Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is scheduled to deliver a speech at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington today calling for steady and substantial funding for the U.S. military — at least 4 percent of the GDP — to ensure the world knows America is ready and able for combat, if necessary,
Politico reports.
In the lead-up to his run for president in 2016, the Louisiana Republican is positioning himself as a hawk, with plans to address The Citadel in South Carolina on Tuesday.
His speech at AEI in Washington is billed as "a plan to rebuild America’s military strength and reaffirm the United States as a force for freedom and stability around the world."
"The stark consequences of six years of disengagement and a diminishing U.S. commitment to defense are readily apparent in the current threat environment. With terrorist groups destabilizing the Middle East and North Africa, Iraq on the brink, and Russian forces in Ukraine, many are wondering whether the time has come to reinvest in American global leadership."
The National Journal noted that The Citadel, the site of important foreign policy speeches by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2011 and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul in 2013, also happens to be located in the Palmetto State, where the first Southern state held a Republican presidential primary. Jindal visited South Carolina in June for a big GOP fundraiser.
At the AEI, Jindal will point out that U.S. spending on the military has steadily declined under President Barack Obama. In 2013, $618.7 billion — or about 3.8 percent of GDP — was spent on the military, down from 4.2 percent in 2012, according to Politico, citing statistics compiled by the World Bank. In 2011, the figure was 4.6 percent of GDP and the year before it was 4.7 percent.
Jindal’s 4 percent proposal "excludes temporary war funding for Afghanistan but covers long-term investment," Politico reports. The publication received an advance copy of the governor’s speech.
"We must undo the president’s harmful spending cuts and ensure that our fighting men and women always have the tools they need to succeed," Jindal will say. "The reality is that there this is less need to use the military when it is feared and respected, and the best approach to reducing the level of global risk would be to move decisively to rebuild the tools of military power," Jindal will say in his speech. "Without a strong defense, our allies will not trust our promises, and our adversaries will not believe our threats."
He also plans to make reference to former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s new book, in which Panetta criticizes Obama for failing to leave stabilizing ground troops in Iraq, something widely believed could have staved off the Islamic State (ISIS).
In August, Jindal
wrote an opinion piece for Fox News on Obama’s speech regarding ISIS.
"We have a president who is disturbingly naïve and holds a dangerous utopian view of the world and the dangers therein," he wrote. "Earlier this year, President Obama downplayed the danger of the ISIS, comparing these terrorists to a 'junior varsity' team that does not pose the same threat as al-Qaeda. For him now to assert, 'people like this ultimately fail because the future is won by those who build and not destroy,' is flat out absurd."
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