Military Crippling Sequester Must Be Stopped

[MachineGhost]

Sure reeks of the typical Republican hypocrisy:

Sequestration would have a crippling effect on our Armed Forces. Although defense spending accounts for less than 20 percent of the federal budget, half of the deficit reduction efforts to date have come out of defense.

Obama administration officials have testified that sequestration could break the back of a military stretched thin by three years of cuts and ten years of war.

Sequestration would force the greatest Armed Forces in history to its knees, resulting in the smallest Army since 1940, the smallest Navy since 1916, and the smallest Air Force in our history.

We would risk ceding our special role in world affairs to countries such as Russia and China, who are both vastly expanding their military power.

We would risk breaking faith with our all-volunteer military, reneging on sacred promises made to care for the health and well-being of our troops and our veterans.

We would risk the gains made against global terrorism and risk our ability to prevent another September 11th attack.

And we would tacitly accept what our military leadership calls an extraordinary and unacceptable degree of danger in a strategically uncertain and perilous time.

In addition to this threat to our national security, the sequester would also impose deep cuts to programs like the National Institutes of Health and border security, squeezing critical priorities while letting entitlement spending remain on autopilot.

Full Story: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... 14089.html

[fnord123]

We would risk ceding our special role in world affairs to countries such as Russia and China, who are both vastly expanding their military power

I don't want to cede our special role.  Let's spend 2X what China and Russia spend together on our own military, so we can really kick their asses if need be.

(For those who don't know, we would need to cut our military spending by 70% in order to only spend double what China & Russia spend combined)

[Reub]

A strong national defense coupled with a vibrant, capitalistic private sector sounds like a perfect system to me. I believe that the founding fathers agreed. I see no fault in the Republicans fighting for both.

[MachineGhost]

A strong national defense coupled with a vibrant, capitalistic private sector sounds like a perfect system to me. I believe that the founding fathers agreed. I see no fault in the Republicans fighting for both.

You don't perceive the hypocrisy in that Republicans always claim to be against big government, yet the military-industrial complex is one of the largest, most wasteful and inefficient government boondoggles known to man?  Why do they keep campaigning on that they are going to reduce the size of big government, but never do it or carve out special exceptions?

The Anti-Federalists were against "standing armies", so I don't see that there was agreement among the Founding Fathers.

MG

[FarmerD]

A strong national defense coupled with a vibrant, capitalistic private sector sounds like a perfect system to me. I believe that the founding fathers agreed. I see no fault in the Republicans fighting for both.

You don't perceive the hypocrisy in that Republicans always claim to be against big government, yet the military-industrial complex is one of the largest, most wasteful and inefficient government boondoggles known to man?  Why do they keep campaigning on that they are going to reduce the size of big government, but never do it or carve out special exceptions?

The Anti-Federalists were against "standing armies", so I don't see that there was agreement among the Founding Fathers.

MG

Agree with everything you said.  If you ever want to see what it's like to live in a centrally planned Soviet style world, join the US military.  I estimate about 50% of all money spent on DoD is totally wasted.  Unfortunately, asking DoD to cut waste is somehow seen as unpatriotic by conservatives.  I believe in a strong national defense but we could have that on half our current national budget.  There are a lot of simple things we could do to cut the waste. We could:

Convert a lot of active duty specialists into reservists
Concentrate on drones rather than flying manned fighters and bombers
Eliminate/contract out most support personnel (Only 10% of the Air Force has a fighting mission - the rest are support personnel)
Eliminate most Navy ships
Eliminate most TDY's (i.e. conferences).  If you think GSA is bad, you never seen DoD spending $millions on absurd travel and tourism. 

I highly recommend anyone who interested should read John T Reed's excellent military articles on his website. 

[WildAboutHarry]

The post WWII period has, with a few semi-minor exceptions, enjoyed unprecedented peace and prosperity (e.g. no world-wide conflicts, etc.) compared to previous times.  In Europe, especially.

I lay the credit for that solely on the superiority of the US military.

There is so much waste in governments in general.  It seems tremendously short-sighted to further cut the one part that is still a US success story - the quality and superiority of our military.

We already had one big "peace dividend" during the Clinton administration.  We squandered that.

I don't want a military as good, or twice as good as our potential enemies.  I want overwhelming force.

[Reub]

I agree! The real problem is the entitlement system that runs on auto-pilot and consumes more of our gdp every day.

[WildAboutHarry]

The post WWII period has, with a few semi-minor exceptions, enjoyed unprecedented peace and prosperity (e.g. no world-wide conflicts, etc.) compared to previous times. In Europe, especially.

I lay the credit for that solely on the superiority of the US military.

There is so much waste in governments in general. It seems tremendously short-sighted to further cut the one part that is still a US success story - the quality and superiority of our military.

We already had one big "peace dividend" during the Clinton administration. We squandered that.

I don't want a military as good, or twice as good as our potential enemies. I want overwhelming force.

i don't see having the best or even the overwhelmingly best military and cutting waste as being mutually exclusive, i do support keeping our military as strong as it is, and making the improvements necessary to adapt to the needs of the times, like most government boondoggles sorting the wheat from the chafe isn't easy, and the political and influential beneficiary's of that waste are very tough to root out. i haven't read up on the sequester plan yet but on the surface it doesn't seem like a well thought out plan to tackle waste, just big random cuts that would end up hurting our strength.

Agree, but "waste" is a relative concept. 

There was an interesting piece in the WSJ today:

In 1940, the United States had the 18th-largest army in the world, right behind tiny Holland. While not so small, its Navy was totally unprepared to face a determined invader. Gen. George Marshall, Army chief of staff, warned Roosevelt that if Hitler landed five divisions on American soil, there was nothing he could do to stop them.

[moda0306]

The post WWII period has, with a few semi-minor exceptions, enjoyed unprecedented peace and prosperity (e.g. no world-wide conflicts, etc.) compared to previous times.  In Europe, especially.

I lay the credit for that solely on the superiority of the US military.

Really?  Not the productivity of free Americans & Europeans?  Not an aversion to war after losing so many lives to it?  Not the democratic states that resulted coming out of the rubble of the war, both on the winning and losing ends?  Not a stabilized/regulated banking system?

Further, I don't know how superior we were to Russia, who effectively became our enemy from 1945 until 1990, or whenever we wish to consider that conflict ended. As early as 1960 they were parking nukes in Cuba.

There also is the question, IF military is good at its job, but as HB would say it's still one big group trap, how come government is "oh so horrible" at doing ANYTHING else?  What makes the government really good at strategizing how to win a war, but really bad at anything else?

[Reub]

i don't see having the best or even the overwhelmingly best military and cutting waste as being mutually exclusive

Agree, but "waste" is a relative concept.

There was an interesting piece in the WSJ today:

In 1940, the United States had the 18th-largest army in the world, right behind tiny Holland. While not so small, its Navy was totally unprepared to face a determined invader. Gen. George Marshall, Army chief of staff, warned Roosevelt that if Hitler landed five divisions on American soil, there was nothing he could do to stop them.

that is part of why its "hard to root out" and where hard to root out meets "adapting to the needs of the time", we let politics and the military industry determine strategy, and to some degree we have to, but what what is advancing our military systems/strategy's? and what is wasteful spending on obsolete or about to be obsolete equipment/strategy's?
i doubt we will ever achieve perfection at this, there will always be some waste, but i see a lot of room for improvement as well..

"Congress wanted to cut spending.  But they were too weasely to decide what to cut.  So they formed a committee to make the decision, with the stipulation that if the committee couldn't agree, there would be automatic cuts.

The committee couldn't agree, so, per the agreement, there ought to be automatic cuts."

Actually, I believe that Bowles/Simpson was a bipartisan agreement that President Obama has ignored to this very day.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopic ... _Brief.cfm

[FarmerD]

I don't want a military as good, or twice as good as our potential enemies.  I want overwhelming force.

So do I.  I used to believe waste was just the price we pay for a strong defense.  However, after 20 years in the USAF, the amount and type of waste I saw was just too egregious to be ignored.  Far too many bureaucrats/dead weight depend on that waste for their livlihood so DoD will never cut waste on it's own.  DoD maintains a Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Hotline.  Yet anyone who calls the hotline WILL THEMSELF be investigated/threatened by higher ranking people involved.  I've seen it personally myself.

Here's my proposal: Hire an independent private sector company to audit DoD.  Give them pay equal to, say, 2% of the cost savings they identify.  I'll bet they find $Billions in easily identifiable waste, fraud, and abuse that does not impact our national defense in any way. 

[Xan]

What makes the government really good at strategizing how to win a war, but really bad at anything else?

Typically, it's because the competition is another government.

[MediumTex]

What makes the government really good at strategizing how to win a war, but really bad at anything else?

Typically, it's because the competition is another government.

Bingo!

It's a pure expression of incompetent entity vs. incompetent entity.

[moda0306]

What makes the government really good at strategizing how to win a war, but really bad at anything else?

Typically, it's because the competition is another government.

If the competition is so weak, and government is bad at everything, still good to privatize all forms of defense, correct?  I mean just because the competition sucks doesn't mean we should find a way to give ourselves a disadvantage.  If the private sector is better at everything than government, we should privatize everything... if the government can do certain things better (not better than other governments, but better than our private sector), we should dig into why that is.

[MediumTex]

What makes the government really good at strategizing how to win a war, but really bad at anything else?

Typically, it's because the competition is another government.

If the competition is so weak, and government is bad at everything, still good to privatize all forms of defense, correct?  I mean just because the competition sucks doesn't mean we should find a way to give ourselves a disadvantage.  If the private sector is better at everything than government, we should privatize everything... if the government can do certain things better (not better than other governments, but better than our private sector), we should dig into why that is.

There are probably some career diplomats at the State Department who would be better at international diplomacy than the private sector.

That's just one example that I can think of, but it raises the interesting question of what would happen if those career diplomats went into the private sector and the government outsourced international diplomacy to private sector companies and contractors were chosen based upon their prior success in negotiationg good deals for the U.S.  I wonder how well that would work over time.

[Ad Orientem]

The problem with giant military forces is that you inevitably have the temptation to use them. Most of this country's problems are at least in part our own creation. If we just learned to mind our own damned business the world would be a happier place.

Ron Paul 2012

[WildAboutHarry]

I don't want a military as good, or twice as good as our potential enemies.  I want overwhelming force.

So do I.  I used to believe waste was just the price we pay for a strong defense.  However, after 20 years in the USAF, the amount and type of waste I saw was just too egregious to be ignored.  Far too many bureaucrats/dead weight depend on that waste for their livlihood so DoD will never cut waste on it's own.   DoD maintains a Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Hotline.  Yet anyone who calls the hotline WILL THEMSELF be investigated/threatened by higher ranking people involved.  I've seen it personally myself.

Here's my proposal: Hire an independent private sector company to audit DoD.  Give them pay equal to, say, 2% of the cost savings they identify.  I'll bet they find $Billions in easily identifiable waste, fraud, and abuse that does not impact our national defense in any way. 

How much of this waste and fraud is due to the DoD (executive branch), to congress (mandating earmarks, etc.), and to the military branches themselves?  I expect a bunch from the first two and a smaller amount from the latter.

I did not spend 20 years in the military (4 in the Navy), but I did see waste.  But I also saw a bunch of people (volunteers, not draftees) earning crap money doing a pretty hard job.  I can tolerate a great deal of waste in the military to avoid what happened to Europe in WWII.

[jackely]

I don't want a military as good, or twice as good as our potential enemies.  I want overwhelming force.

So do I.  I used to believe waste was just the price we pay for a strong defense.  However, after 20 years in the USAF, the amount and type of waste I saw was just too egregious to be ignored.  Far too many bureaucrats/dead weight depend on that waste for their livlihood so DoD will never cut waste on it's own.   DoD maintains a Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Hotline.  Yet anyone who calls the hotline WILL THEMSELF be investigated/threatened by higher ranking people involved.  I've seen it personally myself.

Here's my proposal: Hire an independent private sector company to audit DoD.  Give them pay equal to, say, 2% of the cost savings they identify.  I'll bet they find $Billions in easily identifiable waste, fraud, and abuse that does not impact our national defense in any way. 

How much of this waste and fraud is due to the DoD (executive branch), to congress (mandating earmarks, etc.), and to the military branches themselves?  I expect a bunch from the first two and a smaller amount from the latter.

I did not spend 20 years in the military (4 in the Navy), but I did see waste.  But I also saw a bunch of people (volunteers, not draftees) earning crap money doing a pretty hard job.  I can tolerate a great deal of waste in the military to avoid what happened to Europe in WWII.

We had enough firepower in Vietnam to leave the Viet Cong (literally) shitting their pants in man-made caves and bunkers during the B-52 raids. I think this did us about as much good as whatever the hell we are doing in Afghanistan nowadays. (The word "literally" is overused in modern writing but when I say they were "literally" shitting their pants I mean they were "literally", i.e., "really" shitting their pants).

Some people just won't cry Uncle ('SAM') no matter what we do (see also the Japanese in WWII).

How much do we have to spend on that? Do we have enough?

[MachineGhost]

What a bunch of weasels.

What continues to irk me is that's fine for Democrats because you know that they're all about endless spending and perpetual growth of government, but the Republicans are truly two-faced.  Hypocrites have no personal integrity in my book.  Ignoring that won't make the issue disappear.

Seriously, how long do Republican's continue to flap their mouths while doing the exact opposite before voters jump ship?  It's been going on since at least Barry Goldwater.  Since most Republicans voters seem to be a bunch of really old farts that are going to eventually die off, I question how there is any long-term viability and relevance for the party.

The economic cycle indicates that a third party is due to transform the political landscape in 2016.  Anyone want to bet that movement is not going to be carved out from the Democratic Party?  Then again, both the Neo-Commies and the Neo-Nazis in Greece are coming out of the woodwork.

MG

[MachineGhost]

There also is the question, IF military is good at its job, but as HB would say it's still one big group trap, how come government is "oh so horrible" at doing ANYTHING else?  What makes the government really good at strategizing how to win a war, but really bad at anything else?

That's because the military is a command and control structure with punitive consequences for refusing to follow orders, unlike the civilian bureaucracy.  What the top brass says, goes.  No room for dissent or you'll be court martialed!

I too continually marvel at the differences.  I would much rather live in the orderly military with its strong sense of community, than put up with the rough and tough rabble, urban infrastructure decay and the many other ills of the disorganized civilian sector.  But as usual, its a choice between security and individual freedom.

MG

[hoost]

Seriously, how long do Republican's continue to flap their mouths while doing the exact opposite before voters jump ship?  It's been going on since at least Barry Goldwater.  Since most Republicans voters seem to be a bunch of really old farts that are going to eventually die off, I question how there is any long-term viability and relevance for the party.

I think that if you look at the number of young people attracted to Ron Paul's message, you might get a glimpse of the future of the Republican party, if they are willing to embrace it.  I went to his recent rally in Houston, and I was pretty impressed with the turn out, both in terms of numbers and age.  If the Republicans aren't willing to accept it, maybe HB's Libertarian party will stand to benefit.

[Lone Wolf]

Seriously, how long do Republican's continue to flap their mouths while doing the exact opposite before voters jump ship?  It's been going on since at least Barry Goldwater.  Since most Republicans voters seem to be a bunch of really old farts that are going to eventually die off, I question how there is any long-term viability and relevance for the party.

I think that if you look at the number of young people attracted to Ron Paul's message, you might get a glimpse of the future of the Republican party, if they are willing to embrace it.

I agree.  As far as I can tell, the two-party system is here to stay.  That does not, however, mean that the two parties have to stay just as they are.

The young Republican voters of today that I encounter today seem to be war-weary but patriotic and overall just very skeptical of the size, scope, and competence of government.  Most of the younger Tea Party types are extremely persuadable on (or already in favor of) issues like drug legalization.  Most are overwhelmingly against the creepy overreach of the TSA.  They seem to especially like recent more libertarian-oriented figures like Rand Paul.

So I think it's all down to, as hoost says, "whether they choose to embrace it".  My conclusions are, of course, very self-serving so there's every reason to think I'm just having some fun engaging in wishful thinking.  "Hey!  I bet the Republican Party is going to start realizing that I'm right about everything!"