CUT THE DEFENSE BUDGET RIGHT NOW

Fifty years after Dwight D. Eisenhower's January 17, 1961 speech on the "military-industrial complex", that threat has morphed into a far more powerful and sinister force than Eisenhower could have imagined. It has become a "Permanent War State", with the power to keep the United States at war continuously for the indefinite future.
* The military budget doubled from 1998 to 2008 in the biggest explosion of military spending since the early 1950s - and now accounts for 56 percent of discretionary federal spending.

* The military leadership used its political clout to ensure that U.S. forces would continue to fight in Afghanistan indefinitely, even after the premises of its strategy were shown to have been false.

Those moves have completed the process of creating a "Permanent War State" -- a set of institutions with the authority to wage largely secret wars across a vast expanse of the globe for the indefinite future.

But the power of this new state formation is still subject to the same political dynamics that have threatened militarist interests twice before: popular antipathy to a major war, broad demands for reduced military spending and the necessity to reduce the Federal budget deficit and debt.

What’s it like to be at perpetual war for nearly three-quarters of a century? Americans have become a fearful people. They are so alarmed at the possibility of a terrorist attack they have willingly given up important Constitutional liberties, even to the point of submitting to intrusive and degrading inspections at airport security. Fear of crime is such an undercurrent of American society that all new cars come with theft alarms. Americans spend billions of dollars yearly to protect themselves from identity theft, and they are greeted at supermarkets with sanitary wipes because of the fear that some stranger left dangerous bacteria on the shopping cart. Fear has caused Americans to turn upon themselves: Democrats against Republicans, Red states against Blue states, liberals against conservatives, Christians against the non-religious, rural against urban, South against North, blacks against whites, the middle class against poor people, and so on.

The recent proposal of Defense Secretary Robert Gates to cut the Department of Defense budget was not a cut at all – it was a reduction in the rate of growth. The only time in the past seventy years the defense budget was significantly cut involved the demobilization after World War II (a relatively brief affair because of the immediate start of the Korean War), and the Peace Dividend during the 1990s after the fall of Communism. The United States, as is well reported, has a military budget larger than the combined budgets of all other countries, and it supports a standing army of millions positioned on over 800 bases around the world, supplemented by an armada of aircraft carriers, fighter jets, submarines, and so forth.

Is it any surprise then, that American society, under the weight of decades of warfare, and incessant and glorified exposure to military deeds and military strength, is collapsing internally. Can this process be halted or reversed? It appears not, other than through a catastrophic collapse of the economy, brought on in part by excessive diversion of national resources to the military machine. This is what happened to the Soviet Union, and could ultimately happen to the US. Until such an occurrence, there is no possibility for America to reverse its reliance on the military as a primary determinant of national culture. The US will remain a warped society, willing to tolerate disintegrating roads and bridges, pathetic schools, a dysfunctional health system, increasing loss of personal liberties, and its wealth concentrated in a corporate oligarchy, all because the military demands a tribute in excess of a trillion dollars a year.

In comments before the House and during a televised interview yesterday, Congressman Ron Paul pointed out that with the decision to increase troop presence in Afghanistan and into Pakistan, president Obama is preparing to continue on the path of “perpetual war for perpetual peace”. The idea that we’re going to bring our troops home eventually is just not so.” Paul added.

“There’s no way that he’s going to be able to pay for this. This is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t have the money and it’s going to bring us down if we don’t stop it.” The Congressman continued.

“All wars are paid for through inflation, this will just put more pressure on the Fed to create more money, because I don’t believe it would help us one bit to tax the people to pay for the war, they’ll try to, but that would be devastating to the economy.”

In response to charges of advocating a policy of cut and run in Afghanistan, the Congressman pointed out that the Taliban were previously allies, and also that according to the U.S. army’s own reports there are only a total of 100 Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

“We’re following this precept of perpetual war for perpetual peace, and to me it’s perpetual bankruptcy.” Paul said.

“The strength that we need is a president who finally resists the pressure by the special interests, the military industrial complex, the bankers and all the people who want these wars.” Paul said.

lionshead2010 wrote: So I will agree that the U.S. could certainly cut the DoD budget. Unfortunately, even if we cut the $963.7 billion DoD budget to zero that STILL would not cover the entire, ever-growing deficit.

The DoD budget is low hanging fruit to lots of folks who want a quick payoff on balancing the budget, but it doesn't take an economic genius to figure out (looking at the numbers above) that there are other areas the we could possibly trim the fat and I'm not hearing much talk about that other than the whining that goes on when someone in Congress suggests a cut in one of the sacred cows outlined in the "mandatory" portion of the U.S. budget. I wonder what makes some of those programs "mandatory"? I wonder if we can take a surgeon's knife to some of those programs too?

Another point I haven't really heard mentioned so far in this discussion is the reality that America's global reach in commerce requires us and nations like us to have land forces and sea power to maintain our access to the world market. Without our Navy, for instance, it's very likely that pirate operations like the ones found off the Coast of Somalia would pop up in many other navigational choke points around the world. We enjoy free access to much of the world's market because the bad guys in the world (yes, contrary to VL's purist perspective of the world there are evil people out there) know we are willing to insure that access with military might. It's fun to talk about bringing ALL our military home but it's unrealistic. America's current business posture in the world requires some military might. It sounds like VL is a business person and has benefited from this posture. There will always be a cost associated with our world trade unless we are prepared to shrink the economy by a heck of a lot.

So sure, let's talk about cutting the evil DoD budget, it's clearly low hanging fruit, but I hope you are equally motivated to make those tough cuts in some of the other mandatory and discretionary programs too.

We should also be prepared to accept the fact that cuts in the DoD budget, and any other programs we go after in our effort to balance the budget, will be putting Americans out of work and adding to that economy killing 9-10% unemployment rate. This is going to be a tough pill for America to swallow no matter what but the cuts must begin before the whole country tanks its economy on debt.

Navycpo7 wrote: SC, as I posted earlier on this thread, this contractor issue is one of the biggest issues that if corrected could save alot of money. Gates already ordered the closing of the Joint Task Force Command in Norfolk VA, of course both the Repub and Demo VA delegation are already up in arms about it. Most of those duties could be transferred to another command and have the same results. The DOD budget has increased I think it was approx 7% each year for the past 20 years or so. Think that is what I read. Gates is trying to bring it down to around 1 percent. But I whole heartly disagree with your one article about the war in Afgan. We, the military do not want to be there. We are there because of our Civilian Government that ordered us there. So long as they decide we are going to be there we do not have a choice. It is not the military that makes these choices. We serve under the President of the United States and the people of this country. Lionhead said it best.

After Eisenhower, it became clear that the alliance of militarist interests included not only the military services and their industrial clients but civilian officials in the Pentagon, the CIA's Directorate of Operations, top officials at the State Department and the White House national security adviser. During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, that militarist alliance succeeded in pushing the White House into a war in Vietnam, despite the reluctance of both presidents, as documented in my book Perils of Dominance. But in mid-1990 they got an unexpected break when Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait. George H. W. Bush - a key figure in the militarist complex as former CIA Director -- seized the opportunity to launch a war that would end the "Vietnam syndrome". The Bush administration turned a popular clear-cut military victory in the 1991 Gulf War into a rationale for further use of military force in the Middle East. The 9/11 attacks were the biggest single boon to the militarist alliance. The Bush administration exploited the climate of fear to railroad the country into a war of aggression against Iraq. The underlying strategy, approved by the military leadership after 9/11, was to use Iraq as a base from which to wage a campaign of regime change in a long list of countries. Instead of reversing the ill-considered use of military force, however, the same coalition of officials pushed for an even more militarized approach to jihadism. Over the next few years, it gained unprecedented power over resources and policy at home and further extended its reach abroad:
* The Pentagon embraced the idea of the "long war" - a twenty-year strategy envisioning deployment of U.S. troops in dozens of countries, and the Army adopted the idea of "the era of persistent warfare" as its rationale for more budgetary resources.

* The military leadership used its political clout to ensure that U.S. forces would continue to fight in Afghanistan indefinitely, even after the premises of its strategy were shown to have been false.