Military spending and earmarks: A stimulus we don't need
Posted by Linda Stamato April 10, 2009 9:09AM
In a none-too-veiled criticism of Pentagon spending, the Star Ledger editors, reciting incidences of fraud and corruption and the effect of relaxed regulations and declining investigative manpower and "expertise" during the Bush presidency, ask "Who is guarding the Pentagon?" The timely and important brief ends with a pointed observation by the director of The Center for Public Integrity, William G. Dupree:
This is a cut and paste from a blog that I felt is appropriate to this thread.
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The secretary of defense is trying to cancel a contract for 22 billion dollars worth of aircraft the Air Force. does not need or want....
I repeat my mantra . There is absolutely no excuse for the USA to spend more on defense than the entire rest of the world combined . And BO , who promised us " Change " , INCREASED military expenditures by 4% in his first budget . Smells very much like same old , same old to me .
posted by Dirck
5 months ago
As Teddy Roosevelt said-"Walk Softly and Carry A Big Stick"-
We need to learn that we are stronger when -we carry the stick -but don't use it.
Guerilla style war is hard to beat-a very small force can defeat a much larger one.
I think that Afghanistan will be another Vietnam-they will just hang in there and wait us out. Better to spend money on the hearts and minds thing than for weapons. However, because Afghanistan is composed of small villages in impossible terrain-it makes that approach very hard to do also.
Yeah.....What's the point in spending 6 million on a tank when a 5 thousand dollar rocket can wreck it? What can the F22 do the F16 or 18 can't? Who is the enemy? A bunch of Bedouins living in caves and tents shooting AK47's? Seems to me the Pentagon has lost touch with reality in their headlong race in chasing funds for their departments.
The military industrial complex has always lived off the government-and indirectly that is you and me.
I think we need to keep our top position as far as military technology is concerned-all those weapons have their place-but in the current situation-they have no place-I do like the remote controlled drones, etc.
They do have their place-they save lives.
But we are always goning to prop up-Boeing, Raytheon, and General Dynamics.
Remember Eisenhower warned us about this-and that was a long time ago.
Ah...the real issue is earmark this and earmark that, it business and with 9.5% unemployment no Congress person facing reelection in about a year, in their right mind, is going to halt military spending no matter the effectiveness or efficiency of the weapon or weapons, or what enemy they may or may not be used against.
Yes, we have enemies and wars, past, present and future. And most of what we build is to fight the last war, the Maginot Line is still up for sale, unused.
As to the use of unconventional warfare, it is really a question of definition of who are you fighting and where. The Russians and Chinese mean one form of fighting, Al Qaeda and the IRA another, with weapons, tactics and strategy to match.
And, by the way, the Vietnam War was forty years ago, more or less, and there was a secret plan to win that one. It was twenty years ago we won the Cold War and met the enemy and sold him stuff. Since then, we have fought a few more wars most militarily successfully. What we haven't done, is too secure the peace that each of these wars have presented mainly because we don't live in peacefully times, where all grievances are resolved, the plenty is shared equally and everyone believes in the same future.
In some sense, the military-industrial complex is the least of our worries, the more pressing is that we can't stop killing each other in the name of god, threat or cause is more pressing.
We can't stop shooting at each other because we can't decide how resources will be be shared. Greed is the cause of the military build up and Greed causes all wars. Sorry to sound like an evangilical nutcase but that IS the bottom line.
Bad habits are hard to brake.
