If
you
truly want to help the U.S.
military, slash its yearly budget.
It's
counter
intuitive, right? We think more
money will help the Pentagon
field effective forces and to be
better prepared to defend America.
But that hasn't proven to the
case. The more money the Pentagon
gets,
the more money gets spent on
unnecessary and often poorly
performing
weapons
systems.
Take
my old service, the U.S. Air
Force. It doesn't need the B-21
bomber.
It doesn't need new
ICBMs.
The
F-35
fighter
is
a
major disappointment, a "Ferrari"
according to the Air
Force Chief of Staff, i.e. an
exotic and temperamental plane you
fly
only on occasion, which isn't what
the Air Force wanted or needed.
Similarly, the Navy is building
aircraft carriers that can't
launch
planes effectively and "little
crappy ships" that have no
role at all. And the Army has
thousands of M-1 Abrams tanks
parked in
storage that it'll probably never
use.
Do
you have a friend with too much money?
Maybe he got an inheritance or
some other windfall. And the money makes
him stupid. It's stipulated
in the inheritance that he must spend all
of it within a year or two
(the way Pentagon appropriations work),
and if he fails to spend it,
he'll get less in the future. So he spends
wildly, without giving it
much thought, because he's got the money
and because he has to. And
spending money on expensive "Ferraris" is
fun. He's not
encouraged to think about how to use the
money wisely, rather the
reverse. So he just buys big ticket items
willy-nilly.
Congress,
of course, is the Pentagon's enabler.
Whatever the military wants
nowadays, Congress is determined to give
the brass more, in the false
name of supporting the troops. It's not
the troops that see the
money, it's the industrial side of Ike's
military-industrial complex
that profits the most. There's something
truly unseemly about
Congress throwing money at the Pentagon
while camp-following weapons
contractors siphon it up.
Technically,
incredibly,
the U.S. military is no longer at
war, i.e. "large-scale
combat operations," according to
Secretary of Defense Lloyd
Austin. Perhaps you missed the
announcement
that
new
U.S. troops coming on active duty
wouldn't automatically receive
the National Defense Service
Medal, as they have since 9/11 and
the
subsequent global war on terror.
With those "large-scale"
wars finally ended, shouldn't the
Pentagon's budget decrease in a
big
way? Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
were costing the U.S. over $100
billion a year, yet as they have
ended, the Pentagon's budget has
increased
by
more
than $100 billion. Talk about
counter intuitive! Wars end as war
budgets increase.
Only in America.
There
is
no logic here. I'm reminded of a
scene from the original Star
Trek
in
which
Spock is befuddled by an attack on
Captain Kirk because there's
apparently no logic to it. As an
alien patiently explains to Spock,
"Perhaps you should forget logic
and devote yourself to
motivations of passion or gain."
It's a telling lesson for
anyone looking to explain the
illogic of America's defense
budget.
Get
rid of the passion and gain in the
Pentagon's budget, America. It's
time to use logic and make major cuts.
Force the military to think
rather than to spend. Who knows ... we may
end up with a leaner, even
a smarter, military, one committed less to
war and more to supporting
and defending the U.S. Constitution.
