Dana Rohrabacher: “I appreciate this opportunity to say a few words about the C-17. I may not be permitted to do so later in this…”

“I appreciate this opportunity to say a few words about the C-17. I may not be permitted to do so later in this Department of Defense authorization. We will be increasing the number, the proposal is to increase the number of C-17's from four to six. I join with my colleagues, the gentlemen from California [Mr. Horn] and the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Harman] in support of that measure. It seems that America is always condemned to fight the last war. Between the first two great World Wars, the issue was battleships. And our Navy insisted on battleship production versus aircraft carriers. I might add, had we looked at technology and what was the need of technology rather than follow politics, we might have deterred World War II, because we might have had aircraft carriers that would have deterred the attack on Pearl Harbor. During the cold war, it was the power of presence. Those were the battleships of the day. We had bases all over the world, and we had a large number of troops in our standing army. Well, providing security in the future will depend on projecting power from the United States and having a very strong reserve force and will depend on technological superiority, not on large numbers of troops based all over the world, but on our ability to project our power, both technologically and otherwise, throughout the world. Having foreign bases will not be part of the picture, most likely, 10 years from now.”