News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, While we are all watching this shadow play in D.C. with Obama and the Republicans each jockeying for election advantage next year and holding the rest of us hostage …
IF Obama were sincere and worried about anything other than his re-election and four more years in the Big House and riding in the Big Plane he would be leading the fight for fiscal sanity by ripping apart the BS U.S. military budget …..
First of all, do you notice as you should, that 99 percent, of the time no matter who is speaking, they always refer to the DEFENSE budget not the military budget or the Pentagon budget – always the DEFENSE budget – giving the ultimate pork barrel spending a cherished status it no longer deserves which makes it difficult or impossible to attack because it’s the DEFENSE budget.
Who can be against us defending our nation with our DEFENSE budget? How can our DEFENSE spending be too large! Do you want us to be invaded and by those Chinese or Russians or Iranians or Fiji Islanders, all just waiting to swarm over America and enslave us all the moment we reduce our DEFENSE budget.
And that’s even without mentioning the “magic” phrase – the U.S. WAR against terrorism!! The war that never ends and which never can be won. It just goes on forever.
Time to WAKE up America – more precisely, WAKE up Obama. It is the MILITARY budget. Good defense does not depend on wasting billions of dollars to mismanagement, useless projects, graft, corruption, duplication, etc.
Let’s dig in further to the MISUSE of language. The United States is NOT fighting two wars. We have invaded and are occupying two countries Iraq and Afghanistan. And supporting their corrupt institutions or non-institutions. The hundreds of billions spent in both countries, the thousands of precious American lives lost, and the tens if not hundreds of thousands of Americans scared for life physically, mentally or both over there have not been fighting WARS they have been sent to colonize two countries for purposes other than America’s defense.
Want more?
It is beyond absurd to believe the best way to eliminate individual acts of terrorism directed within the U.S. is to send over a hundred thousand soldiers to a place like Afghanistan and spend correction WASTE over $10 BILLION a month there. All we are really doing is creating more terrorists who the U.S. military then congratulates itself for killing them at very great expense in dollars and lives.
President Obama as we know is a Big Fan of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan; of course fine tuning his rhetoric for his
re-election campaign. Hey Obama, As Commander in Chief order ALL the American troops home tomorrow. That alone will save over $150 Billion over the next 12 months and all by itself create more than half of the budget savings for next year alone they are proposing by slashing other programs and spending for the poor and middle class Americans.
Now let’s move beyond Iraq and Afghanistan …
To the more “permanent” parts of the MILITARY budget. And let’s go beyond the thousands or millions of individual parts – this is not meant to be a book length review – to the two key elements of the U.S. military budget. More or less we spend more on our military each year than ALL the rest of the world combined ALL of it including everyone all of Western and Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Japan, Iran, Brazil, Turkey, Australia, the Fuji Islands, etc,
Etc.
ALL over 200 nations on Earth combined more or less do not spend collectively as much annually on military expenses as the U.S. does all alone. That’s a sucker deal if there ever was one. And unbelievable, but true.
What we need President Obama is a well thought out plan to reduce our military spending by 50% over the next 4 years. And still spend a whopping $250 BILLION plus on the military each year. While at the same time setting a very attractive example and gaining agreements for other countries to lower their military spending in favor of worthwhile useful national priorities.
Here is the second basic issue about the U.S. military budget. It is antiquated. It is NOT a 21st century budget. It is stuck in the past. Preparing us for yesterday’s realities not today’s and less tomorrow’s needs. The fact is automation and electronics have overtaken traditional military thinking as they always do. The U.S. is spending mega-bucks on new weapons systems that are guaranteed to be obsolete long, long before their announced life cycles end which are used to justify their obscene costs.
The worst example of all military aircraft.
The age of the fighter pilot is over forever. Unfortunately the U.S.
has not gotten the message even worse we are preparing to spend atrocious amounts on the so called next generation of piloted fighter jets that are supposedly going to be the key to our air power for the next 50 years that are obsolete before the first plane is ever fully tested let alone deployed.
What am I talking about??
The F35 Joint Strike Fighter. Price tag. Projected at $ 1 TRILLION over the so called 50 year life span of the jet. Really?? 50 years. What are the Brass smoking up there in those secret offices in the
Pentagon?? 50 years!
Maybe medical marijuana is now available in the Pentagon. There must be some reason for their foggy logic. And if they are willing to admit to $1 TRILLION imagine what the actual cost will be. Excuse me the $1 TRILLION is only the cost for operating and maintaining the fleet of new F35s it does not include the cost of developing and buying them.
This is the government’s idea of a logical military budget and this is just for one small part attack aircraft. Call it insanity. But no, that
is not the worst part. These fighter jets are supposedly going to be key to U.S. airpower until at least 2070 or so. Now can you imagine how much more advanced technology will be decades before 2070. The fact is these planes are going to be obsolete before they are ever built. They already are.
We should NOT be building a new generation of pilot operated fighter planes at all. Relatively inexpensive unmanned drones are already doing the work of most fighter aircraft already. Better and at no risk to pilots. With even more R&D they will be better yet.
For all practical purposes the age of piloted fighter military aircraft is over. What we should be doing is outfitting our existing fighter planes to be operated remotely by experienced pilots on the ground with joy sticks and computer screens.
The aircraft we already have could perform at a more advanced level, except for the fact of their human pilots whose bodies and their human limitations prevent the aircraft from utilizing capabilities they otherwise possess and could in terms of maneuvers and risk taking the pilot’s presence prevents.
Even more quickly evolving technology for targeting aircraft are another reason we will never again be able to develop and build such jets which are not increasingly vulnerable.
I have not gotten to personnel issues among others and I won’t here. Again this is a Commentary not a book. But what we need is a NEW U.S. military of and for the 21st century. And in being far better and attuned to the 21st century also far less expensive and far more efficient with a far flatter management system.
So not only can’t we afford our bloated military budget it is producing an obsolete military. Just one more issue out Clueless President and Clueless Congress do not understand or appreciate.
If they did it is one more reason they would not be squabbling endlessly over the budget and the debt limit at OUR expense.
Arthur Piccolo is a professional writer and commentator and often writes about Latin America for New Americas.
