable to suppose that Samuel Bush profited from American wars.
Similarly, President George H. W. Bush was the Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency which functions in part as the President of the United States’ primary covert military force. As someone in charge of what is essentially a military, it is reasonable to suppose that President George H. W. Bush profited from American wars.
Finally, President George W. Bush’s vice president, Richard “Dick” Cheney very likely profited from American wars.
“Cheney was selected to be the Secretary of Defense during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush, holding the position for the majority of Bush’s term from 1989 to 1993. During his time in the Department of Defense, Cheney oversaw the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, among other actions. Out of office during the Clinton administration, Cheney was the Chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company [a weapons contractor and a component of Standard & Poor’s 500] from 1995 to 2000.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney
Vice president Richard “Dick” Cheney went from Secretary of Defense to CEO of a very large weapons contractor to the vice president of the USA who helped orchestrate two ruinous wars. It’s not even worth bothering to comment on this other to say this seems like part of a screenplay for an incredible Hollywood movie.
Also, it seems that the Bush family controls a significant amount of stock in The Carlyle Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carlyle_Group which seems to profit handsomely from American wars.
and
“Three subsequent generations of the Bush family have been Yale alumni. Prescott Bush was admitted to the Zeta Psi fraternity and Skull and Bones secret society. George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush are also members of that society.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush
Skull and Bones is clearly a pagan organization. For example, “The Skull and Bones Hall is otherwise known as the “Tomb”.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_Bones#Tomb
“Skull and Bones’s membership developed a reputation in association with the “Power Elite”” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_Bones#Bonesmen
Here’s one final fact you might find interesting:
“He [John Kerry] also became a member of the secretive Skull and Bones Society” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry
Much like Jewish reformers (Reformed Jews), Christian protestors (Protestant Christians) reject the strictures of traditional religious authority in favor of freedom. In Yiddish this is the lethal “frum vs frei” debate that the Haskalah intensified. The “Hanukkah era” we live in can be seen as a brilliantly dark conflagration pitting the Korachs of the world who espouse liberty and egalitarianism against Jews and Noahides who worship Hakodesh Barchu.
Chazal ceaselessly drum into us that paganism has three fundamental “ingredients”: licentiousness, murder, and idolatry. Lying to persuade Americans to support wars to extend the American empire (New York’s moniker is not accidentally the “Empire State” and West Point is essentially next door to Manhattan for an obvious reason) and then committing war crimes in those wars are a couple of myriad symptoms of America’s fundamentally pagan culture.
Having Saddam Hussein assassinated would have been reasonable for he was a dangerous pagan despot. But entering into wars in Iraq and Afganastan and then executing them with such naked and unnecessary brutality (along with a large dose of “crony capitalism” which is merely a fashionable phrase for corruption), simply and clearly illustrated America’s essentially pagan character.
See “War Is a Racket” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket