The Unmentionable
One thing to admire about Barack Obama is his willingness to name big problems bluntly: for exampe, energy (wasteful overuse, overloading the ecosystem) and health care (a problem of costs as well as insurance company ripoffs), to name two. It goes without saying that clarity about first principles comes as an enormous relief after the brain-dead, plutocracy-gilding drivel that has spewed out of the White House for the last eight years.
The savvy Lorelei Kelly has a valuable piece up at Huffington Post on the huge missing argument in Washington. What, she asks, is the point of a military budget that accounts for "approximately 54% of discretionary spending" not including war spending? You read that correctly--leave out Iraq and Afghanistan, and the military still take more than half all discretionary spending. That staggering figure does include "plenty of permanent earmarks like missile defense and nuclear weapons." Talk about whole herds of large beasts in the room.
This is not to say that the country can afford to go without intelligent strategy. But "America has not had a real security strategy since the end of 'containment' and the Cold War in 1991," she writes. It's long past time for a rethink of the purpose of military spending. Sticking the label "national security" on gigantic, automatic expenditures clarifies nothing. Meanwhile, on the right, big spenders are insisting that 4 percent of GDP constitute a floor for military spending. (These big spenders call themselves "conservatives." Perhaps Rick Warren might apply himself to the Purpose-Driven Military Budget.)
But in keeping with the new philosophical mood, Kelly is also practical, and tough on what she calls The Lefty Chorus, which "may be right on priorities, but its rhetoric still looks backward for inspiration." Instead of beating the drums for butter over guns, she argues,
A much more effective strategy for the Left will be to make tradeoffs within the defense budget this year and not try to shift money around between domestic and defense spending. Take on missile defense and the F-22, but at the same time, stand up for military families, genocide prevention, body armor, Foreign Area Officers. Take on the imbalance in our policy that hands the military far too much responsibility. This is a great opportunity for the Left to gain much needed legitimacy in this debate. Don't blow the common ground that exists out there! Quit pitting the Air Force against the Department of Education. That argument doesn't work. It never has.
The discussion is long overdue. I don't expect to see it on the Sunday shows or major op-ed pages, but isn't this one thing the blogosphere is for?
This is beautiful!
Here's my reconceptualization of "defense." Call it "protection" instead. Once you see it that way, you suddenly have to ask: What kinds of protection does American need most right now? Well, health care is a kind of protection. So is education as a kind of social capitol for the future. A good energy policy. Care for the environment. And so on.
We need to prioritize "protection" in such a way that we do not make the mistake of devoting so much money and national talent to the military that we deplete the very civilization we're hoping to protect.
Think of those Mayan cities buried under the jungle. The civilization died. Whole cities simply perished. It's happened in other places. Even been to Ephesus? The river delta moved so far that ultimately it was no longer a port city. It died.
So let's plan ahead - for peace and "protection" with every meaning of the word protection. (and let's throw out the word defense - or call it what it is... a money monster) Otherwise we become like a civilization that built a wall to protect itself. And all the money got spent on the wall. Meanwhile, behind the all-important wall, the citizens were slowly starving on many levels.
Yes, let's rethink!
December 13, 2008 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is time to demand that the military budget including Veterans Affairs be reduced to 0.5% of Gross Domestic Product within the FIRST Obama administration. Americans cannot afford to spend more on death and destruction, a totally wasteful form of spending.
But no more closing of bases or plants, they should be converted to hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, R&D institutions for the technology that raises our productivity to handle the baby boomer retirement, Universities so that *every* child in America can have a college degree, medical research institutions, etc. These are realistic conversions. No community should be faced with loss of jobs, the jobs should be converted to domestic use.
The time is now.
December 13, 2008 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
There's another way to look at the obscenity of war spending in America--we should stop calling it "defense" spending since that is totally misleading. It's about war and preparation for war. Anyway, the way to look at it is simple and gets the point across without getting lost in all the minutae of particular spending and it is this:
The United States spends more annually on "defense" than all the other nations on earth combined.
Let me repeat in a slightly different way so it really sinks in:
The USA spends more each year (not including the two wars underway) on the military than every other country on earth does for military spending (our allies and nonallies alike).
There is no threat on this planet that could possibly justify that level of military spending. So, if you examine this from an unbiased point of view it becomes clear that virtually all of our government problems with respect to not having enough revenue to do what we need to do for our country stem from this obscene level of waste on new and better ways to destroy civilization. The irony is that if we maintain this level of military spending neither we, nor our enemies, will have to fire a shot to destroy our own country. So all the Chinese or Russians have to do is sit there and wait us out as we bankrupt ourselves, starve our people, destroy public education, public health, public infrastructure, the elderly, etc...
Think about how incredibly absurd that level of military spending is. Think about how unbelievably wasteful that is. Think about the fact that we are pouring approximately $650 BILLION annually down a rat hole just to feed the greed of the arms and munitions industries as well as the contractors who, in allicance with the arms and munitions makers constitute the military industrial complex.
We could and SHOULD cut military spending in half over the next four years to help pay for the many things we actually need in this country. Nothing of any vital importance would be impacted if we were to do so. I say, if you can't defend the United States in peace time with $325 billion it either cannot be done or the wrong people are in charge. Obviously, the latter is the case.
Don't you think the $325 billion in savings annually would come in handy in the future? I do. Furthermore, the nation's military would be more than well funded at that level. Everyone who is sane in this country should be demanding a 50% cut in the military budget in the next four years. It's just that simple. Somehow, I think the military will be able to manage on $325 billion per year.
Anyone who opposes scaling back this obscenity should be tarred and feathered as an unpatriotic wacko bent on bankrupting the nation and handing our country to the Chinese bankers who own the debt required to sustain this sick and sinful level of military spending.
December 13, 2008 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I rec'd this comment!
December 13, 2008 1:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
It used to be called the War Department; now it's the Defense Department. I thought that was a step in the right direction conceptually. Maybe the next step is The Peace Department.
I do think Kelly's on track when he/she says we haven't had a grand strategy since containment. Need a new one that fits the times and reality. Along with an industrial policy to keep with all the other countries who have one.
December 13, 2008 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sadly, Americans are easily manipulated by fear and nationalism, both of which keep Dems meek in the face of GOP "soft on terror" and "weak on defense" charges.
So we will pay billions in peacetime for military personnel to sit on bases, but nothing for infrastructure. How about expanding the Corps of Engineers to include more roadbuilding, bridge repair, etc (all within the DOD budger)? Then, perhaps a domestic non-military national service corps tasked with upgrading "security" at schools, hospitals and even factories (eg. chemical, munitions and nuclear plants).
Since "cutting the military" = not "supporting our troops" in GOP-speak, we may need to be creative about expanding the military's role.
Ironically, that's exactly what "the surge" did in Iraq. I read that >60% of the added troops were building walls and doing other reconstruction tasks unrelated to the role most Americans thought they were doing (that is, kicking Arab butt).
December 13, 2008 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nothing keeps Democrats "meek" except their own cowardice and the fact that they simply do not have the courage of their alleged convictions. Sadly, it is that simple.
December 13, 2008 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Senator Daschel was speaking about health care back in June and I watched the tape. His point was that the push by all lobbies will be to keep the status quo. This is five months before Barack is elected and six months before he had the appointment for HHS.
The moneyed class is addicted to the Dept. of Defense. It will do ANYTHING to sustain the status quo. I think oleeb is wrong on this. I think we are going to see some real courage and conviction and there will be moaning and the gnashing of teeth by the moneyed class to do all the harm it can to the New Administration.
Get ready for a good fight.
December 13, 2008 6:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
What do you think I'm wrong about? I think we're in close to 100% agreement. The question is whether we as a people will have the courage to stand up and say we've had it with all our wealth being squandered on military madness. Will the Democrats have the balls? I hope so. The problem is their track record which is utterly miserable for the past 40 years. It would be completely surprising to see Democrats act with courage and stand fast against continuing the bloated miliary budgets, but it would be most welcome. I just see nothing in recent years that would indicate they are capable of such action.
December 14, 2008 2:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Another question worth asking: if all this spending has given us the mightiest military in the world, then why have we become mired in two wars in small, relatively poor West Asian nations? Given what we spend on defense, Iraq and Afghanistan really should have been slam-dunks. The reason they weren't is that so much of the money is wasted on things like missile defense and obsolete bombers. Pork is what it is, and that's what we should call it: a military Bridge to Nowhere. Now, if someone wants to reclassify it as economic development spending, we should be happy to have that conversation.
December 14, 2008 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since the end of WWII how has having "the greatest military in the world" benefitted us?
December 14, 2008 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dismantling the current set of DoD projects is anything but simple. Many of these boondogles are based on multi-year contracts. The project details are intentionally difficult to discover. The congress has no oversight over many of them. They employ a lot of people through the country.
I agree that there are significant problems with the system, but calling for an arbitrary reduction in spending is not a sensible approach. Reducing spending on the system requires cooperation from many many people with a vested interest in their own piece of largesse.
A better approach is to direct elements of the armed services and the civilian support industries toward constructive projects.
December 15, 2008 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps this sounds like Dr. Pangloss but the financial crisis may be useful in cutting the DOD.
Not with respect to next year. It's mostly locked
in concrete by those multi year contracts and if it weren't, 2009 isn't the year for cutting spending. But Obama will merely elicit the sage nodding of heads if he begins warning now that when the economy begins recovering we'll have to pay the piper- repay the money we spent on the Bailout.
With that cover he should initiate "Plan 2012" an instruction to the DOD to plan for a budget by then which is ,yes, half of this year's. Working back from what that budget would have to look like, the DOD would automatically come to the programs for which phase out planning must begin this year .
The in-between years will take care of themselves.
And there should be paramaters (using the word correctly)that the subsequent years budget must either remain at that multiple of the GDP or reduce by , say, 2020 to half that multiple.
I know that- in good or bad faith- the DOD will argue that first Obama must set a mission against which the DOD can plan.
He should turn that around by telling the DOD that it's their job to tell him what mission they can implement at each of those paramaters. After which, he'll choose.
They'll know that answer. And we'll probably agree with it.
December 15, 2008 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another point about military spending versus results in Iraq/Afghanistan: this is a very limited way of thinking.
A better way of thinking about this is that, as horrible as conditions are for the nations that we've invaded, the American public--to their credit--will not stand for the level of ruthlessness necessary to "win" there. A lot of people have died either directly or indirectly from us being those places, and a lot more have been wounded or suffered because of us. Almost none of them had animosity toward this nation. War did a very poor job of diffusing the existing threats, and it created many more problems that didn't exist before.
We didn't win there because we went to war. And we didn't win the war because not that many of us really want to hurt people. It's not that much about equipment. After all, with no more than training, armor, and hand weapons 2000 Roman soldiers killed 60000 Celts in a single day.
December 15, 2008 4:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
If discretionary spending weren't such a vanishingly small portion of the overall budget, this would mean something.
Oddly enough, no one seems to be complaining that we're spending twice as much on Medicare as the military. Heck, Bush's prescription drug benefit will be a bigger long term drag on the Treasury than his wars will be.
December 18, 2008 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink