Ryan's Military Budget Plan

In the October 11, 2012 Vice Presidential debate Paul Ryan said the Democrats propose a $478 billion cut to the defense budget and another $500 billion in upcoming cuts. Martha Raddatz said – let’s put the automatic defense cuts aside. Ryan said the current plan is to cut 80,000 soldiers, 20,000 Marines, 120 cargo planes, and cutting jet fighters and missile defense – we’re saying don’t cut the military by $1 trillion. Joe Biden said – he’s talking about the automatic cuts that they (the Republicans) demanded and Ryan voted on – more Biden truths.

Martha then asked about Afghanistan. Ryan said – we don’t want to lose the gains we’ve gotten, we don’t want the Taliban to give Al Qaeda a safe haven, we agree with the Administration’s 2014 transition. Biden said – we’ve done what we set out to do, eliminated Bin Laden, decimated Al Qaeda and we’ve trained over 315,000 Afghanis; with our 49 allies we’ll continue to train in camps and not go out with the Afghan soldiers if necessary but it’s time for them to take over the security of their country and we will be leaving in 2014 and we’ll save $800 billion over 10 years. Ryan said if it were just this we’d call it a success but what we’re witnessing is the unraveling of Obama foreign policy. Ryan said we agree with their timeline but don’t want to broadcast it; in 2013 the Administration will assess the best way to meet the deadline but we don’t want to give our allies a reason to trust us less and embold a timeframe for our enemies to hold and wait out for us and take over the country. Biden said unless you set a timeline they’re (Afghanistan and Iraq) happy for us to continue to do the job. The surge troop pullout was set before the surge occurred. Martha said she spoke with troops and officers that were concerned with the withdrawal during the fighting season. Biden said he was sure there are people concerned but it was the decision of the Joint Chiefs. Ryan explained that in the warmer weather there is more fighting, when the snow comes the fighting slows; the problem is we have fewer troops to face the insurgents coming from Pakistan. Biden said the American troops were replaced by Afghan soldiers (a decrease of American with an increase of Afghan soldiers) even in the East where it’s more dangerous – we don’t want more Americans killed (this includes by Afghan soldiers that they trained). There’s more on this subject but I don’t think the issues surrounding Afghanistan are going to go away anytime too soon so I’ll leave it here for now.