Join Magister Campbell as he presents another episode of The Tower, A Third Side Perspective to military news for the Infernal Legion. In this episode we are discussing Trump’s ‘rebuilding the military’ record. This originally aired in the Infernal Legion Podcast #42: https://radiofreesatan.com/blog/infernal-legion-042-sinister-scuttlebutt/
Listen to the entire podcast episode
About The Tower
The Tower is a monthly segment of the Infernal Legion podcast. It presents a third side perspective on military personnel, institutions, issues, and news. The Tower’s host, Magister Campbell, is a veteran of the U.S. Army who served for five years from 1997-2002.
About Infernal Legion
The Infernal Legion is the first Satanic veteran’s service organization. Members of this group are Satanists (as defined by Anton Szandor LaVey in “The Satanic Bible”) and Veterans (as defined in Title 38 of the Code of Federal Regulations) of the United States Armed Forces.
The Infernal Legion exists as a non-profit organization designed to assist Satanic Veterans with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as well as with housing, employment, counseling, and much more. It also serves to promote the creative endeavors of Satanic Veterans and as a virtual, members only clubhouse for the warriors of the Infernal Empire, the elite of the Alien Elite!
Transcript
Trump Didn’t Rebuild the Military
https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-defense-spending-u-s-military-joe-biden-b3af3ff2
by The Editorial Board
February 22, 2024
Nikki Haley is vowing to keep contesting Donald Trump and warning voters about his weaknesses. Here’s an under appreciated vulnerability for the 45th President: His failure to build a U.S. military prepared for the world’s compounding dangers.
One of Mr. Trump’s stock applause lines is that he “rebuilt the military” while in the White House, and the point is popular even with Republican voters who don’t support U.S. deployments overseas. “My Administration has embarked on a colossal rebuilding of the American armed forces, a record like no other,” Mr. Trump said at West Point in 2020.
Mr. Trump did increase the defense budget during his four years in office—by roughly $225 billion, according to defense analyst Mackenzie Eaglen. The U.S. military in 2017 was reeling from years of budget cuts under Barack Obama that had savaged readiness.
That year far more service members died in training accidents than did in combat. Of the new money in Mr. Trump’s fiscal 2019 budget request for the Pentagon, nearly 90% flowed to personnel, operations and maintenance accounts. Mr. Trump deserves credit for digging out of that hole.
But the money was a blip. U.S. defense spending under Mr. Trump topped out at 3.4% of the economy in 2020, up from 3.1% in 2017, even though America devoted 4.6% to military spending as recently as 2011. Compare that with the 6% that President Ronald Reagan spent in 1986 while building a 600-ship Navy to win the Cold War. The U.S. is now heading south of 3% of GDP on defense, and interest payments on the national debt will soon surpass Pentagon spending.
Mr. Trump ran in 2016 on building a 350-ship Navy and expanding the Army to 540,000 soldiers. The world from the Pacific to Europe would be safer if he had followed through. He hired good advisers but often spent his political capital wading into the culture-war defense controversies of the day.
The Trump Administration didn’t release a detailed plan to grow the naval fleet until December 2020—after Mr. Trump had lost his bid for re-election. In 2021 the Navy had 294 ships. The U.S. Army is now the smallest since 1940. Mr. Trump’s Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson produced a plan to expand the force to 386 squadrons from 312. But it wasn’t a presidential priority and went nowhere.
Mr. Trump says that because of President Biden’s support for Ukraine “the arsenals are empty, the stockpiles are bare,” as he said last year. Yet if Mr. Trump had accomplished the military rebuild he claims, would the U.S. be straining to produce enough missiles and ammunition for both Ukraine and Israel? His budgets did little to rebuild the defense industrial base or restore long-term contracts for steady weapons procurement.
Voters remember a calmer world under Mr. Trump, and he can claim credit for degrading ISIS. But he tweeted while in office that U.S. defense spending was “crazy!” even as he purports to support “peace through strength.” Some of Mr. Trump’s current budget advisers want to reduce defense spending in the name of fiscal restraint, though they won’t touch the giant entitlements that are the real spending problem.
Mr. Biden, for his part, has proposed budgets each year that cut military spending after inflation. But Mr. Trump shares blame for the fact that the U.S. military is overstretched by the world’s demands.
A cause worth a presidential candidacy would be rebuilding the armed forces and restoring what Reagan called America’s margin of safety. But neither party’s leading candidate is making the case.
Thoughts
- We need a smaller, more agile military, not a larger one.
- Increasingly our military reaction is based not on on the ground forces, but drone operated precision strikes
- We should be focusing on intel over quantity of forces
- Defense spending is up year after year, but we still can’t seem to keep up with caring for the world. Why should we?
- Presidents ironically the commander in chief, has little to do with actual readiness, some have never even served and talk shit about our generals,… trump
- With fewer civilians willing to enlist or reenlist, and more world conflicts we had better stop thinking about force numbers and why we are supporting war in the first place.
- Israel/palestine is a genocide
- Russia/ukraine’s fate is written on the wall