Jeb Bush Remarks: A U.S. Defense Policy for the 21st Century

Jeb Bush US Defense Policy

Jeb addressed cadets at The Citadel. The following is an incomplete catch of the items he pitched:

1. Unleash the air force from self-imposed restrictions
2. Arm the Kurds
3. Target their leaders using special forces.
4. The US and its allies need to expand their presence on the ground in accordance to what our military experts say, not our politicians.
5. The bulk of the ground troops will be local a partnership of the willing.
6. To end the crisis, we need to stabilize Syria by removing Assad.
7. But for US who will protect Christians, from Shiite and Sunni alike? A fair amount
8. The State of readiness
   1. We are going from capability to ragged edge
   2. The B52 is 70 years’ old
   3. The Naval Fleet is half the size in 88
   4. To train we have to borrow Helicopters from our allies.
9. China has spent heavily in getting stronger, Obama doesn’t care.
10. In a Bush administration we will keep our edge in sea, land and area both technologically and militarily.
11. To deter we must have the equipment, capability and will to act.

How to get there:

1. Increase the army by 40K soldiers
2. Marines 186K fighters
3. We must continue to invest in special forces. 
4. Our intelligence services are overstretched.  I’ll provide everything they need to support the warfighter. Peace through strength.
5. I’ll work with Congress to rebuild our airplanes, our naval fleet, our submarines, better missile defenses to protect against Iranian and North Korean defenses.
6. I’ll Fight for the Patriot program re-instatement.
   1. We need it now.
7. We need to modernize the Vet Medical program

We need to reform the Pentagon, procurement reform, reduce the size of the civilians employees whose first allegiance is to Unions rather than warfighters.

Cyber superiority is a necessity. The intelligence agencies will be given the authority and resources to respond to cyber pirates, saboteurs, and foreign agencies.

Our military needs to be First Period!

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I really liked his speech. Jeb sounded good and his ideas were coherent and well directed.  We need something along the line he describes, and he certainly demonstrated a we are in it to win attitude I liked.