It's Not a "Defense" Department

The U.S. military budget, and the add-on war budget, and the total of the two have all been headed upwards for years and have been headed upwards for the past year and a half. Yes, I know, all you hear about is the one airplane that the so-called Secretary of Defense doesn't want but that Congress insists on giving him anyway. But he and the President have twice asked for a larger overall budget and twice been given it. And almost none of it has anything to do with defense.

The radical edge of acceptable discussion -- and really it's probably beyond the pale, and you may hear nothing of it -- is represented by a report released on Friday at http://comw.org/pda by the Project on Defense Alternatives and other members of the Sustainable Defense Task Force. They propose tweaking what they absurdly call the "defense" budget ever so slightly. Neither Gates nor Obama is likely to stand for such talk, and both are likely to nonetheless be depicted in the media as enemies of a "strong defense." Nonetheless, the new report is outrageously inadequate and laughably unsustainable. It's merely a baby step in the right direction. And such steps are so scandalous as to be met with silence in Washington.

"We should spend as much as necessary on national defense, but not one penny more," says the report, titled "Debt, Deficits, & Defense: A Way Forward" (DDD). Would that we, or even this report, could live up to that. Congressmen Barney Frank, Walter Jones, and Ron Paul, and Senator Ron Wyden requested the report, and it's a fine one as these things go. Congressman Dennis Kucinich used to be ostracized for suggesting a 15% cut to the Pentagon. Two years ago, Congressman Frank proposed a 25% cut, but much of the supposed cut came in the form of ending the current wars, something that -- as far as Frank is concerned -- will happen or not, at the pleasure of the President. The new report (DDD) looks at the non-war military budget alone and proposes cuts that would save "$960 billion between 2011 and 2020". That is to say, $96 billion per year. If the 2011 budget is $708 billion and it miraculously ceases to explode upward during the following nine years, but remains unchanged, then we're talking about a cut of 13.5%. If the budget continues to skyrocket, and the war budget too continues to climb, then we're talking about a much smaller cut.

Oh the outrage! The horror! Surely the commies and the terrorists, if not the krauts and the japs, will be marching us all off to camps tomorrow. Well, they might set off a bomb in Times Square. But because our military's actions antagonize the world and make us less safe, we are endangered by Pentagon budget cuts that are too small, not those that would be too large. DDD refers to the military budget as the "defense budget" and keeps up the pretense that it is used for defending us. The cuts it proposes are not aimed at reducing or eliminating wars of aggression, drone strikes, secret unauthorized coups and assassinations, or prisoner abuse. Instead they're focused on doing what we've been doing but doing it "right". In the words of the report:

"We have focused especially on:
• DoD programs that are based on unreliable or unproven technologies,
• Military missions and capabilities that exhibit low military utility or a poor cost-benefit payoff,
• Assets and capabilities that mismatch or substantially overmatch current and emerging military challenges, and
• Opportunities for providing needed capabilities and assets at lower cost via management reforms."

In other words, we should cut out the waste, impose some accountability on the contracting, and buy the weapons that actually kill the most people for each dollar spent. So, according to DDD, we should reduce our nukes until we can only destroy the planet a reasonable number of times over, reduce "missile defense" programs, cut "peacetime" personnel down to 1.3 million (assuming there ever again is a "peacetime"), cut the Navy back from 10 naval air wings to 8, not buy the crazy planes and vehicles that don't work, etc. These are all moves in the right direction, but so is drilling 8 new oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico instead of 10. So is partially leaving Afghanistan in 8 more years instead of 10. So is giving Goldman Sachs $8 trillion instead of $10 trillion.

Section VII of the DDD report adds an important bit of information. Its title is "A Strategy of Restraint Would Allow Even Greater Savings." This section was drawn up by task force members from the Cato Institute who point out that:

"By cutting missions we can cut force structure -- reducing the number of US military personnel and the weapons and vehicles we procure for them. By cutting force structure and bringing back our forces from overseas, we can reduce the cost of operation and maintaining the military."

One step further in the argument would have explained the difference between offense and defense, between useful spending and spending that is not merely wasteful but actually endangers us and others. Our offensive military budget is larger than those of all conceivable enemies combined. It should be cut by at least two-thirds. But proposing to cut it by 13.5 percent is not just considered reckless; it's considered so horrifying as to be unmentionable.

Congressman Barney Frank was scheduled to hold a press conference at 10 a.m. on Friday in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center. When 100 teabaggers show up there shouting about their taxes, it's a national news story. I wonder if GE, Viacom, and Disney will fill you in on what Congressman Frank has to say about where some of that hated government spending could be curtailed. Don't hold your breath, but hold onto your wallet.

but cutting that bloated Pentagon budget is absolutely essential and I would sincerely hope it's top on the list for a second Obama term.

Ending Empire is also essential. We can't afford it, especially since the people it most directly benefits have decided as a group that they should be exempted from paying its costs.

The risk in ending Empire is the disruption of international trade, but since that trade has been such a disaster for the American worker, perhaps some short term pain is well worth it since it will spur industry to reopen plants near the point of consumption, especially in the US.

The system we have is unsustainable. We have to modify it or lose everything.

That is how high the stakes are now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_War

The United States Department of War, also called the War Office, was the cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the US Army. It was also responsible for naval affairs until the establishment of the Navy Department in 1798, and for some land-based air forces until the creation of the Department of the Air Force in 1947.

The War Department existed from 1789 until September 18, 1947, when it was renamed as the Department of the Army, and became part of the new, joint National Military Establishment (NME). Shortly thereafter, in 1949, the NME was renamed the Department of Defense, which the Department of the Army is part of today.

:dem:

-Laelth

Think of how many MORE unemployed we would have if there weren't hundreds of thousands of people sitting around the hundreds of bases we have in hundreds of countries.

...weapons and vehicles. Congresscritters are going to fight tooth and nail to protect those military-contractor-provided jobs in their districts.

The movie "Why We Fight" goes into detail about how the military contractors spread the work around on purpose to make sure there are dozens, if not hundreds, of Congressmen who will fight for the pork.

America is totally controlled by corporations at this point. The only strategy to survive is to lay low and stay out of their way - or else you risk getting Wellstoned.

Let's offer them free training in the health care professions and start a transition to single-payer. We have a shortage of doctors, nurses, and other medical people in this country and many people are avoiding going to the doctor because they don't have the money.

Each day, 273 people die due to lack of health care in the U.S.

We need single-payer health care, not a welfare bailout for the serial-killer insurance agencies.

There are a lot of needs here that aren't being met. But as we all know, "peace isn't profitable".

So much for the right wing "patriots" and their "love" of the Constitution - didn't the Founding Fathers warn strongly against a Standing Army? (rhetorical question - I know they did)

They're the best in the world at it. And, they deliver.

PS: My family has a tradition of service in uniform that goes back to 1775.

... so technically that department defends something.

I've been posting the $$$ spent on all these fancy war toys and 'defense' for the last two years.

k&r

We need to pull our soldiers and resources out of all the countries in the world. Let them use their own resources to defend themselves. 

We could eliminate most of our weapons systems. We could end two useless wars that aren't defending the US one iota. We need to destoy 90% of our nuclear arsenal which will never be used and is costing us billions to store and maintain. We need to ground and destroy entire fleets of aircraft. 

We need to eliminate all 5 branches of the military and consolidate it into just one name, such as 'The Military'. We are spending (wasting) hundreds of billions in having 5 branches and all of the duplication and overlap. We could have one uniform instead of five. We could eliminate 80 % of the heirarchy in the military by putting all those useless generals out to pasture. 

These are just a few ideas of how to elimnate the massive amount of rampant waste being spent on useless or unneeded weaponry. 

The current system is insane and is only perpetuated by the military-industrial complex and cheered on and defended by the most ignorant and stupid people in our country, conservative extremists who would like to see every dime in our treasury spent building weapons to kill, but not a dime to spend on our infrastructure, on healthcare or on any other constructive or positive ventures. 

President Obama, please hold your head up high, stand tough and DO NOT give into the forces of evil that have held our country hostage for so long. Make a stand for the good of our country and the American people and REJECT the evil that has our country in a stranglehold that will certainly result in our country's demise. 

Our country has far less to worry about from any external threat than it does from the obvious domestic threats from the radical, war mongering right. May the angels of a higher sanity guide you and give you the strength to do what is right, and not fall victim to the right wing. 

I am a veteran of the US Army. I have seen firsthand the rampant wastes in the military. It's time to end the era of fear-inspired military escalation and to pruge our military of the unconscionable waste that is consuming our once great nation. 

if it was widely understood that where they prey is at the church of aggression. Yes, I know that's the predatory kind and not the type rooted in faith.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_defense

On July 26, 1947, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which set up the "National Military Establishment" to begin operations on September 18, 1947, the day after the Senate confirmed James V. Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense. The Establishment had the unfortunate abbreviation "NME" (with a pronunciation virtually identical to "enemy"), and was renamed the "Department of Defense" (also described in the Act under "Title II - The Department of Defense", and later abbreviated as "DOD" or "DoD") on August 10, 1949.

The name-shift from "Department of War" to "Department of Defense" has been seen as an acceptance of Carl von Clausewitz's second maxim from his famous work On War. Clausewitz states: "The aggressor always pretends to be peace-loving because he would like to achieve his conquests without bloodshed . . . Therefore, aggression must be presented as a defensive reaction by the aggressor nation."<3> Hugh Nibley comments: "Nobody ever attacks. You're always just on the defensive. After World War I, the German War Office, Kriegsamt, changed its name to Wehrmacht, "defense power." We changed our War Office to the Department of Defense. We're just defensive now, that's all. Both sides must take the defensive position, whether they are aggressors or not."<4>

Better yet, the pre-emptive offense department.

on voluntary wars of aggression, and blowing up innocent civilians with video games. We're building enemies faster than we're killing them. And we're neglecting America.