Defense Spending and the Deficit
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-09-14/defense-spending-and-deficit
Army National Guard soldiers from Vermont, 186th Brigade Support Battalion, Task Force Avalanche, prepare for a convoy operation with a pre-combat inspection before departure to Combat Outpost Zormat from Forward Operating Base Lightning near Gardez district of Paktya province, Afghanistan, 2010
U.S. Army Sgt Tony Knouf, 304th Public Affairs Detachment, for the National Guard via Flickr
The cost of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Iraq now tops $1 trillion, and the nation’s debt tops thirteen trillion: New pressures to rein in the Pentagon’s budget and implications for national security.
Guests
James Kitfield
senior correspondent, National Journal magazine.
Gordon Adams
professor, School of International Service, American University
fellow,the Stimson Center,
regular blogger, Capital Gains and Games.
Kori Schake
research fellow, the Hoover Institution
associate professor of international security studies, at the United States Military Academy, West Point
Comments
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Please ask your guests to comment on the cost of our mercenary force, which we call "contractors." It's been know for a long time that Blackwater, now called Xe, are paid multiple times what the troops are. Not only is this unfair to our troops, and allows behavior that creates enemies abroad, it inflates the cost of our war. This could, of course, be solved through a draft, but that level of honesty is too politically unpalatable.
I hope this conversation will include some discussion of Andrew Bacevich's latest book on the "national security bureaucracy." We have a situation in which defense has become sacred -- is deeply (and purposefully) embedded in each congressional district.
I believe this attention to security is one of the many reasons we are losing our sense of purpose. Defense is a moral issue no less than political and economic.
Please inquire of your guest how much of the defense buget goes to outscourcing? It is my understanding that contractors provide services for the State Department, the CIA, Military Police duties, and a host of other military support services. Thanks. Dan, Charlotte, NC
I totally agree with Jeramee. Sometimes our politicians can manipulate numbers by hiding behind the contractors.
I noticed the picture on the webpage is of National Guardsmen. Which leads me to my question: Has anyone looked at reforming the Guard and Reserve. It seems to me the two could be molded into a combined Reserve Force.
Important program. Couple you please invite guests to comment on the proposed Frank/Paul legislation to dramatically reduce military spending. Thank you.
Excellent point. I, too, am familiar with Bacevish's recent thinking on this and including it would be very relevant to this discussion.
Has China spent one yuan on Iraq or Afganistan? Why can't we be more like them and spend more wisely.
Besides defense, I noticed the extraordinary growth of the Department of Homeland Security and of the cottage industry it depends on.
This enterprise must employ, directly and indirectly, half-a-million people. Perhaps the large-scale urban development around Dulles Airport in the past decade would have never happened without the creation of the Dept. of Homeland Security. Yet, we cannot be certain whether we actually need a new Department to fight old challenges.
There are millions of us who haven't forgotten that this "war" is really an activity that is conducted behalf of the oil industry. And since our nation spends as much as the next 15 following nations COMBINED on our military, why can't we cut that IN HALF and spend as much as the next 8 combined. That surely would not be detrimental in any way and I would love to see those dollars go toward our national healthcare programs. That would actually be useful and beneficial for our citizenry.
We have always been told that we need the armed forces because it is important for the safety and security of the civilians.
We fights wars there so that we do not have to fight wars here, and there are islamic militants that want to kill us.
But, according to Islamic militants if you are not a Muslim you are an Infidel and there are 4.5 billion people in the world who are 'Infidels', they why do they keep on attacking us? There is something wrong with the picture and what our politicans keep on telling us. I feel we are being misled!!
I agree with you 100%. there is no country in the world that can defeat USA in conventional warfare. And from Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq we know that no mordern weapons can defeat a population/force/militants/insurgents/terrorists(all those words that have been used to define them) who we invade and impose our rules upon them.
I think we are fighting war for OIL and AIPAC ever since the USSR fell and the cold war ended. That is pitiful.
If we want them to co-operate with us and buy into our way of life lets not attack them with bombs but give them food, medicine and education.
Lets use AID not WAR!!
Is there any possibility of lowering both future costs and future tensions by increasing the strength of international organizations like the UN?
I just heard the show and was enraged by the blatant boosterism on the part of the West Point employee. Why have such a clearly biased person on the panel? We need truth and transparency, not more smoke screens generated by people who are on the dole. Insulting.
Kori Schake used the expression “policing the global commons,” as if this were a given, something that all Americans want to do and agree upon. Nonsense! Who decided that? The obscenity is that no one questions it. Please read Andrew Bacevich’s latest work “Washington Rules,” which deals directly with this issue – runaway, unquestioned defense spending – and how the military/industrial complex has snookered the people and, more importantly, the Congress into supporting this madness.
Oh, and the way Ms. Scxhake defined our troops in Korea and Japan as being “a political force” was especially revealing. They are HOSTAGES, so that we will be sure to go to war if anything happens in either of those 2 countries.
I checked on the funding for the Hoover Institute (Ms. Schake’s employer), and 2 major donors are Boeing McDonnell and Rockwell, both immense beneficiaries of anything having to do with war and its profits.
Dane, PLEASE have Andrew Bacevich on your program, and bring back Ms. Schake to defend the madness
One point of view that hasn't been discussed is that defense cuts also translate as job cuts. If you believe that the government should spend us out of this recession then how is that consistent with cutting spending on defense. Where do you think that money goes? Some of it may go to corrupt governments, but the majority goes to paying soldiers and the supplying companies employees. A large portion of that money comes back into our economy.
Shoshin and Dina point to something which the DR show may have lost awareness of: the notion of what's "fair and balanced" as seen from inside the Beltway appears to be very narrow out here -- even in Texas! It's not just the right wing cant that goes unchallenged, it's unoriginal thinking that gets in the way of real discussion. Even the vocabulary of "national security" dates back to the Cold War, a signal that we're still in some form of cold war.
And as Peter Meltzer notes (above), the Department of Homeland Security and its offshoots are part of the problem of entrenched "defense" expenditure.
Diane's guest, Kori Schake, reminded me of those prepaid Pentagon brass who turned up on TV news -- back during the previous administration -- as "independent analysts." Then, too, the assumptions went unchallenged. Aside from anything else, what discussions like this often reveal is Washington's considerable isolation from a wild variety of political changes taking place within the country...
Even on the DR show we're hearing the same voices, drawn from the same media and the same academic or political power structure, with some slight variation from day to day, depending only slightly on the change of subject matter.
Or maybe I'm just reacting to having heard, earlier this morning, the NPR news reader refer to a "Democrat" proposal or point of view. Oh, Rush, here is thy sting...!
After listening to the show, I think one of the core issues that merits further discussion is the presence of thousands of US troops in countries overseas such as Japan and Germany.
Why are they there? One panelist believed that they provided "security and stabilization." How? What would happen if their number were reduced, a revolution in an advanced peaceful, democratic, and prosperous country? That stretches credulity to me. Who is paying for these troops and the dividends they provide?
Whether the author referenced by tarascon is appropriate for another show I don't know, but a discussion of the role of the United States, especially our military, outside of the context of our two current wars certainly is deserving of an hour of attention from your fine program.
Even in today (Sep 15)'s show, reference was made to "reining in entitlements" to balance the budget. There's one huge entitlement that nobody acknowledges - the "defense" budget. An F-22 fighter cost $137 Million. That's $10,000 from every high school in the US, or annual health insurance for 20,000 or so citizens, even under today's inefficient delivery system. The F-22 is being superseded by the F-35 at God only knows how much per copy. Two aircraft development programs expending billions of dollars while the only "enemy" on the horizon is guys riding camels from cave to cave. And don't get me started on the billions we spend on our ironically named "intelligence" infrastructure.
Everybody - Get Andrew Bacevich's "Washington Rules" and read it three times. We're in the last days of the American experiment. Don't miss it!