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njlauren -> RE: The abhorent Neo-Con Right... (3/30/2014 10:18:01 AM)
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Yachtie-
It doesn't take a genius to figure out why. A fiscal conservative would look at the DOD budget and say "what reason do we need to spend this kind of money? What is the threat? What do we really need" and would start from there. The problem is that fiscal conservatism only seems to apply with politicians to things they don't like, and defense spending or farm spending or the idiotic ethanol subsidies or corn subsidies are things they like.
Sure, McCain is waving the red flag of war, but be knows, having served in Vietnam, that Russia knows it has no worries about a military conflict over Ukraine, as long as Russia still has nuclear weapons, it is a moot point, and everyone knows it, including McCain.Not to mention that Russia's oil and gas is feeding into Europe, and if those supplies get disrupted, you would see oil and gas prices worldwide soaring, no matter how much the US pulls out of the ocean or shale, it is the same reason no one will hit Iran, other than Israel.
Mitt Romney, who talked about the 47% and all that jazz, wanted to increase defense spending by 100 billion dollars a year...why?
With Iraq and Afghanistan, we see how expensive wars are (roughly 3 trillion pissed away at least), and yet what is the end result? We aren't any safer, we haven't changed anything.
So why?
The Pentagon has been releasing reports over the past decade that say we are spending money on the wrong things, and too much of it, that for their needs they aren't getting what they want, yet get stuff they don't.
Okay,so why?
Very simply, DOD spending is very, very important to certain constituencies. The marine Osprey aircraft is a piece of shit, it has killed more marines I suspect then it has helped, yet we continue to make it, long after it became an expensive albatross..why? Among other things, key components are made in a district covered by Eric Cantor.
We are building the F35 attack fighter, that is way behind schedule and way over budget, the planes are approaching some ridiculous amount per plane, the program itself is approaching I believe 1 trillion in projected cost, yet it still is not in use from what I know, and it has many problems. More importantly, as advanced as it is, no one, not the Chinese, not the Russians certainly, is building anything approaching what we have today, so why?
The answer was found in several reviews of the Pentagon budget, what they found out is that about half the DOD spending is on large scale projects based in cold war thinking, of huge conflicts with mega powers, when it isn't likely. China though it spends money on defense, obviously, is in the game of economic dominance, and they frankly outside local issues aren't not in the kind of race the USSR was, they are a capitalist economy, intertwined with everyone else, and a war would cost them as much or more than others..plus an arms race doesn't make them money. Russia is what Obama called them, a regional power, and they, too, are not the USSR, their economy depends on demand from the rest of the world. Putin is a thug and an oligarch, but he has gotten too rich, as have his cronies, to really risk that.
With the war on terrorism, those kinds of systems are useless, it is a war of intelligence and special forces, not grunts on the ground, not guys on aircraft carriers, not bombs and missiles and such.
Okay, so why the spending? Are they living in the cold war?
No, it is that DOD spending for the most part is pork barrel, a lot of districts, especially in the red states, live off DOD spending. Take a look at where Lockheed Martin Marietta facilities are located and take a look at their local reps, not likely represented by liberal or moderates. Look at where Boeing military stuff is done, Ratheon and others.......
Some of those reports say that 50% of that spending is on stuff simply to get government spending to some districts. Pentagon asks for 10 transport planes, congress give them 20. Pentagon says they need money to fund a standing army of 100,000, congress says make it 300,000, and so forth.
We have huge bases all over the country, that were built to a large extent either for WWII (16 million under arms) or the cold war, yet those days are long gone but many of those bases exist...and it is because those bases provide an economic lifeline to those areas. Close down Biloxi or Fort Bragg, if they are redundant (not saying they are), and it would devastate the area, yet in other areas, bases close and become economic gold mines (Fort Monmouth in NJ is becoming a mixed residential/business complex, for example). Defense plants are often the largest major employer in an area, what happens if they shut down or cut back? Then too we have the outsourcing of military stuff, where firms like Haliburton, Blackstone and others make a fortune on contracts for services...
Then, too, if we cut back our active troop size, what happens to those who see the military as a way out of poverty or to get an education? If the military cuts back, it means they likely will be a lot more choosy (during the depression, with a small military, it was very, very hard to enlist in the services)....
Even in relatively conservative estimates, 300 billion a year is wasted on equipment, manpower and facilities we probably don't need to face threats now or in the future...and a lot of that money goes to districts where conservative legislators will fight tooth and nail to keep it, they talk big about cutting pork and unnecessary spending, but only when it is someone else's....
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