KA-CHING, KA-CHING, KA-CHING …
|| By FITSNEWS || We’ve said before – and will say again – that mindless growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. By definition, it is inherently all-consuming and destructive, unable to distinguish when its unsustainable expansion begins to destroy the organism on which it depends for its existence.
Case in point? America’s military budget … which is fueling a similarly mindless “War on Terror.”
Don’t get us wrong. America should absolutely wage a war against “terror” in the event there is a credible threat to the security of our homeland or to our nation’s legitimate global interests. Such operations are expressly provided for in our nation’s Constitution – and we believe they should be funded commensurately.
The “War on Terror” should not, however, involve attempted nation-building or the subsidization of defensive and/ or offensive operations on behalf of nations fully capable of defending themselves. Nor should it involve the hypocritical escalations of conflicts that do not make America safer.
Nor should it subsidize unnecessary projects like this … or this … or this.
Why not? Because America cannot afford to spend any more blood or treasure on costly, provocative war games which lack a national security justification, meaningful and achievable objectives or clearly defined exit strategies.
Yet the country’s latest budget deal – approved by a lame duck Congress – contained a “surge” in defense spending. And according to top analysts, that’s just a preview of what’s to come … from president Barack Obama and the new “Republican-controlled” Congress.
And let’s not forget the Lindsey Graham for President campaign (a.k.a. the military-industrial warplex mouthpiece) … which will no doubt view any spending request as “too little.”
Obama has started the bidding at $535 billion in his budget … with is $35 billion more than he and “Republicans” agreed to as part of their 2011 “debt dereliction deal.” Which of course proves what he said at the time – that neither party in Washington, D.C. was never going to follow through on the modest reductions in excessive growth they promised as a part of that deal.
Anyway …
“President Obama’s proposed Pentagon budget busts through the Budget Control Act’s spending caps, and Republicans are already signaling that they want even more,” Chris Preble of The Cato Institute said this week.
Preble is the libertarian-leaning think tank’s vice president for defense and foreign policy studies.
“Neither side has outlined offsetting cuts or tax increases sufficient to cover the difference,” he added. “While the two sides engage in a high stakes game of chicken, people who actually care about the nation’s fiscal health, and our physical security should focus on meaningful reforms that will keep costs down while allowing the U.S. military to remain the preeminent fighting force in the world.”
What reforms, specifically, is Preble referring to? Well, he references a number of items included “excess overhead, reining in personnel costs, and canceling or scaling back on costly and unnecessary weapon systems.”
“There are a range of proposals out there, including the Defense Business Board’s latest report, the recommendations of the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, and a statement signed by over two dozen experts in June 2013,” Preble said. “If the White House and congressional leaders ignore these recommendations, and demand more for the Pentagon without considering how the money is spent, they will prove that they care more about political grandstanding than about preserving national security.”
Sounds eminently sensible to us … certainly much more sensible than the “invade everybody with money we don’t have” approach espoused by Graham and U.S. Sen. John McCain.
But if Obama’s budget request is any indication … the Graham/ McCain doctrine is the one holding sway in our nation’s capital.
21 comments
Eisenhower warned us. Oh well.
A trillion here, a trillion there, no worries. We have a printing press.
No matter that the War on Terror is as unwinnable as the War on Poverty and the War on Stupidity.
After pouring over all the highly classified briefing material, military expert Sic Willie KNOWS what is required and what is not in the defense budget. Please enlighten us with the details.
The BEST thing about FITS vomiting his, and RonPauls, national defense expertise on here…is that we know that is what we DON’T want to do…
Obama handled Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan EXACTLY like the Liberal-Tarians would have…appease the brutal terroists by giving them anything they want……
And thanks to those GENIUSES…the area is worse now than it was during Clinton, who set us up for the 9-11 Catastrophe…
Not sure what you’d call their defense strategy…but DUMB-@$$ery ‘FITS’ real well…
I thought that mission was accomplished, you know, as in a done deal…
Obama has undone EVERY BIT of Success in Iraq…and against Terrorism..you Brain DEAD Dumb@$$….
Apparently, you’re confused by the word “accomplished.” Care to site Bush’s success for us?
Our troops took out Hussein…they got a Democracy…and 70% of the Iraqis ELECTED a PRESIDENT…you ignorant F*#k….
A Democrazy? They ran away like little girls thinking they could handle running their country with the U.S. holding their hands? Should have been their problem all along, not ours.
America was doing fine, until that Dumb@$$ Obama jerked the rug out from beneath the Iraqis…you idiot…
You sound like a media Lemming, drunk on the Bull-S#!t they feed their fools…
It would have been worth a billion pounds of gold to have mitigated that area w/ a stable government….you have F*#ked that up…and no telling how much it’s going to cost us to get it back to where Bush had it…
Another Trillion??
Maybe more. If we are lucky we won’t have to start at 911, 2.0. But Obummer has given away all that was accomplished by President Bush.
400 new air force refueling tankers? Or several upgrades to the existing fleet?
(Considering that the current fleet has less than 400 air frame hours, average, there is nothing wrong with those existing air frames. Engine upgrades, avionics upgrades, toilet seat upgrades = way, way less than 1/10th the costs of all new tankers … and it is questionable whether the air force needs all of ’em.)
100 brand new super sonic F-35s? In addition to the 110 the air force already has?
(Considering that 100 A-10 T-bolt-2 costs way less than 1/10th to build, buy, operate … and sell to our allies ’cause they want and need ’em. There is no world market for the F-35., ’cause no one else can afford them, no one else wants them, no one else needs them.)
The military/industrial complex has even this administration fooled … Oh Bummer.
I love the A-10 as much as anyone having actually had one help save my bacon once however, it isn’t the end all be all of aircraft. They’re old and need tremendous upgrading (primarily because the Air Farce has ignored them).
That said, the F-35 is a trillion and a half dollar unmitigated disaster. At a time when “manned aircraft” should be eliminated except for long loiter ground attack weapons, we’re building a completely unnecessary, vastly over priced hangar queen. AI driven drone aircraft can eliminate all of the costs associated with keeping the “squishy thing inside alive” and consequently perform maneuvers not even possible with human pilots. It’s time to cut load on manned fighters and bombers of all types. Tomahawks make better bombers than bomber (and I also love the BUFF-52).
Drones do not have “sympathy” for the non-combatant … meat space pilots can.
The short-pants, hats-on-backwards, snot-nosed, raster-blasting, drone driver all too often is more interested in notches in his game-boy controller than the non-combatant casualties 9,000 miles away.
If there is to be a judge, jury and executioner at the controls, He should be on the scene. (It’s the Christian in me, not the fan of Terminator movies.)
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“… the A-10 … old and need tremendous upgrading (primarily because the Air Farce has ignored them. …”
Any modernized platform that can deliver one or two Gatling Guns to the scene will work. The topography, the straight wing, the semi-shielded engines, the rock solid airframe, the use of semi-standard “non-military grade” engines and parts … the redundancies in control, command, hardening of the cockpit …
The only real reason that the Military/Industrial Complex does not want to upgrade the A-10 style close support machine is that it does not cost enough to fatten their own paychecks (In My Opinion).
Having spent a career in DoD, let me say that nothing is as bloated and wasteful as the defense budget. Back in the years when Saint Ronnie was president, I participated in a USN group to define budget priorities. It didn’t matter! We didn’t want or need the monies allocated, but the amounts were increased year after year. Why? Congress. Members of the House and Senate are pawns of the defense industries. The criteria used are not the genuine national security interests of the U.S., but what is made, grown or built in the district or state of which congressman or senator.
Look at that picture. Look at Gen. Dempsey.
Remember how David Petraeus had ribbons going down almost to the bottom of his ribcage? And, he never saw combat until Bush sent him to Iraq.
He looked like a Soviet era general. That should have been a warning sign. It really should have.
Like every one else in the Army, Petraeus’ ribbons are ABOVE his breast pocket, not “down to his ribcage”. For a four star with 37 years of service his “fruit salad” is about right. In addition to the medals and ribbons, he’s a master parachutist, a Ranger, air assault qualified and has a combat action badge for actions in Iraq.
Like most of us who served after the end of the Vietnam war there was very little combat to engage in until Gulf One. Grenada lasted about ten minutes, Panama about the same. The stuff on his “rib cage” are the badges identifying the unit he served in combat with (in this case, the 101st) on the left breast pocket and his Army Staff and JCS badge on the right.
Petraeus has an earned PhD and was the commander of the command and general staff college. He was in Haiti and Bosnia when things were ugly there.
I’m not a fan of his, his inability to keep his “pecker in his pocket” and his mishandling of classified information are serious problems. That said, his uniform is about right for a four star who was a “mover and shaker” at peace and at war.
Dempsey still looks like a little yes man weasel. IMO Probably how he has kept his job. I agree 100% on the A10. The best plane in the Air Force for close support. When the A10s were at Myrtle Beach they would come over the place I worked and use our equipment as “targets”. It was fun to watch. Some times they would just sit up there and watch then other times they would come out of nowhere and rattle our cages. You couldn’t hear them coming till they were on you. It would have been something else on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Dempsey is a little weaselesque in appearance but he’s been a fairly low key but effective CJCS. In that picture he’s wearing about half of his authorized ribbons and badges. He’s not as “militarily accomplished” as his USMA classmates Petraeus or the DIRNSA Kieth Alexander but he’s a lot more humble.
Oh it’s not “mindless” at all.
There’s BILLIONS to be made.
Hey did you know Lindsay Graham is concerned about federal spending?
Considering deficit spending now dwarfs defense and non-defense discretionary spending, let’s talk about how all of it is mindless. Brainless, mindless, and ball-less.