GE Trying to Resuscitate F-35 Alternative Engine

The Politico newspaper last week ran an article detailing the last-ditch efforts that GE is making in its attempt to save the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's proposed "alternative engine".
The Obama Administration and Secretary of Defense Gates have targeted this second engine for elimination, but GE is fighting hard to save it in the upcoming conference committees.
The Obama Administration has already succeeded in ending the production of F-22 Raptors, one of the key cuts that Secretary Gates announced earlier this year. The JSF second engine was also on Gates's list, backed up by a threatened veto by President Obama.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/25838.html

CAGW Hammers F-35 Second Engine

Citizens Against Government Waste has been strongly critical of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter "alternative engine", running ads against its $7.2 B cost. You can see the ad--and sign CAGW's petition, at this link:
http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=jsf_engine#petition

New IPS Report: Global Warming & Our Security

My friend Miriam Pemberton at the Institute for Policy Studies has just released an excellent and important new study, comparing expenditures on climate change reduction to funding for other security threats. Here's the link:
http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/military_vs_climate_security_mapping_the_shift_from_the_bush_years_to_the_obama_era
Ms. Pemberton's report draws a set of important conclusions:
The public interest would be served by closing the enormous gap between federal expenditures on military as opposed to climate security. The grounds for this are:
*It will make the balance of our security resources more consistent with the relative magnitudes of the threats faced by the nation and the world.
*In a time of rising unemployment, this shift will create more jobs than the current balance of spending on military and climate security.
*It will redirect the jobs base toward work the country needs doing.
Paul Rosenberg over on OpenLeft.com has a related piece, pointing out that in recent years the Pentagon itself has realized that climate change is a huge threat to our near-term security.
The logical result would be, as the IPS research suggests, to reorient our military spending to put more funding into U.S./worldwide carbon dioxide reduction and poverty mitigation planning, with less spent on continuing to defend against non-existent Cold War threats.
This would be a worthy, smart game plan for the Obama Administration, imho...

F-35 alternative engine struck in Senate

The fight is not yet over, because the House has not yet agreed to follow President Obama's lead on this issue, but the Senate did eliminate funding for the second, "alternative" engine proposed for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
http://thehill.com/business--lobby/senators-nix-funding-for-second-joint-strike-fighter-engine-2009-07-23.html

Where Does Military Money Go?

Long-time activists Bill Goodfellow & Bob Edgar talk about where our military dollars go...
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/08/05/where_our_defense_money_goes/

Imperial Over-reach?

Another insightful Chalmers Johnson post about our over-extended military bases...
http://www.pdamerica.org/articles/news/2009-08-04-12-18-34-news.php

military purchases out of whack

Here's some graphic evidence from the NY Times showing how our military spending is out of control, particularly when contrasted with the health of the regular economy--note the wide separation opening up during the Bush/Cheney years.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/31/business/20090801_CHARTS_GRAPHIC.html

F-22 Vote Count

Here's the vote breakdown on the Senate F-22 rejection:
(a yes vote is to oppose building even more F-22s)

YEAs ---58

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennet (D-CO)
Bond (R-MO)

Brown (D-OH)
Burris (D-IL)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)

Coburn (R-OK)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corker (R-TN)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dorgan (D-ND)

Durbin (D-IL)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Franken (D-MN)

Gillibrand (D-NY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagan (D-NC)
Harkin (D-IA)

Johnson (D-SD)
Kaufman (D-DE)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)

Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)

Lincoln (D-AR)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Menendez (D-NJ)

Merkley (D-OR)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)

Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Shelby (R-AL)

Specter (D-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Udall (D-CO)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (D-VA)

Webb (D-VA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---40

Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Begich (D-AK)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bingaman (D-NM)

Boxer (D-CA)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Byrd (D-WV)

Cantwell (D-WA)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Cornyn (R-TX)

Crapo (R-ID)
Dodd (D-CT)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)

Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)

Lieberman (ID-CT)
Martinez (R-FL)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)

Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Snowe (R-ME)

Tester (D-MT)
Thune (R-SD)
Udall (D-NM)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

Not Voting - 2

Kennedy (D-MA)
Mikulski (D-MD)

F-22 Vote Important for Arms Control

John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World, who has been fighting the military spending battle as long as anyone in Washington, made this point about the importance of the Senate vote against more F-22s--that it was critical to win it to help us in upcoming arms control votes (such as the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty & a START follow-on treaty):
"The vote was also significant because it provided an opportunity for the Defense Department and Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin to rev up their vote counting operation. They set up procedures to count noses, persuade the undecideds and win over those who started out supporting the F-22.
This vote counting operation, with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, will be vital when the Senate gets to later votes on a START follow-on treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty."

Senate Says No to More F-22s!

The Senate voted 58-40 to reject even more F-22 Raptors beyond 187 (including the 183 F-22s already built, plus the 4 included in the Obama Administration's budget). The vote margin was larger than expected, which is good news for upcoming fights, including the House battle (which may come today).
This is a significant victory for Secretary Gates and the Obama Administration, and for those reformers who believe, as I do, that our military budget is way out of whack. It also avoids a depressing defeat on this issue, which would have been spun as a bad turn of events for the Administration, with media spin no doubt extrapolating to health care & climate change.
More importantly, would have raised the question of whether or not we reformers could ever retire any weapons program, no matter how unnecessary, even when the DOD & the President were on our side (which, of course, is not normally the case).
So it's not the end of the Empire, or bringing the oil/military/industrial complex to its knees--but it is a win--and it's been a while since our side has slowed down the military juggernaut on any issue.

F-35 alternative engine "unnecessary" & "unwanted"

A quarter-page ad in the "A" section of today's Washington Post highlights the cost of the "alternative engine" for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that is currently being argued over in the Congress. The key argument in the ad is that one "unwanted, unnecessary alternate engine" for the F-35 would cost the same as 53 Joint Strike Fighters.
The ad quotes a March 2007 GAO report that puts the price of this engine at $7.2B.
Some of us agree that the engine is unecessary, and hope that the Obama Administration does veto it if the Congress insists on trying to fund it.
Of course some of us think the F-35 is "unnecessary", too...especially at a cost of up to $1T!

"We'll Have to Back Down"

Chairman John Murtha and the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee decided to keep funding more F-22s than President Obama and the Secretary of Defense requested.
However, even Chairman Murtha seems to indicate that if the President remains steadfast on his veto threat, more F-22s may not survive the process--here's a key paragraph from the article in The Hill online:
"Murtha, in a briefing with reporters, acknowledged the veto promise and indicated that if the presidential veto is looming over the spending bill and Congress does not have the votes to override the veto and support more F-22s, 'We'll back down on the damn thing.'"
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/house-defense-appropriators-ok-more-f-22-funds-2009-07-16.html

"We Do Not Need These Planes"

President Obama reiterated his Administration's pledge to veto any attempt by the Congress to fund more F-22s beyond the 187 that Secretary Gates requested.
This Washington Post article also notes that the Administration criticized the attempt by the Congress to fund an "alternative engine" for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
The article, written by R. Jeffrey Smith, notes that President Obama sent a letter to Senator Carl Levin and Senator John McCain, who head up the Senate Armed Services Committee. The President's letter was blunt: "We do not need these planes"...
The article noted that the "president's veto threat reflects his desire to win congressional backing for virtually all of the large revisions in Pentagon spending put forward by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in April, including terminating a half-dozen Cold War-era weapons programs to help pay for arms and equipment that military commanders say they need in Iraq and Afghanistan and for future counterinsurgency efforts. 'I think we've done pretty well' winning support for most of the changes, Gates told reporters last month, with the exception of the proposed $1.75 billion for more F-22s and $439 million for an alternative engine for the F-35 that the Pentagon has long considered wasteful."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/13/AR2009071303098.html?hpid=moreheadlines

F-22 Battle Looms

Rep. Barney Frank, one of the leaders of the fight to cut the military budget down to a sensible size, has several times this year made the case to activists that we need a victory this year.
One of the obvious targets is the F-22 Raptor, since even the Bush/Obama Secretary of Defense says we don't need any more.
That fight is now. If you care about this issue, call your Congress members.

Blue Dogs Refuse to Look at DOD for $$

As we all know, the Democrats in Congress have the votes to pass health care reform, no matter what the Republicans do, if they would stick together and remember what they promised the voters they would do.
Unfortunately, a small group of "Blue Dogs", who claim to stand up for fiscal responsibility, are holding up reform by demanding that any new costs be paid for with equivalent cuts.
But why? If we need $300B or $400B over the next 10 years to finance the current reform package, why not look across the river at the Pentagon for some of that money. After all, the DOD budget was essentially doubled during the Bush/Cheney years, despite the obvious fact that we have no global enemy who can compete with our military might.
For most American families, health care is more important than more fighter planes.

F-22 Takes Hit from Post

Friday's Washington Post headline says it clearly: "Premier U.S. Fighter Jet Has Major Shortcomings". That's the F-22 Raptor they're talking about--we already have 183 of them, and the hawks in the Congress want to build more, even though the Secretary of Defense says we don't need any more.
Maybe sometime soon the Post could do a similar critique of the over-budget, still-technically-deficient F-35 Joint Strike Fighter--you know, before we spend half a trillion dollars more...
http://webmaila.juno.com/webmail/new/5?userinfo=52db97590d82205c1ee3ac98de31d61c&count=1247444645

Congress Ignores Administration on Military Cuts

Armand Biroonak blogs at the Campaign for America's Future about recent decisions in the Congress to go beyond the recommendations of Secretary Gates, by adding even more money to the bloated military budget.
Biroonak notes that the F-22 was designed to meet a Soviet threat that no longer exists, which means that the 183 Raptors we already have should be more than enough.
In addition, of course, plans are proceeding for the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which may ultimately cost as much as President Obama's first stimulus package.
The blog notes that the Administration did issue a veto threat on the extra F-22s, its first one.
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009072806/congress-breaks-administration-protects-defense-lobby

The latest New Yorker magazine profiles James Hansen, one of the early conscientious scientists who warned us about global warming (and later stood up to the Bush Administration). He's a gutsy scientist, he says we're not doing enough to combat climate change, and he's begun to try civil disobedience to make his point.
If we were serious about "national security," this is where we would be spending our next trillion dollars, rather than on more useless F-22s, on F-35s that aren't even fully tested, on missile defense for Eastern Europe that doesn't work and which they don't want, and on various helicopters, Presidential planes, and hundreds of overseas bases...
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/29/090629fa_fact_kolbert

Overseas Obstacles for F-35 Still to Come?

This recent Hill article points out that some of our European allies involved in the joint production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters may be having second thoughts, due to the economic crisis and increasing political obstacles...
It strikes me that our allies in this project may be easier to stop than the Pentagon...
http://thehill.com/the-executive/fighters-path-could-get-bumpy-as-foreign-partners-facing-pressures-2009-06-04.html

Summary of House Bill Add-On Costs

This link will take you to an excellent summary of the House military authorization bill, done by the Center for Arms Control:
http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/policy/securityspending/articles/062409_c111_fy10_hasc_hr2647/

Rep. Frank Objects to Extra F-22 Funding

Marie Rietmann of WAND passed on the statement below from Barney Frank, who was leading the effort in the House to block extra funding for more unnecessary F-22s:

"Statement by Congressman Frank Concerning the Failure to Consider Amendment to Cut Additional Funding for the F-22

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Barney Frank today released the following statement about the refusal of the House Rules Committee to make in order the amendment to block additional funding for the F-22 Raptor stealth aircraft. The funding had been added to the Defense Authorization bill, over the President’s objections, by a vote of 31-30 in the House Armed Services Committee.

'I am very unpleasantly surprised that some members of the Democratic leadership, with whom I generally agree, blocked my efforts to offer an amendment that is strongly supported by President Obama. The refusal of the House to support the President’s effort to cut the F-22 is a very bad sign for those of us who would like to see budget discipline applied to the Pentagon as well as to other agencies.'”

President Threatens Veto on Fighter Planes

The Obama Administration threatened to veto the military funding bill if Congress insists on increasing the number of F-22s, and insists on building an alternative F-35 engine.
Secretary Gates had recommended bringing the F-22 Raptor program to an end, but the House voted by one vote, very early in the morning, to extend the program--despite the fact that not a single one of the 183 F-22s we already built has seen action in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
As for the F-35 alternative engine, unfortunately it appears that the Obama Administration's irritation was brought on by the fact that they cut a few of F-35s to pay for the alternative engine (which Secretary Gates also opposes).
This information came from a great summary by Peace Action's Paul Kawika Martin, who has been very busy on Capitol Hill this week, from an article in Congress Daily by Megan Scully (which unfortunately requires a subscription).

http://www.rollcall.com/news/35354-1.html
The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call graciously accepted a recent essay that I wrote on the hypocrisy of Blue Dog Democrats and Republicans who pretend to care about deficit spending, but never even cast a glance at the oversized military budget.
So even though our military budget almost doubled during the Bush/Cheney years, the first place that our so-called deficit hawks look to cut back on spending is Social Security & Medicare, rather than say, the F35 Joint Strike Fighter, which may cost one trillion dollars by the time all the planned (but not yet functioning) fighter planes are built.
We spend as much as the rest of the world--and most of the other top military spenders are our allies in Europe--but the deficit hawks can't see the Pentagon when they're looking for cuts...

Englehardt Explains Empire

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/03-5
Tom Englehardt, of TomDispatch.com, has written a brilliant essay on one of the missing words in the current American discourse--the word "empire." ( You can see the essay on Alternet, Common Dreams, or at TomDispatch.com )
Englehardt pretends to be delivering a commencement speech to 2009 graduates, since for some strange reason no doubt related to the fact that he actually understands that our nation is acting like an Empire, Tom was not invited to give such a speech in person.
It is well worth reading. Intelligent, well written (as usual for Englehardt), accurate.
It should be required reading in universities all over America. I won't hold my breath...

Are We 4 Times as Safe as in 1948?

At a recent meeting of a small group of dedicated activists who are still trying to keep the military budget under control, a chart was passed around listing the "Budget Authority for National Defense, FY 1948-2009," in billions of constant FY09 dollars. The amounts included both war and nuclear funding for each year, and showed some interesting facts. (Unfortunately, I missed the part that explained who had actually done the chart, so I can't give proper credit, but I'll summarize some of the key points here.)

In 1948, just after World War II, at the onset of the Cold War, our military budget authority was $171B. It went up significantly during the Korean War, then settled at about twice the 1948 figure during the latter years of the Eisenhower Administration and the early JFK years ($366B in 1961, for instance). The mid-to-late-1960s escalation of the Vietnam War took it up over $500B in 1967 & 1968, 3 times the 1948 amount.

Believe it or not, progressives were actually strong enough politically that the military budget was cut each year that Richard Nixon was in office, dropping from $513B in 1968 down to $352B in 1975. Ronald Reagan increased the military budget each of his first 5 years in office, up to $557B in 1985, but the election of a Democratic Senate in 1986 calmed that down some.

Once the Cold War ended, the military budget dropped steadily during both the first Bush Presidency and during Clinton's two terms, at least in constant dollars, from $502B in 1989 down to $416B in 1993, and then on down to $387 in 2000. (Funny that this decline in military spending is never associated with the strong economy of the 1990s, isn't it?)

At that point, George W. took over, and the military budget almost doubled over the next 8 years, while the economy stagnated. U.S. military budget authority rose up to $426B in 2001, $448B in 2002, $547B in 2003, $570B in 2004, $565B in 2005, $605B in 2006, $660B in 2007, and $709B in 2008.

In other words, our military budget has escalated by 4 times in 60 years--from $171B in 1948 to $709B in 2008. Do you feel 4 times safer? Are we 4x safer now than we were 60 years ago?

http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/conservative_hypocrisy_on_military_spending
My piece on the hypocrisy of conservatives--both Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats--who pretend that they care about deficits, but never touch any project in the military budget, no matter how useless, over-budget, or under-tested, was picked up by the Asheville Citizen Times. It was then reposted on the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) web site, where I am an Associate Fellow.

Chris Hedges takes on "permanent war"

There is one experiment that history has run multiple times over the past centuries, always with the same result. That experiment is the test of whether a nation can remain tolerant, solvent, prosperous, free, etc., while trying to run the world.
The answer is always no. The imperial experiment always fails. Unfortunately, many elites within the would-be empire benefit over the short term from the attempt to rule, preventing the rest of the country from minding its own business, which both they and the rest of the world would prefer.
The U.S. is that latest in a long line to try this experiment, and the vast array of deep-seated problems inherited by President Obama from his inept and bellicose predecessor is evidence that we are likely to soon suffer the same fate as those rulers before us.
Chris Hedges takes a no-holds-barred look at our "permanent war" society in this piece:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090518_the_disease_of_permanent_war/

"Gravy Train" loaded with extras

www.taxpayer.net/index.php

The Taxpayers for Common Sense recently posted a good article about the "gravy train" that is the Federal military budget (click under "National Security"). TCS points out that the House managed to add quite a few extra projects to the last supplemental bill, including "nearly $1 billioon for 11 C-130 transport planes and $100 million for wing repairs for Navy aircraft". The House also rammed in $2.25 billion for eight C-17 Globemaster cargo planes, one of two eliminated aircraft programs". As for the other "eliminated" aircraft program, the F-22 Raptor, "the Senate quietly deleted $147 million in shut-down costs, keeping the program on life support..." It's good to have TCS keeping an eye on these extra costs...

call in against the supplemental

United for Peace & Justice is promoting a call-in today to oppose the supplemental request for the Iraq & Afghanistan wars.
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/index.php

taxes for military

While looking at the National Priorites Project web site's nice breakdown of Afghanistan war costs (see blog post below), I also noticed a good tax analysis of military spendng that NPP had done last month, which I had missed...
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/taxday2009

Big $$ Cost of the Afghan War

The always-useful National Priorities Project has put together a quick history of the current Afghan conflict, along with a chart (on page 4) listing, state-by-state, the amount of money being spent for the war in Afghanistan. The NPP also lists the "opportunity costs" foregone in Head Start, health care, and renewable energy by spending this $172B in Afghanistan instead...
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/

Europe & Canada Could Help

I did a Huffington Post, trying to make the case for Europe & Canada to help the U.S. peace movement on those issues where they also have a big stake in rolling back our more grandiose imperial designs--link below...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-cobble/how-europe-canada-could-h_b_189463.html

Hacking the F-35? It's Jointly Built!

There's an interesting story in the Washington Post this morning, following up on a story that the Wall Street Journal broke, that some hackers from another country (with various side references to China later on) had broken into the Pentagon/Lockheed computer systems for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
[The F-35 is the new fighter plane that Secretary Gates wants to produce to take the place of the F-22, which he wants to phase out. Part of the rationale for the F-35 is that each new plane is cheaper than each new F-22, which is true--each new F-35 "only" costs about $100 million, not even a third of each new F-22 (about $339M). The problem is--and maybe this is why the Pentagon has such problems with cost overruns in its budgets--apparently no one has noticed that only about 60 more F-22s were going to be built.
So even if they are individually more costly, the remaining cost would only be about 1/10 as expensive as the more than 2,400 F-35s that the Pentagon has requested!
The total costs for the entire F-35 program could add up to close to a trillion dollars, more than President Obama's recent stimulus package.]
To get back to the hacking story, various officials immediately reassured us that no critical information was lost. Aside from the unlikeliness that these officials actually know what was lost, the whole thing gives me the sense of a vast misdirection ploy. After all, aren't we building the F-35 jointly with 8 other nations in the first place?
And do we really think that the other 8 nations--including the United Kingdom, Norway, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Turkey, Australia & Canada--are all going to protect U.S. military secrets as compulsively as we do (except for Israel, of course, which apparently has the right to spy on us without serious penalties--see developing Jane Harman scandal for further details)?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042103938.html?nav=hcmodule

Want a New Green Economy? Cut Military Spending!

Even though Secretary Gates requested a 4% increase in the military budget, the Blue Dogs and the conservatives have wailed loudly that these supposed "cuts" will cost Americans jobs.
The truth is, though, that military spending is one of the least effective ways to create jobs here at home. Research sponsored by the Women's Action for New Directions Education Fund ( www.WANDEducationFund.org ) makes the point clearly:
*Investing $1 billion in the military creates about 8,500 jobs.
*Investing $1 billion in mass transit creates almost two-and-a-half times as many jobs, about 19,800 jobs. And helps us defeat global warming, arguably the biggest current threat to our real security.
WAND Education Fund's research also shows that weatherizing homes or spending more on health care creates one-and-a-half times as many jobs as military spending (and more than just cutting taxes, the other favorite but ineffective conservative mantra).
And spending $1 billion on education creates about 17,700 jobs, more than twice as many as military spending.
So if you want to put America back to work, cut the bloated military budget and spend the billions you save on mass transit, schools, health care, and weatherizing homes.

We Should Help Obama Cut Nukes

President Obama has been pretty steadfast over his career in his stated intent to slash the world's nuclear stockpiles, by emphasizing non-proliferation, focusing on "loose nukes", and working directly with Russia to cut nuclear weapons way down in both of the two main nuclear arsenals, America's & Russia's.
Those of us on the progressive side should encourage him in this, and help him. We should not take such an effort lightly, since the forces that will try to undercut and hollow out such a plan are strong and well-connected.
Barack Obama is doing something very good here, very brave, and we should make it clear we support him on his nuclear reduction proposal.
After all, tomorrow is Earth Day--and you can't hug the earth with nuclear arms...

$100 Million in Cuts? Easy.

President Obama yesterday asked his Cabinet to help him find $100 million in new spending cuts. Heck, I can do that, without breaking a sweat.
The new supplemental request for Iraq & Afghanistan is $83 billion. My suggestion is that we go ahead and get out of Iraq instead, and reverse course in Afghanistan. (Think about it, Barack--what would LBJ do if he had a second chance? Do you think--knowing what he learned from Vietnam--that LBJ would let himself get sucked into Afghanistan like he did Vietnam, even though he knew from the start it was a disaster?! A word to the wise...)
Let's close down hundreds of overseas bases, not force European Missile Defense down the throats of the Czechs & Poles who don't even want it, and help President Obama carry out his long-time goal of actually slashing our nuclear stockpiles (and Russia's!). That would save a few gazillion bucks.
Here's an idea--don't buy any more F-22s, since Secretary Gates says he wants to end them, not mend them. That specifically includes the 4 that somehow snuck into the Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental request, even though one of the big raps against the F-22 is that it has never been used in either of our current wars! Since each one costs something like $339M, cutting 4 of them would save over $1.3B--more than 13 times President Obama's goal!
And here's a swell idea--the Pentagon original asked for 2,458 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, each of which is estimated to cost a minimum of $100M--exactly the President's stated goal! So if we just cut one of them, bingo, we're there! And if we cut, say 2,458 of them, we'd save a cool $245.8 billion!!! (Some experts say it's closer to $1 trillion, more than the President's stimulus package!) Wouldn't $245.8 billion build a lot of new schools, levees, weatherized homes...?

UFPJ says cut the military budget!

It's Tax Day, and the biggest peace coalition, United for Peace & Justice, is circulating a petition calling for a 25% cut in the military budget, since that's where half of every discretionary tax dollar you spend goes! And since that's where there are so many wasteful, unnecessary weapons projects...And since that's one of the main places that the Bush/Cheney Administration massively increased our spending during the past 8 years...
So sign up, and let's start to get this Empire mess turned around!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/302/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1864

Are We Being Gamed?

I give Secretary Gates points for political bravery. He stood up and told Congress that the Cold War was over, and the Soviet Union is long gone, so we don't need to spend any more money to build more F-22 Raptors. 183 of them is enough.
But I can't help but wonder if those of us who actually want to cut the military budget aren't being "gamed" here. I know that Secretary Gates is skilled at bureaucratic maneuvering, and very familiar with the ways of Congress--so he knows that there is a better-than-average chance that Congress will fund more F-22s, not cut them off.
Meanwhile, Secretary Gates quietly took a giant step down the road to institutionalizing the over-budget, delayed, incredibly expensive F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which very few people have noticed because all the attention is on the F-22 proposed cuts.
(Though I note that 4 F-22s have also been carefully requested in the Iraq/Afghanistan $85B supplemental, which seems tacky to me, given that one of the big criticisms of the F-22 is that it has yet to be used in either of our two current wars...So why do we need to "replace" 4 of them in an Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental, when they've never been used there?)
So what's the likely outcome? A requested cut in the F-22, which Congress ignores, plus a requested big increase in the F-35, which Congress gladly agrees with...Voila! We end up spending even more on unnecessary fighter planes, while supposedly cutting them...
The magic of military spending, where a 4% increase, after 8 years of massive Bush/Cheney spending increases, is characterized in the media as a cut...

Zakaria asks a good question

In the 4/12 Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria had a column discussing Secretary Gates's proposed military budget. He points out that our military spending in recent years has taken place "...in a dreamland, where ever more elaborate weapons are built without regard to enemies, costs, or trade-offs." True, that.
He notes that a lot of the military budget "...is based on wish lists from the services, which are often lists that were conceived during the Cold War." Also true, that.
He makes note of the fact that the supposed aircraft carrier cut will not really be carried out until 2030. Okay...
And he also raises a very good question, one that most commentators seem to have missed in all the uproar raised by F-22 supporters--and definitely a point Congress should consider:
“...while we don't need the F-22, we are still going to make 2,443 F-35s at an eventual cost of $1 trillion. Do we really need those? What is the thinking behind the size of that program?”
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/fareed_zakaria/2009/04/a_military_for_the_real_world.html

6 Big Cuts to Save Big Bucks

Analyst William Hartung spells out 6 programs that can be quickly and safely slashed from the Pentagon's budget, saving us $35 B a year without jeopardizing a hair on anyone's head.
Hartung notes that saving this much would almost equal the cost of the Afghanistan war. As a lifelong smart aleck, I'd point out that cutting these 6 programs as Hartung suggests, while also getting out of the dead-end quagmire of Afghanistan would be even smarter! We could save $70B a year, build a lot of schools, provide people health care, weatherize millions of homes. Or we could double our savings!
I'm sure all the Blue Dog budget-cutters will agree with Hartung, since their #1 priority is supposedly the budget deficit, right? Surely they'd like to save $35 B a year, right?
And even better, President Obama could avoid LBJ's fate, where an unwinnable, unpopular war slowly but surely sinks a popular, transformative domestic policy agenda. I know President Obama knows LBJ's history/tragedy--so when do we start to act on that knowledge?
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4018163&c=AIR&s=TOP

Why AfriCom?

Why in the world is an African-American President continuing to allow Africom to exist, to meddle, to interfere? Is a big military outpost on the African continent really an idea of the future, or a leftover from a discredited past of colonization and control?
I came across this interesting web site/article through a link from blogger AliceDem on OpenLeft, who also commented that "we are borrowing money from the Chinese in order to compete with China in Africa." Good line. Bad idea.
And yet another place we could save some money for health care for all...
http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/gao-report-on-africom/

Fewer Nukes!

President Obama today began negotiations with Russian President Medvedev to reduce the number of offensive strategic weapons significantly. The two leaders pronounced their nations "ready to move beyond Cold War mentalities."
Thank you, Mr. President--let's get this one done!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/01/AR2009040100242.html?hpid=topnews

Liberal Groups Call for Military Cuts

A coalition of liberal groups is pushing a letter around Capitol Hill these days, calling for serious cuts in the military budget, in order to pay for long-neglected social programs and new Obama Administration domestic initiatives promised during the election campaign.
Key progressive lawmakers are quoted in an article in The Hill, including Progressive Caucus Chair Raul Grijalva and Senate Appropriations Subcommittee head Tom Harkin, making the case that it's time for less spending on the military, and more on our social needs.
Niel Ritchie of the League of Rural Voters points out the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as an example of wasteful, unnecessary spending, noting that "a few hundred billion dollars is a lot of schools and a lot of health care."
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/liberals-want-more-defense-spending-left-behind-2009-03-25.html

save money--close some foreign bases

A GMU prof, Hugh Gusterson, has suggested in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (you know, the one with the doomsday clock!) that it's time to look at shuttering some of America's overseas bases. He argues that closing many of our approximately 1,000 foreign bases would save the taxpayers billions of dollars a year, decrease resentments that have built up among our allies, and bring us back closer to our nation's original founding in a rebellion against colonizers.
He suggests that the next 50 years will see strong movements against U.S. bases, and reminds us that the Declaration of Independence had strong words against bad habit of the British of quartering troops among the colonies...Words to the wise...
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/hugh-gusterson/empire-of-bases

Levin says military cuts will be "painful"

Carl Levin of Michigan, Chair of Senate Armed Services, said yesterday that military budget cuts will be "large" and "painful".
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/31/senator-expect-painful-cuts-in-pentagon-budget-1/

Will Blue Dogs Look at DOD?

Rumors leaked out that the aerial refueling tanker and a planned long-range bomber might be on the Administration's chopping block. The Congress, which only yesterday acted concerned about the deficit, immediately began complaining.
But as the old bank robber story goes, he robbed banks because that's where the money was. So if members of Congress really want to make serious cuts that bring future budgets into line, they need to start where so much of the money is after Bush/Cheney--the Pentagon budget.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=news-000003070256

Headline Says It Well!

"Global Opposition Movement Challenges JSF" is the headline in the Aviation Week, in an article setting out many of the key objections to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
One of the most interesting points the article makes is that the information-sharing possible via the Web means that opponents to the F-35 can share their critiques in ways that were not possible at a similar stage in the development of previous massive weapons systems.
I would add two comments to their article:
(1) The "sovereignty" question seems to me to be a potential problem, should opposition really begin to gear up in places like Italy, Canada, the U.K.--proud countries whose citizens might object if they knew they were becoming part of an enormously expensive weapons project, but not given complete control of the technology.
(2) The grassroots peace community is missing from this story, though I'm not criticizing the article, it's probably our own fault. Where are we? Surely, even as over-stretched as the U.S. peace movement is, we can find our voices in time to stop a dangerous, massively expensive, over-budget, already-delayed, unnecessary, destabilizing fighter plane, at a time when the U.S. is flat broke!
And what about Europe--isn't it in recession, too? Seriously, peace activists in Canada, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, the U.K., Turkey, Australia--do you really need this fighter plane? Can you afford it? Did you know your government ordered it for you?
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=defense&id=news/FIGHT030409.xml&headline=Global%20Opposition%20Movement%20Challenges%20JSF

Globe opines that Obama serious about cuts

A recent Boston Globe online article makes the case that the appointment of Kennedy School of Government prof Ashton Carter to be the chief weapons purchaser for the Pentagon shows that President Obama is serious about making some cuts in outmoded Cold War weapons systems.
The writer, Bryan Bender, points out that Carter has never worked for a weapons company (score!), and has been a critic of the DOD's bad habit of buying unnecessary weapons systems (score!).
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/02/24/harvard_professor_named_to_pentagon_post/?page=2
The article specifically mentions several weapons systems that might be on the cut line (and suggests that Secretary Gates would back Carter): the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Future Combat System ground vehicles, and the Virginia class submarine.
fwiw, Mr. President, I applaud this choice...

Terminate it & save big bucks!

A spot-on quote from Winslow Wheeler & Pierre Sprey about the F-35, in the post below:

"The F-35, still in its early stages, is headed for major cost overruns, schedule delays, and performance calamities, perhaps even surpassing the F-22 mess. But will the new Gates team really save money in the F-35 program? Not a chance. The business-as-usual plan doesn’t terminate the F-35, which would save serious money; it just delays production. That allows temporary transfer of the money needed now to keep the F-22 slurping at the public trough and kicks the can down the road for the F-35. The stretch-out only makes the F-35 more expensive, which in turn further reduces the force size—all to keep alive a deeply flawed, unfixable design."

Catch that? The key is to terminate it, "which would save serious money"....

Wheeler & Sprey Talk to the Right

Winslow & Pierre tell the truth about both the F-22 & the F-35!
(Plus, they list some of the DOD's best over-spending tricks...)
And they do it in the American Conservative magazine.
http://www.amconmag.com/

Budget Analysis & Contractors

Armand Biroonak has a good piece at the Institute for America's Future web site, discussing the current state of play surrounding the Congress, the DOD, and the Obama Administration.
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009020927/push-cut-defense-waste
Armand earlier had some good numbers on the military contractor scam--my description, not his--a scandal hiding in broad daylight if there ever was one! Talk about a place we could cut...
http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009020819/department-defense-contractors

This Budget a "Course Correction"?

Miriam Pemberton of IPS, one of the smartest military budget analysts around, took a quick look at the Obama Administration's budget proposal with her colleague Suzanne Smith. Their conclusion was that it was a "modest course correction," but unfortunately not a "sweeping shift" of priorities.
Imho, since the Bush/Cheney years had set the nation on a preposterously expensive, overly militaristic, and clearly unsustainable course, "modest course corrections" are not enough. Duh.
http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/1118

Barney Frank Gets the Ball Rolling

Congressman Barney Frank yesterday called a meeting on Capitol Hill to discuss his proposal to cut 25% from the military budget. He specifically invited grassroots activists and organizations interested in a less expensive, saner, less warlike military budget to come meet with him, to get the ball rolling towards reform.
Frank pushed the need for organizations and coalitions interested in domestic social needs to join the military budget cuts fight--otherwise, he said, they would not have the money for their own needed projects. He also handed out his excellent Nation essay (link below).
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/frank
Congressman Frank was joined by about 75 activists, and 4 of his colleagues: Rep. Barbara Lee, new Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus; Rep. Lynn Woolsey, current Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; Rep. Dennis Kucinich; and Rep. Keith Ellison. All 5 spoke briefly, and pointed out how important this effort was, both to provide needed funding for health care and alternative energy initiatives, and to create a safer world.
Military reform experts Larry Korb and Gordon Adams also spoke, making a case for a military budget based not on political power or DOD wish lists, but based on strategy and real defense needs.
Congressman Frank then engaged in an extensive Q&A session with the audience, and made it clear that he saw this meeting as the first of many. He stressed that this will be a long fight, a drawn-out process, and that winning more funding for projects like housing the homeless might well require a two-step, year-long process: step one, putting a maximum cap on this year's military budget, forcing the DOD to make adjustments; and step two, then pushing to win more funding for domestic needs in next year's budget. He understood that no one was particularly overjoyed with this, but said that might be the only choice...

Time to "Hold the Line"

Gordon Adams, the former White House staffer for national security budgeting in the Clinton Administration, makes the case that we should "hold the line" on military spending, that after the unrestrained military spending of the Bush/Cheney years, it's time for a pause...
Here's are two key paragraphs from his piece (emphasis added):
"This phony 'cut' debate conceals an underlying reality: there has basically been no discipline in defense budgeting for the last eight years. In FY2001, the defense appropriation was $315 billion, including supplemental funding. In FY 2009, including the supplementals, defense will actually receive nearly $650 billion, or more than twice as much as it did eight budgets ago.
When DOD's resources are fully counted, they reflect historically unprecedented growth. Going back to World War II, our annual defense spending now dwarfs any previous period in history. It is more than the defense spending of every other country in the world combined. It has provided new generations of aircraft, ships, missiles, military vehicles, led to significant growth in the projected costs of current and future weapons programs, providing an almost unprecedented fiscal boon to the manufacturers of military equipment."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gordon-adams/hold-the-line-on-defense_b_166507.html

Barney Frank calls the question

Barney Frank has a good essay in the newest Nation magazine, making the excellent point that any pundit or editorial board or Blue Dog in Congress who says we have to cut the deficit for our children should be required to consider the military budget as well as the domestic budget.
We spend as much money as the rest of the world. We spend half of our discretionary budget on the military. And the military budget has basically doubled during the Bush years. So shouldn't we look there first for the money we need for health care, alternative energy & jobs?
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/frank

AEI Tries to Sell Some F22 & F35 Pork in Post

In last Sunday's Washington Post (Outlook, 2/8/09), two AEI authors tried to make the case for military spending as "stimulus". Given that military spending zoomed upwards during the Bush/Cheney years, while the economy struggled mightily (even before the current huge downturn), this does not seem likely.
In fact, it does not only seem causative, it's not even correlative.
Plus, as has been pointed out frequently, mass transit construction, health care, education, and weatherization projects all produce many, many more jobs than military spending.
The gist of the article is that the new President should agree to continue to produce another $20 to $25 billion in F22 Raptors, as a "stimulus" project. Given that there is actually no strategic reason to have more F22s, since the Soviet Union has now been gone for almost 2 decades, I don't blame them for trying to sneak the planes in through the stimulus door.
But here's the kicker--their F22 funding is partly just a "loss leader" to get to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a hugely expensive (hundreds of billions of dollars, minimum), over-budget, repeatedly-delayed fighter plane that one of George W. Bush's DOD brass (a former Lockheed top dog) kept pushing forward.
The authors sneak this paragraph into the article: "Nor are defense programs a lifetime commitment...Continuing production of the F-18 and F-22 Raptor fighter jets for two or three years would, in essence, provide a bridge for the airplane industry until the F-35 Lightning is ready for full-scale production..."
So we can't afford to rebuild public schools, but we should keep producing unneeded F-22 Raptors until we are ready for full-scale production of the unneeded F-35? Not.

Engelhardt Excellent on Afghanistan

Tom Engelhardt, whose posts are almost always worth reading, does it again with an excellent post on the danger to America posed by continuing to try to fight in Afghanistan.
His basic point is that just because the Soviet Union lost the Cold War, that doesn't mean the U.S. won--it could mean that the U.S. lost more slowly.
Our bloated military budget is a clear symptom that the Cold War disease still infects us.
http://www.alternet.org/audits/125564/?page=1

Go Barney!

Barney Frank states the obvious, but on the Sunday talk shows, it's earth-shattering!
He rides over both his conservative opponents and George the host--as you must do on these shows!--to make his points that spending on domestic needs does stimulate the economy, while spending on the military is far too often wasteful, with no oversight.
In particular, he corrects a sad attempt to call the stimulative package the most expensive spending program ever, by pointing out that the Iraq War will earn that crown, something conservatives seem blissfully disinterested in...
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/39471

GoBama! Cut Those Nukes!

President Obama wants to work out a new deal with the Russians, to slash each nation's nuclear arsenal by 80%! Thank you, Mr. President...
I did debate prep for Dennis Kucinich, which meant I got to see dozens of the primary debates, and I had noticed that Barack Obama seemed serious about rolling back our nuclear stockpiles.
We should do what we can to help...it's not like chances like this come around every week...every year...every decade...every generation...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5654836.ece

David Swanson nails it--as usual!

David Swanson is a good friend of mine, and his excellent piece for the American Chronicle hits the nail on the head regarding the need to cut the military budget in a serious way. Here's the link: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/90041
David not only raises the cuts that we need in the usual wasteful weapons programs like the Joint Strike Fighter, the Osprey, the Navy destroyer, the Future Combat System, etc., he points out that the military budget should be cut in areas that are often soft-pedaled, even by reformers, such as our nearly one thousand overseas bases, our torture and spying systems, missile defense, the militarization of space, the new Northern Command and Africom, and, of course, the occupation of Iraq and the growing quagmire in Afghanistan.
I particularly enjoyed this paragraph: "Well, for fiscal year 2009, we're looking at $653 billion for the Pentagon, plus $162 billion in supplemental spending for Iraq and Afghanistan. A quarter of $815 billion is $203.75 billion. Anyone who couldn't figure out where to cut $203.75 billion from the military and wars is probably a danger to themselves and others."

Simply Unsustainable

Chalmers Johnson once again speaks Truth to Empire, calling the question on our bloated and provocative military budget, which actually makes us less safe. He is particularly hard on the F22 & the F35 fighter planes--and justifiably so--and on our extensive array of overseas bases (seen by the rest of the world as imperial outposts).
Johnson doesn't just critique the worst proposed weapons programs, however--he sets out the complicated strategies that the Department of Defense uses to make its spending politically untouchable, even when the programs are recognized as failures.
To quote a paragraph from him, near the beginning of his article: "Given our economic crisis, the estimated trillion dollars we spend each year on the military and its weaponry is simply unsustainable. Even if present fiscal constraints no longer existed, we would still have misspent too much of our tax revenues on too few, overly expensive, overly complex weapons systems that leave us ill-prepared to defend the country in a real military emergency. We face a double crisis at the Pentagon: we can no longer afford the pretense of being the Earth's sole superpower, and we cannot afford to perpetuate a system in which the military-industrial complex makes its fortune off inferior, poorly designed weapons."
Johnson has been one of the most perceptive critics of our military overreach for at least the last decade, going back to his brilliant book Blowback. His analyses are always worth reading--my thanks to Don Hazen & Alternet for posting it.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/124881/?page=1

Military Cuts Issue Percolating--At Last!

There has definitely been a strong uptick in articles and comments regarding cutting the preposterously bloated military budget that Bush & Cheney left behind.
The important one, perhaps, was Rahm Emanuel's comment on the Sunday morning talk shows a couple weeks ago, referring to $300 B in DoD overruns--that put the issue on the radar for the talking heads and punditry.
In addition, it seems clear that as America's economic woes have deepened with each passing day, even the densest members of the D.C. Establishment have begun to realize that overpriced, unnecessary weapons systems (JSF, I hear your name being called! Virginia subs? Osprey?) & our overextended system of overseas bases (are we an Empire or a shining city on the hill?) & new dangerous provocations like militarizing space may be the only places left to find some money for a serious green jobs push, for health care for everyone, and for a slowing down the deficit burden we've been handing our children and grandchildren.
President Obama promised more troops and better equipment for those troops. Given our economy, the only way to get there is to cut back on the unnecessary weapons systems.
Oh, and end the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan...

Truman Project report worth reading

As a lifelong opponent of the military/industrial/petroleum economy, I'm pretty sure that I know that I disagree with the Truman National Security Project a lot of the time.
I nevertheless found their recent report well worth reading, even though I clearly qualify as a "guillotiner" (a cutter) in their eyes--see the report for a more expanded explanation.
Here's an example of a paragraph where I applaud them for being clear about the wastefulness of the Joint Strike Fighter, while confessing that, yes, I would slash its funding...
"Take, for example, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. At a price tag of
$242 billion, it is the most expensive aircraft program in the history of
the Department of Defense (DoD) and thus a prime candidate for cutting
back and saving money. Those who look longingly at the past and see
the era of conventional warfare as a time of innocence will fight to fully
fund the F-35, while those wielding the guillotine and the partisans of
unconventional war will try to slash its funding or cut it altogether."
So when do we Robespierres get to "wield the guillotine" on these big weapons projects?
http://www.trumanproject.org/files/backgrounders/Strategic_Balance.pdf

National Journal military spending debate

Here is a link to a fascinating set of suggestions from a series of military spending experts, trying to set out what Secretary Gates should do under the new Obama Administration.
The National Journal's Corine Hegland summarizes the suggestions in a series of 7 points at the beginning, then the analysts make their cases after that.
I had a particular bias towards part (b), "eliminate non-useful weapons systems," which on the non-political level seems like a no-brainer in a time of restricted revenues.
Here is Ms. Hegland's summary: "b) Eliminate non-useful weapons systems including the amphibious warfare vehicle, the Army's Future Combat Systems; the F-22, F-35, C-13OJ, Stryker, DDG-1000 destroyer, and the V-22. (nominations by Joseph Collins, Larry Korb, Rachel Kleinfield, Andy Krepinevich, and Winslow Wheeler; Wheeler describes the systems as 'low-hanging fruit with their hyper-cost, almost complete irrelevance to warfare as we know it today, and high probability they are technical failures.') 'Gates now has both the opportunity and challenge to align the defense program with his vision,' writes Krepinevich, noting that the services are struggling to accept 'persistent irregular conflict.'”
Two straightforward statements jumped out at me, since part of my goal is to free up large amounts of money for social needs for the American people.
Rachel Kleinfeld, the Executive Director of the Truman National Security Project, was blunt: "The F-35 program is exhibit A for cuts--as 'the most costly single aircraft program in DoD history' in the words of the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis, it offers little that is essential for the wars we are likely to fight in the future."
In his usual refreshing style, Winslow Wheeler of the Center for Defense Information agrees with Kleinfeld that "...the Air Force's newest fighter, the F-35, can be regarded as only a technical fiasco – even more so than the preposterously over-priced and -hyped F-22. Nor is the $120 million per copy F-35 'affordable.'”
The entire set of posts can be found here:
http://security.nationaljournal.com/2009/01/will-obama-unleash-gates.php#1219590

Sturm und Drang on the F35

Interesting HuffPost by Frankie Sturm, who works at the Truman National Security Project.
A key point by Sturm is this: "...a break from the past could do our future some good. Our military isn't suffering from a lack of defense spending. It's suffering from a lack of smart spending."
He offers up the F35 Joint Strike Fighter as a prime example, noting that the JSF is "...the most expensive aircraft program in DoD history, yet it has neither the flight range to accomplish likely missions nor is it necessary for fighting irregular wars, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Sturm is more conciliatory than I would be, calling for a "scaling back" of the F35, where I would call for dropping the whole deal. But even the scaling back, Sturm notes, could "free up billions of dollars" for the new Administration...Yes, it could.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frankie-sturm/strategic-spending-in-200_b_158484.html

Kudos for "America's Defense Meltdown" book

An interesting Washington Monthly piece, where writers & thinkers suggest books that the new President should read. One of them, suggested by James Fallows, is "America's Defense Meltdown", a collection of essays by experts on the military budget who believe that the current situation is out of whack. There are links in the Fallows article to both order the book, or to read it free through the Center for Defense Information web site.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0901.obama.html

Obama to Close Guantanamo

So here's an idea: President Obama is going to close Guantanamo prison this year, as a way to show the world that things have changed in the U.S. That could save a few bucks.
So why not give the land back to the Cubans, as a good will gesture so we can get over a half century of political posturing? Or maybe we should team up with the Cubans, who know how to train young people to be doctors & nurses in the developing world, and use the base facilities as a training facility for new Peace Corps type volunteers, people who want to go to Africa to treat & prevent diseases, dig wells, build energy efficient housing?
After all, what do people remember today about John F. Kennedy's policy accomplishments? The Peace Corps.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gQOzRNnZMLweaYkGryXPvQFlG6mgD95SART00

Hart says fewer nukes

GaryHart makes the case for the Obama Administration to cut down our nuclear arsenals, which would make negotiating with the rest of the world easier, give us back some moral authority, save money, and increase our security.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/an-early-victory-for-obam_b_160595.html

Military Spending as Oreo Cookies Video

The recent blog post by Chris Bowers on openleft.com led to several valuable contributions from commenters, including this "golden oldie" mentioned by "yoda", who provided us to the link to Ben Cohen & TrueMajority's famous oreo cookies video.
This well-done video spells out in detail (or at least in oreo cookies) the huge dimensions of our military spending (and it's actually a little out-of-date, and thus understated), compared to our domestic spending needs, and also compared to the military spending of other nations.
Watch it--it's brief, and it's brilliant...
http://www.truemajority.org/oreos/

OpenLeft commenter dsulz helped out with a link to the Charlie Rose interview, suggesting that we go to about the 20:30 mark for similar comments about big military spending cuts...

http://www.charlierose.com/vie...
by: dsulz

openleft.com commenter "The Big Hurt" chipped in with the key part of the Emanuel "Meet the Press" clip, the part focused on cutting $300 B out of the military budget...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28719406#28719406
go to about the 1:58 point

CoS Emanuel calls for $300B in Military Cuts!!

Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel suggested on Meet the Press last week that $300 billion in cost overruns are available for cutting out of the military budget. (There is also a link embedded in this OpenLeft piece that connects to his similar comment on Charlie Rose.)
This strikes me as huge--to have Rahm talking about military cuts right out of the box, especially without being provoked by the interviewer, and as blogger Chris Bowers points out, to be so specific about the figure of $300 B.
And this is separate from the money that could be saved when the occupation of Iraq is ended, which the new President has promised repeatedly to accomplish.
We know that there's money for social needs being wasted over at the Pentagon. I'm very glad to see that the White House seems to know it, too.
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=11031

Harry Belafonte & Becoming Firefighters

Paul Rosenberg at openleft.com ran a nice recap of Harry Belafonte's remarks at the Peace Ball, which I had the good fortune to attend on Inauguration Night. Well worth reading...
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=32B74E22EE6702E0F6A6900DF510B50D?diaryId=11110

"Yes, We Can End the War & Fix the Economy!"

John Nichols of the Nation recently named Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) the "Most Valuable Political Group" of 2008. PDA will be living up to that billing during inauguration week, distributing a couple hundred thousand flyers demanding "Health Care, Not Warfare!" to those attending events in D.C., but also in cities across the country. The leaflet they will be handing out, quoting Dr. King and making the case for single-payer national health care, is here:
http://pdamerica.org/misc/PDA_IG_FINAL.pdf

The basic concept is simple--that we spend too much on our military, and not enough on the social needs of the American people. The PDA push fits in well as part of the strategy endorsed by the national meeting of United for Peace & Justice (UFPJ) last month, to press for a 20% cut in the military budget by 2010. UFPJ is our most broad-based peace & justice coalition, and has led the fight against the Iraq War from before it started. The UFPJ effort is called "Yes, We Can! Beyond War, a New Economy Is Possible!". The goal is to tie the need to end the occupation of Iraq and cut the military budget to the crying need for good green jobs, health care for everyone, new infrastructure spending on levees and bridges, and greater provision of needed social services like food stamps and unemployment insurance.
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=4003

One of the great organizations that I have worked with for years is the National Priorities Project (NPP), which meticulously breaks down the costs of war & the costs of a war economy, and contrasts those costs with what needed social goods we could buy with the same amount of money, social goods such as health care, new schools, child care, food, housing, etc. NPP also does a great job with its charts and comparisons, making these costs accessible to everyone.
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/

One of their latest excellent efforts is a research report by Anita Dancs, an Assistant Professor at Western New England College, in conjunction with Mary Orisich & Suzanne Smith of NPP, to set out "The Military Cost of Securing Energy." They estimate that "...the United States is spending between $97 and $215 billion dollars annually on military action to defend access to oil and natural gas reserves around the globe."
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Energy_Security/Energy_Priorities

AFSC's "New Roadmap for Peace"

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) laid out 5 principles for reforming our foreign policy:
(1) Our nation should invest in peace.
(2) Strengthen the civilian agencies that work on peace and development issues.
(3) Give diplomacy a chance.
(4) Be a part of global peacebuilding efforts.
(5) Create justice through good development and trade policies.
http://www.roadmapforpeace.org/
AFSC's "New Roadmap for U.S. Engagement with the World" was prepared for the Obama transition team to review, examining these 5 principles in more depth:
http://www.roadmapforpeace.org/download.html

Reform expert Winslow Wheeler has released an extensive critique of the U.S. military budget, entitled "America's Defense Meltdown", which the Center for Defense Information is graciously allowing people to read online:
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=4404&from_page=../index.cfm

Wheeler is a brave analyst, never afraid to call it as he sees it...

Militarism--One of Dr. King's Nightmares!

Here's a link to an essay I wrote for the Huffington Post, pointing out that although there is always a lot of talk about Dr. King's "dream," there is usually a lot less discussion of the need for a "true revolution of values," particularly concerning the big nightmares that Martin Luther King, Jr., warned us about: racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-cobble/one-of-dr-kings-nightmare_b_157237.html

If we need some money to pay for health care, a green jobs economy, and a recovery program, might I suggest the military budget as a place to search?

Check out IPS's Unified Security Budget

If you want an excellent analysis of our military budget, and suggestions for ways we could both make ourselves more secure while saving large amounts of money, you should check out the Institute for Policy Studies (disclosure note: I am an Associate Fellow at IPS) study, "A Unified Security Budget for the United States, FY 2009".
Here is the link: http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/#676
The report was put together by a task force of experts, led by Miriam Pemberton of the Foreign Policy in Focus Project at IPS, together with Lawrence Korb of the Center for Defense Information and the Center for American Progress. I know Miriam well, and she is one of the most astute analysts of our military budget.

As we approach what would have been Martin Luther King, Jr's. 80th birthday, we would do well to reflect on some of his comments about war and excessive militarism. On April 4, 1967, Dr. King delivered his "Beyond Vietnam" speech ( http://www.mlkonline.net/vietnam.html ), at which time he announced his opposition to the Vietnam War.
And he also made important points about the need to change our values, and move away from militarism--does our current military budget reflect our values?

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values...
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies...True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war."

new budget cutter--start with DOD

The Obama Administration just announced the appointment of a new budget-cutting czar (my term, not theirs), Nancy Killefer, to eliminate waste and inefficiency in the Federal budget.
The key phrase (from an AP story), for our purposes: "As he named Killefer, Obama promised to scour the federal budget to eliminate what doesn't work and improve what does to 'put government on the side of taxpayers.' He said: 'We can no longer afford to sustain the old ways when we know there are new and more efficient ways to getting the job done.'"

I'd like to suggest she start with freezing all new military weapons programs, to give her time to figure out which ones to stop entirely (the JSF? SDI? the occupation of Iraq?).

How about Military "Pay-Go" Cuts?

In a recent Washington Post article focused on the upcoming stimulus package, one potential stumbling block was identified as "Blue Dog" concerns about the deficit, and the need for pay-as-you-go cuts to balance new expenditures. Here's the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/03/AR2009010300721_2.html?sid=ST2009010302071&s_pos
And here's a relevant quote: "That could sour some deficit hawks on the idea. 'It's going to be very problematic to me unless they can tell me how it's going to be paid for,' said Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), a leading centrist Democrat."
Well, I've got some suggestions: how about some cuts in the military budget, which has grown totally out of control during the Bush/Cheney Era?
Maybe we could end the occupation of Iraq? Close several hundred overseas bases? Block the unnecessary new weapons systems that have been left on the table--say, the F35 Joint Strike Fighter & the F/A-22 Raptor, the V-22 Osprey, the Virginia-Class submarine, offensive space weapons, SDI, the DDG-1000, and Future Combat Systems?
After all, that's where the (future) money is...