Podcast: The 3WHH, with Afghan Vet Spencer Case

We weren’t able to do a 3WHH episode for our regular Saturday time slot last weekend because I was on the road, so we’re doing this mid-week show with a special return guest, philosopher Spencer Case, who in a previous life served in the U.S. Army in deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan. While supportive of our military mission, he had misgivings about how it was all going during his Afghan deployment in 2009 and 2010.

Then Lucretia and I discuss at length whether conservatives should turn against the military, or at the very least the politicized and bureaucratized military leadership. We spend a lot of time discussing a savage article by an anonymous serving general officer posted by Glenn Reynolds on Instapundit, which says, among other bracing things, “Unreformed, the Department of Defense is an inscrutable labyrinth which invites fraud, waste, and abuse.” To which Steve proposes: maybe we should cut the Pentagon budget in half. (And do the same for the State Department.) The left has always hated the military, while the right always defended it and wanted to spend more, even with its waste and extravagance. But perhaps that support was a contingent relic of the Cold War? What does it mean for the American military if both the left and the right dislike it?

You know what to do now: listen here, or ship out to base Ricochet.

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