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More Guns, No Butter
The Nation | Editorial
03 March 2008 Issue
Americans are worried about the impending recession and the Wall Street crisis,
as well as the exhilarating and unpredictable presidential contest. But another
threatening force is bearing down on the nation: our out-of-control military
machine. The ever-voracious Pentagon is using this fragile moment as cover for
seizing an even greater share of the nation's dwindling resources-trillions
more in federal indebtedness to fight a phantom "war on terror." In
constant dollars, next year's proposed military budget will be the largest since
World War II-around $700 billion.
It reveals not only bureaucratic greed but clever politics. What makes the
money grab scary is the silence. Only recently has Barack Obama begun to link
the money drained by the disastrous Iraq War to the need for universal healthcare
and other domestic proposals. But neither Obama nor Hillary Clinton has been
willing to criticize this year's bloated military budget and declare, "Not
on my watch. Not if I become President." The military planners think they
have Democrats in a box; any candidate who raises questions now can be accused
of aiding terrorists. But the obscenely expensive weapons systems (designed
to combat a Soviet military long gone) have nothing to do with terrorism. If
the generals get away with this, the next presidency will be wretchedly compromised
before it starts.
The United States, the world's sole superpower, already spends more on its
military than most of the rest of the world combined. And those who assume military
spending will subside when we get out of Iraq-if we get out-haven't been paying
attention. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his new Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, have been beating the tom-toms for greater spending
after withdrawal. Various "experts," including those at the centrist
Brookings Institution, are on board for sustaining the pace of Pentagon spending.
Obama and Clinton have both endorsed an increase in the size of the active-duty
military by 90,000 troops, while John McCain, their presumed rival this fall,
wants to increase it by 150,000 (as he gives the word "quagmire" new
meaning with his call to stay in Iraq for as long as 100 years).
The real reasons driving the military budget have nothing to do with terrorism,
says Gordon Adams, a budget expert at American University. "The absence
of budget discipline has allowed unit costs for major new hardware programs
to soar," he explains. The unit cost of satellite design for missile defense,
for example, has risen by more than 300 percent. The price tag on the already
obsolete F-22 stealth fighter has inflated by nearly 190 percent. The estimated
cost of the Army's Future Combat System increased by 54 percent.
In other words, the shocking waste displayed by military contractors in Iraq
merely replicates what has long been standard practice in Washington. This is
not a secret. The Government Accountability Office and sharp-eyed critics in
Congress like Henry Waxman have been exposing the reckless, even criminal, practices
of military contractors for years. A courageous presidential candidate would
start by making two patriotic accusations: the armed forces have undermined
themselves by this scandalous misuse of scarce public money, and the swollen
military budget is all about feeding the hogs in the military-industrial complex.
Citizens must fight the militarism that's choking our democracy. Given the
power and money of the military lobby, we're not likely to get any encouragement
from either party or any presidential candidates, at least not at first. But
we can force the issue into the dialogue and remember who listened and who didn't.
Call it politics for the long run, the politics of hope with a sharper edge.
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