Maggie's Farm

Dr. Friedman is an idiot. His three premises are wrong, his conclusions, pompously concluded after the fact and a bottle of Pinot Noir, are wrong. Politics have limited our ability to wage war. We should have destroyed each one of those enemies, but home-grown discontent prevented victory.

The main thing he completely omitted is that all the wars up to and including WWII were funded separately by a budget called The War Budget. Congress had nothing to say about it. The President was empowered to sell bonds to pay for war. In the four months after Iwo Jima, 26 BILLION dollars worth of bonds were sold. That amount of money transacted for anything hasn’t occurred since.

The Democrats stopped that DURING Korea precisely because it was an unpopular expedition. They empowered Congress to ‘better reflect’ the will of the people and it’s gone downhill since.

War cannot be waged by comittee.
.

Forgot to add: Friedman works on Wall Street. I wonder if he might be opposed to war bonds?