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Predictably, the Republican backlash was swift. House Minority Leader John Boehner called Frank "incredibly irresponsible." House Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee ranking member John McHugh (R-NY) labeled the proposed reduction "unconscionable." Democrats--especially those on the House Armed Services Committee --didn't exactly embrace Frank's target, either.
But Congressman Frank isn't backing down. In an e-mail to me yesterday he wrote, "Much of the reduction will come from ending the war in Iraq and from cutting unneeded weapons systems. I believe that it's appropriate to reduce defense spending, and this is a goal I wanted to set. I don't have specific details at this point, but I will be working with my colleagues to identify weapons systems that we can reduce, and I also want to look at drawing down the number of our overseas bases."
Even a senior Pentagon advisory group--the Defense Business Board --recently concluded that the current budget is "not sustainable." And according to the Boston Globe, "Pentagon insiders and defense budget specialists say the Pentagon has been on a largely unchecked spending spree since 2001 that will prove politically difficult to curtail but nevertheless must be reined in."
The current budget allots over $500 billion to defense, and an additional $200 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a recent editorial in the New York Times tells us, the budget is "nearly equal to all of the rest of the world's defense budgets combined." It represents 57 percent of the total discretionary budget.
In Unified Security Budget for the United States, FY 2009, research fellow Miriam Pemberton of the Institute for Policy Studies, and former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, outline not only cuts that need to be made to implement a sane defense budget, but also the shift in priorities required to confront the real security challenges of the 21st century. The Unified Security Budget (USB) pulls "together in one place US spending on all of its security tools: tools of offense (military forces), defense (homeland security) and prevention (non-military international engagement.) This tool would make it easier for Congress to consider overall security spending priorities and the best allocation of them."
In a recent DefenseNews op-ed, Pemberton and Korb write: "The balance between our spending on military forces and other security tools--like diplomacy, nonproliferation, foreign aid and homeland security--needs to change."
For example, the USB demonstrates that forgoing the scheduled increase in the troubled F-22 fighter jet for FY 2008--$800 million--would be sufficient to triple the amount spent on debt cancellation in the world's poorest countries. Or increase by 50 percent US contributions to international peacekeeping operations. Or triple the amount allocated in FY 2007 for domestic rail and transit security programs.
Along the same lines, canceling the Bush administration's initiative to build offensive space weapons could provide the $800 million needed to double the originally requested annual budget for the State Department's Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization.
The report offers $56 billion in cuts to spending on offensive weapons, and $50 billion in new expenditures on defense and prevention. It transforms the Bush administration's 9:1 ratio of spending on offense as compared to defense and prevention, to 5:1. According to the report, "This budget would emphasize working with international partners to resolve conflicts and tackle looming human security problems like climate change; preventing the spread of nuclear materials by means other than regime change; and addressing the root causes of terrorism, while protecting the homeland against it."
The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and its Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) network of progressive experts also released a report last year-- Just Security--which details how $213 billion could be cut from US military spending. Even with this cut the US would retain the largest military in the world and spend over eight times more than any of the next largest militaries.
Look for an inside-outside strategy to reframe the debate on the defense budget to emerge in the coming weeks. This week, the new American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation (of which I'm a board member) will coordinate a meeting between progressive thinkers like Pemberton and members of the Progressive Caucus to discuss the issue of unsustainable defense spending, alternatives to the status quo, and tactics and strategies on how to win this debate.
Progressives are under no illusions as to the obstacles to making a real and meaningful shift in the way the US approaches the defense budget. As Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information told the Globe, "The forces arrayed against terminating defense programs are today so powerful that if you try to do that it will be like the British Army at the Somme in World War I. You will just get mowed down by the defense industry and military services' machine guns." Or, as even the Bush Administration's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said of the scant resources devoted to the diplomatic corps as compared to military equipment, "Diplomacy simply does not have the built-in, domestic constituency of defense programs."
With increased public awareness of the misplaced priorities of the past eight years--runaway defense spending being no exception--and the growing demands and dangers of our cratering economy and broken healthcare system, now is the moment for citizens to seize and organize around an alternative vision that reflects our determined idealism and grounded realism.
34 Comments so far
Show AllHere is a great deal of good sense in what people are commenting here. I don’t know about Mars or feminine power but something will have to get the penny to drop in the minds of all those nice people in the land of the free and the brave.
The quote was : "The forces arrayed against terminating defense programs are today so powerful that if you try to do that it will be like the British Army at the Somme in World War I. You will just get mowed down by the defense industry and military services' machine guns."
But, most of you still don’t get it. On 9-10-01 Sec. of Defence Rumsfeld announced he could not account for 2.3 trillion, see the video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU )
He managed to get the announcement “buried” the next. How convenient! But did that clear his responsibility for that problem? Was that the end of it? Well no, but the next day, whatever it was, some say Flight 77, complicated the issue a just a little more, coincidentally. “From The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, December 20, 2001: "One Army office in the Pentagon lost 34 of its 65 employees in the attack. Most of those killed in the office, called Resource Services Washington, were civilian accountants, bookkeepers and budget analysts…. It was also the end of the fiscal year and important budget information was in the damaged area." And Insight Magazine editorialized that "the Department of the Army, headed by former Enron executive Thomas White, had an excuse [for not making a full accounting]. In a shocking appeal to sentiment it says it didn't publish a "stand-alone" financial statement for 2001 because of "the loss of financial-management personnel sustained during the Sept. 11 terrorist attack."
And you talk about “killing two birds with one stone” the events of 9 – 11 rolled out a whole new un-accountable spending spree, including the War of Terror and two pointless bloody occupations.
What you don’t get is that it is a story, yesterday it was communists, and then there was nothing to replace them after. So between friends in Israel and the usual boys in Washington a new and endless adversary was concocted AL QAEDA, (An impossible name in Arabic because it sounds like toilet) but it means centre. Anyway you know the rest, it sounds like a TV drama, and it is about as real, but the only thing real about it is been that it justified an estimated expenditure of 3.5 trillion (by 2012).
So as they say follow the money. As yourself, who is the war for, and who is the war against? Who has been made to suffer? Where are the evil bad guys, the armies of mad Jihadists?
There’s no such thing. First there’s the bombing like “Shock and Aw”, the rounding up of thousands of innocent people. People paid to point out people. People hauled off to prisons, people being tortured, their families threatened, denounce their neighbours, who denounce their neighbours brother, and so on and so forth…… and its all to keep those contracts going. Hell, we were out there making enemies!
Here’s yet another bird killed!
Look, your so clever, how about this for a deal and we’ll be quietly doing some friends a service? Here’s some real estate. It’s not making money it has to come down, but we can insure it against “terrorism” and just maybe a couple of planes (or something) will hit these buildings, and they’ll just fall down. We’ll collect billions ….. total potential payout, was capped at $4.577 billion for buildings 1, 2, 4, and 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Silverstein . So How’s about it?
As they say, follow the money. It’s a win win all round. You still don’t get it? Go figure?
P.S. If your interested Google WTC Building No 7. CIA, the IRS, the SEC and the US Secret Service, as well at the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) ... and remember computer files all destroyed in that extraordinary collapse!
Sioux Rose and Seventhson
I have researched extensively the masculine takeover of our world thru doctoral level university courses. I had a quest: What happened to the feminine face of God. I found out! Much of our history is a covered over attempt to undermine the feminine! Why? I believe the time is not yet ripe for the fullness of the lost lambs to come in to the fold. But it seems close. The time is getting close. When this happens, a new creation will appear. It is truly refreshing to hear from others with similar visions.
Each time the feminine power moves a step forward, the masculine dominating forces push us 2 steps back. What are they so afraid of? When the masculine/feminine stand side by side as deity---when balance is achieved---consciousness will immediately change and life on this planet will alter greatly. No more power or masculine rule.
abdosoliman46, Good practical idea....go for it! We need to come together as visionaries, cultural changers, practical workers, idea implementers, and get to work on a new way. We can ignore the powers that be and just work thru. I would love to be a part of that. How can we begin?
abdosoliman46
I was watching TV that showed a scary looking helicopter in a Afghani desert ground, and my fable liberal mind wondered !! how many water wells, sanitary outdoor WC or simple kerosene stoves or small solar panel can be provided for the same cost of the mincing construct. how many grateful sole can enjoy using such simple necessities?
Great article Katrina! $700 billion to blow it up, and $800 million to fix it. What a deal for those big corporations. How about cutting the military by 25% every year for 10 years? Barney Frank should be our defense secretary.
Right on, Barney! That was 25% @ yr. for the next 8 years, wasn't it? Gee, Golly, Willikers, we might actually make it out of this mess.
Complicit in the endless and mindless military buildup is the American public and the insane lifestyle we insist is our right! We are only 5% of world population and we consume upwards of 30% of resources and energy. Of course we need a massive military force to secure and guarantee delivery of the resources underlying our habits of consumption. The state of the economy is much debated these days. It's not the economy that should be at issue...it's the lifestyle!
Right. Like that town in W. Virginia where nearly half the people are obese. Too many examples everywhere!
Cutting the defense budget is an excellent idea. But I would wait till Obama's second term before trying to push through such a contentious piece of legislation. Now is the time for healing. The country is divided and we need to work together to get out of the hole Bush has left us in. If Obama tries to cut defense spending right now, the Republicans will rake him over the coals, other Democrats won't support it, and Obama will start his presidency with the stench of failure.
We don't have the luxury to wait 4 years. And tell me what's "healing" about the obscene militarism in this state?
"Now is the time for healing"
Hah!
Sioux Rose
Mr. HOPE: In any effective healing process the POISON must be gotten out of the wound, or the CAUSE removed. While it's true that getting the Bush Junta out of the control panel is a start, unless and until the diabolical policies instituted on his watch are ultimately cleared away and cleansed, nothing remotely like healing will occur. If we were not experiencing paroxysms of economic overkill we MIGHT get away with the old bandaids of business as usual, the sweet talk about working with opponents across the presumed aisle; but these are NOT usual times, and the old measures will not deliver anything remotely akin to healing.
Remember when Bush used the phrase that America had an ADDICTION to oil? Well, addicts must own their behavior, and enact a "fearless moral inventory." The nation en masse requires as much given its profligate misuse of a great many substances, seen metaphorically in the enormous physical weights of too many citizens. Ghluttony IS one of the 7 deadly sins.
Lets stop calling it the "war on terror' too...also why not go back to the pre-1950's name of 'War Dept' instead of Dept. of 'Defense'...how are all those troops in the Middle East protecting our borders from Mexico & Canada?..did anyone notice the NY TImes had a recent editorial advocating a 100 million INCREASE in the Pentagon's budget(& 92,000 more active duty troops!)
No less than George Washington advocated against a large army for the exact reasons chickenhawk politicians are using it now(invading & occupying foreign countries/'entanglements') The Constitution only requires a strong Navy & if those Marines weren't being blown up in Iraq & Afganistan perhaps they could be stationed on Navy ships protecting shipping lanes!
Where is our Department of Defense? Where are the Marines?
Are they all far too busy flauting international law by murdering and maiming the innocent and plundering the world for the Bush/Cheney cabal to protest us from a small band of pirates?
From The TimesNovember 19, 2008
Iranian grain ship seized as Somali pirates hold world to ransom
Alarm grows as governments and navies are rendered legally powerless to conduct security operations on the high seas
Isn't this the United Nations business, not ours?
Siouxrose and Inanna . . . thank you for your posts. Those were awesome!
Sioux Rose
SEVENTH SON: Thank you for the recognition.
"There is no 'war in Iraq' and it would help our cause if we would stop using those words." (Locust)
I agree 100%. What we have is an occupation in Iraq.
"It is easier to stop funding the US friendly occupation of Iraq, then to stop the funding and force the withdrawal from an on-going 'war' when warmongers can always argue that we must stay because 'victory is around the next corner'." (Locust)
The victory (War-military) was realized years ago with the overthrow of the Iraqi government. The "victory around the corner" mantra did not disturb me nearly as much as the notion that withdrawal would somehow fracture "American prestige" in the eyes of the international community. LOL As if they had any to begin with. (The neo-cons were living in tbeir own world)
"(The neo-cons were living in tbeir own world)"
Oh so true. Unfortunately they dragged the rest of us in with them thanks to a few nuts.
locust...You are so right on!
Madhoosier...Also right on! Another point that everyone seems to consistently overlook the possibility of...Why attack Iraq when binLaden is in your sight? Because if he was actually caught he might have some embarrassing information about the complicity of our own government in the 9/11 attacks, and more! Perhaps the complicity of major world leaders in creating a New World Order where the people are slaves and the masters are the richest elite and the corporations!
Sioux Rose...You have captured my attention! A Paradigm shift is occurring in our world. This war/invasion/occupation is yet another backlash--as there is always a fierce masculine backlash--against any movement of the feminine to balance out our world.
Mars indeed is long overdue for a cease and desist!
You write of Avalon, the Grail, mighty Merlin and of course the great King Arthur. This is a symbolic allegory of the time when the pre Christian influence of the Goddess (the Feminine) was still within the realm of possibility of co-existing with the Masculine/Christian wave of power that unfortunately emerged as a dominant Masculine takeover.
Once again, the Balance (Masculine/Feminine) needed to usher in a higher level of consciousness in our world was snuffed out......temporarily.
We struggle, we fail, we try again. The pendulum is swinging. The Paradigm shift is on the cusp of possibility once again. We have great choices to make. Let us let go of that which is useless and embrace a new thought...LIFE!
The masculine force with its' need for weapons (phallic ones), is truly unable to see the difference between raping (killing/destroying) with its phallic weapon and loving (living) with its weapons turned to plow shares.
Ah the mystery. The masculine is dying to unite in balance with the feminine yet cannot. The imbalance in manifested so clearly in our raping society. The whole world is a woman raping system. It steals our young and eats them (kills them in wars)...and then rapes the mothers to produce more young to kill and be killed. When will this end?
Sioux Rose
INANNA: You touch a subject close to my heart and soul. I have been writing and rewriting the most important book of my career about this subject. The thesis is that monotheism effectively morphed the constellation of gods (masculine prototypes) and goddesses (feminine archetypes) into ONE God, that was made in the image and likeness of powerful males, all their flaws included. In my view, the chief deity worshipped by the 3 Abrahamic religions constitutes a Mars-Saturn (old strict father figure) hybrid.
Moon Dance: Feminine Dimensions of Time looks to the 12 basic personae that dwell around the wheel of time. EACH is equal when the circle (heaven's model of democracy) is honored. Mankind allowed Mars to subsume the other expressions and we have ALL paid a price. To the extent Mars rules, Venus is held in deficit; yet the pair are the cosmos' lovers! The fact that rape is a nearly inevitable fact of war shows that Mars has turned on his beloved, and a very long-term rape is seen in the abduction of cellular structures, the DNA banks of time, to suit the captains of industry who feel they have a right to biogenetically re-engineer what the EARTH MOTHER took eons of trial and error to artistically compose.
I hope this book will be available in early 2009. It will be published at iUniverse.com as I am yet to meet an agent/publisher that sees the value of my best work. This is a major effort that I hope will cause a reexamination of religion, psychology and how human beings of both genders interact with each other, and the Eden bequeathed to us.
Sioux Rose, I am VERY interested in reading this book whenever it is finished, in whatever medium it gets "published". Please let us all know!
Sioux Rose
SEVENTH SON: You are a sweetheart! I appreciate your "cheer leading" as this has been an inordinately long labor of love thus far!
Well, it sounds like a winner in my book (pardon the pun). I am a voracious reader, and your subject matter is one of the ones that interests me greatly. So I am very serious. I would love to read it.
Sioux Rose
Hi again... I am in the final edit stages (2nd round), and I hope it will be in print by FEB-March 2009. I will definitely let you know, and appreciate your vote of confidence.
tomhairless It is sweet that Katarina thinks a $150 billion cut is attainable -
but that's a position for the NY Times. The Nation should advocate; (1)no new
weapons. (2) close all 700 plus overseas bases In the more dangerous late 1930s
we had three overseas bases - Panama, Phillipines and Guantanamo. (3)kill and bury Star Wars. (4)no troops, no mercenaries in Iraq nor in Afghanistan. (5)no nukes on alert. Etc. etc. etc. etc.
Come on now, what else do you really expect from The Nation?
Sioux Rose
These numbers (budget for militarism) proves my mantra: MARS IS TOO MUCH WITH US, no more TIME for MARS RULES!
The U.S. is beginning to morally resemble the state of Avalon as the various warriors returned home, broken and exhausted, unable to recover the Grail. When at last the voice of the mystic Merlin came through he reminded the central truth: "The King and the Land are one." If the KING/Bush only sets out on a path of willful destruction, the land reflects THOSE priorities.
For a nation that calls itself Christian, and therefy presumably has a huge accumulation of faith (Jesus was the maker of miracles, after all), there sure is a gigantic homage to fear in the form of making an idol of weapons... weapons of every size and dimension, and just about every one of them, indecently phallic as if to say something all too Freudian about the real state of those feeling a need to build, identify and USE them on others.
After watching a Jim Jones special on CNN, I am reminded that so-called 'Christians' are capable of just about anything--except morality.
"The forces arrayed against terminating defense programs are today so powerful that if you try to do that it will be like the British Army at the Somme in World War I. You will just get mowed down by the defense industry and military services' machine guns."
That depends on your point of view.
One reason for the British disaster on July 1, 1916, was that they relied on hi-tech weaponry that didn't work. About one third of the millions of shells fired at the German lines failed to explode. Those that did explode were largely shrapnel rounds that were useless for cutting the barbed wire defences in front of the German trenches, and equally ineffective for destroying the deep bunkers where the German machine gunners were sheltering. The long gap (20 minutes if I remember correctly) between the lifting of the barrage and the start of the British infantry advance then enabled the machine gunners to man their posts with devastating consequences.
It's not simply a matter of having force - the greatest military force in the world can be undone if it's badly used.
Is the US defense industry and its military services "British" or "German" right now?
Congressman Frank, sanity and responsibility are not options for the Unsane States of Avarice! What have you been smoking?
Democrats let Lieberman keep committee chair
WASHINGTON - Sen. Joe Lieberman will keep his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee controlled from Tel Aviv.
He can keep the chair and give him and Homeland Security the boot as well.
One of the most obvious unlearned lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that “High Tech” weapons systems, with only a few exceptions like night vision, are pretty much useless when occupying a country or against an insurgency. In fact Rumsfeld’s reliance on High Tech instead of a larger invasion force during the initial invasion of Iraq allowed the future insurgents to obtain 377 tons of super high explosives that no doubt were used to kill and maim thousands of American soldiers. Without to forces to secure munitions dumps, Iraqi government buildings and ethnically diverse neighborhoods Iraqi society quickly devolved into lawlessness.
Instead of planning for the aftermath of the removal of Saddam instead the United State’s war planners planned for the removal of the statues of Saddam. (It was no coincidence that a massive tank recovery vehicle with hundreds of yards of high test cable, the press, their broadcast equipment, and an anti Saddam crowd happened upon the scene to televise the statue toppling and subsequent shoe pummeling.)
In reducing the military budget those responsible for implementing the invasion of Iraq instead of the pursuit of Osama bin Laden deserve special attention. Those who implemented torture policies employed at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo deserve special attention during the budget reduction process. Those who approved depleted uranium munitions without informing America’s soldiers of their dangers should be removed from the military. Those who approved the use of cluster bombs, land mines, white phosphors, the destruction of Fallujah, extraordinary rendition and insufficient troop levels to secure Iraq after the invasion have no place in the United Stated Military.
Seems fair comment overall. Though I wish you had stressed Rumsfield stupidity a bit more. He has a lot of our kids blood on his hands because of his utter stupidity and ignorance.
And hubris. Don't forget hubris. Rumsfeld eats hubris the way Bill Clinton used to eat hamburgers and doughnuts.
Again and again and again I moan -
There is no 'war in Iraq' and it would help our cause if we would stop using those words.
It is easier to stop funding the US friendly occupation of Iraq, then to stop the funding and force the withdrawal from an on-going 'war' when warmongers can always argue that we must stay because 'victory is around the next corner'.
It is easier for the US President to announce that our agreement with the legitimate and stable Iraqi government means that our troops can come home, then for the President to 'cut and run' and 'lose Iraq' by retreating from the battlefield.
End the war - deny that it exists. Then there's no legitimate reason for us to continue to pay to keep our troops there.