THE MILITARY BUDGET

America's military budget is bloated by waste, inefficiancy and outright theft and it is not nearly as effective at protecting our security as it can be. In addition, the disproportionate size of the budget encourages other countries to spend more on armaments thereby increasing the risk of armed conflicts worldwide.

RECRUITING, BUSH STYLE

Bush people are well aware that reinstituting the draft could cost the Neocons the presidency in 2008. They also know that they have to do something about the dramatically failing voluntary enrollment system. Fortunately for them, they have a tried and true solution for this type of quandary – just lie about it. When the lies are challenged, simply tell more lies and insist that you are telling the truth.

Their most outrageous lie is that everything is going just fine. Although ridiculous on its face, the Neocons unabashedly cite a month here or there, or some other situation that seems to support their cause. Most of the lies, however, are told directly to our young men and women who actually are considering the military because they need a job. Fortunately for Bush, his own economic policies have increased that pool.

Under Bush, military recruiters are now concentrating on teenagers in poor minority neighborhoods across the country. They tout all of the benefits of military service, but discreetly leave out the fact that you can also get your leg, or your head, blown off. The recruiters themselves are under extreme pressure to meet the quotas necessary to support the Bush lie that nothing is wrong.

Potential recruits receive a sugarcoated version of military service. They are offered money for college, free medical and dental care, the chance to be stationed in a nice place like Hawaii, 30 days of paid vacation a year, retirement benefits, sign-up bonuses and a home loan program. They are never reminded that they may have to spend the rest of his life without a limb, or simply not be around to enjoy the rest of their life.

American’s unity and willingness to sacrifice during World War II shows that the voluntary enrollment system would work just fine if the young people believed that the war was necessary. In other words, the truth would work fine if the war was just. But the war is not just, and the poor Bushies are forced to lie about it.

Potential recruits also have reason to believe that the Bush Administration does not care enough about their safety. The have heard that they will have to risk being blown up by an improvised explosive device, and not be equipped with minimally adequate armor. They suspect that if something goes wrong, like Abu Ghraib, the military will try to pin it on them instead of having the higher-ups, who are actually responsible, bear the consequences.

The best people to lie to are those that are most vulnerable. So they go to young people in poor city neighborhoods, small towns and rural areas. There is even a provision in the No Child Left Behind Act that requires high schools to turn over student information to military recruiters. They Army also tries to soften up the “influencers” by hiring the professional advertising agency, Leo Burnett USA, to create a campaign to win over parents and other adults in a position to influence potential recruits.

The No Child Left Behind Act is a 670-page encyclopedia that, I suspect, is only completely understood by its Neocon authors. It is difficult to imagine Bush reaching a new ethical low, but he may have come close when he snuck a clause in this act that gives military recruiters the right to go after our kids while they are still in high school.

The Act requires public secondary schools to provide military recruiters with the name, address and phone numbers of all of its students. It also obligates schools to allow two visits a year by recruiters from each military service. A student’s contact information can be withheld only if a student over 18 years old, or the parent of any student, submits a written request to keep the information private.

Military recruiters strive for efficiency by concentrating on schools where they are most likely to be successful in finding volunteers. Minority dominated schools in poor areas can out-produce affluent schools by six to one. Surprisingly they tend to eschew the poorest and most crime-ridden areas in order to avoid the least psychologically qualified people or those who are on drugs. In other words, they avoid the kind of people who might benefit most from military discipline.

Once inside the schools, the military recruiters are free to use the most persuasive psychological marketing tactics to coerce young people to join the armed forces. The recruiters’ manual advises that recruiters go wherever the students are, such as sporting events and shopping malls. Junior ROTC classes are taught drills by a conspicuously uniformed instructor. Recruiters make themselves as visible as possible by chaperoning dances and conspicuously talking to popular students in front of others.

These students are referred to as “centers of influence” in the recruiter’s manual and they include the president of the student organization, the captain of the football team and the like. Likely volunteers can easily get over a dozen telephone calls to their home from the various services and are inundated with mailings and multiple home visits. The information gathered by these contacts is tracked with a specially designed computer program.

Techniques for closing the sale appear to have been taken directly from a manual for used car salesmen. The “challenge close” is described in the manual, as well as how to put the prospect in the right psychological mood for it. Recruiters are taught how to get an ego reaction by suggesting that basic training might be too difficult for him. They are taught how to psychoanalyze the teen to know what sales approach would be most effective. They know if they should stress job training, college tuition, adventure, or whatever else might make the particular individual volunteer. A free “Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery” purports to help teenagers with their career choice while it actually is used to get information to aid in the recruiting process.

LHS

OUR MILITARY BUDGET
THE WORLD'S BIGGEST SCAM

In 2004 the American military budget was $455 Billion. Compared to the theft and waste in this budget, the healthcare scams are like stealing quarters from a gumball machine. One major example of profligate waste is the modern nuclear powered aircraft carrier. They cost about $4.5 billion to build and about $1 billion to decommission and dismantle. Since the carrier itself is so vulnerable, it takes another $6 billion worth of support ships to protect and service it. The annual cost to keep a carrier and its associated fleet afloat is $1-$1.5 billion. To make matters worse, most of the 80-100 aircraft aboard the carrier are needed to protect the ship itself. Only about 35 planes are actually available to fly combat missions. In spite of all that protection, an aircraft carrier is extremely vulnerable. A bomb hole in its landing deck will put it out of commission. A remote controlled torpedo, launched from a distance, could start a chain reaction since the carrier is loaded with fuel and about 4000 bombs that could all add to its own ka-boom. Today, aircraft carriers are used to create a psychological show of strength, instead of actually participating in combat.

The B-2 bomber costs about $1 billion each. (By the way, for those of you who have never had a billion dollars, a billion is a thousand million, which is in turn a thousand thousand.) The low visibility materials in a B-2 are sensitive to water, humidity and extreme climates. The delicate bird has to be housed in permanent shelters and needs additional facilities and equipment if they are deployed. Any conventional bombing mission risks the destruction of an aircraft that is worth more than the damage it could do. A nuclear bombing mission risks the destruction of humanity. In addition there are serious questions about just how low-observable are these low-observable aircraft and whether America’s defense posture would be better served if each billion dollars were spent on multiple numbers of less expensive aircraft.

Andy Rooney, the 86 year-old curmudgeonly commentator, is regularly given the last few minutes of the 60 Minutes program on CBS to rant and rave about something that annoys him. Although he is always very clever and insightful, he rarely covers political issues, or even issues of serious import. For that reason, I was very surprised to hear him rail against our military budget, and to do it so well. His comments are reprinted below.

LHS

IKE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE WAR MACHINE

The following is a weekly 60 Minutes Commentary by CBS News correspondent Andy Rooney, Oct. 2, 2005

I’m not really clear how much a billion dollars is but the United States—Our United States—is spending $5.6 billion a month fighting this war in Iraq that we never should have gotten into.

We still have 139,000 soldiers in Iraq today.

Almost 2000 Americans have died there. For what?

Now we have the hurricanes to pay for. One way our government pays for a lot of things is by borrowing from countries like China.

Another way our government is planning to pay for the war and the hurricane damage is by cutting spending for things like Medicare prescriptions, highway construction, farm payments AMTRAK, National Public Radio and loans to graduate students. Do these sound like the things you’d like to cut back on to pay for Iraq?

I’ll tell you where we ought to start saving: on our bloated military establishment.

We’re paying for weapons we’ll never use.

No other country spends the kind of money we spend on our military. Last year Japan spent $42 billion. Italy spent $28 billion, Russia spent only $19 billion. The United States spent $455 billion.

We have 8,000 tanks for example. On Abrams tank costs 150 times as much as a Ford station wagon.

We have more than 10,000 nuclear weapons—enough to destroy all of mankind.

We’re spending $200 million a year on bullets alone. That’s a lot of target practice. We have 1,155,000 enlisted men and women and 225,000 officers. One officer to tell every five soldiers what to do. We have 40,000 colonels alone, and 870 generals.

We had a great commander in WWII, Dwight Eisenhower. He became President and on leaving the White House in 1961, he said this: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist…”

Well, Ike was right. That’s just what’s happened.

LHS

AMERICA, THE LAST SUPERPOWER?

It’s time to ask some serious questions about America’s “Superpower” status. How do we define the term? Who thinks that we actually are a superpower? What would be the consequences if America were not a superpower?

The definition of the term “Superpower” is both vague and a matter of individual opinion. This ambiguity makes the term a lot less significant than most of us would think.

For the most part, it is Americans that think America is a superpower. Outside of this country people see that we cannot even control a small country like Iraq or Afghanistan. Our great weapons systems are useless against terrorism or insurgency. Our Army, while not in disarray, is certainly not the well-organized and well-staffed force that we would like it to be.

If America were not a superpower, we would be forced to try to influence the world using the strength of our economy and the power of diplomacy. This is not a bad thing!

Afghanistan is a good example of the limitations of American military power. President Hamid Karzai controls only a very limited area around Kabul. The rest of the country is controlled by the warlords who earn their income from the opium trade. Hamid Karzai has almost no Army or security forces of his own. The Afghan National Army is only about 20,000 strong, with the U.S. promising to train another 50,000 by the end of next year.

The opium poppy is cultivated in 28 of Afghanistan’s 32 regions. About 80% of the world’s opium comes from Afghanistan, and production has been increasing since the American invasion. Under the Taliban in the year 2000, 4,600 tons of opium were produced. In 2004, under American occupation, the warlords produced a record 4,950 tons. The conflict in Afghanistan is over who will control the cash crop, and not over pro or anti-American politics. The point however is that American forces seem to have the power to control very little.

In Iraq we can also appreciate the limitation of American control. Is it any wonder that the rest of the world is reluctant to apply the “Superpower” designation to America?

There are several reasons for America’s weak military status. The main one, in my opinion, is that our troops are spread thinly throughout the world in over 100 different countries. Our fighting forces are also very inefficiently organized. How else can we explain why, with a military in excess of one million men, we can hardly maintain a 140,000-man force in Iraq?

Another reason for our military weakness is our devotion to weapons systems that are not applicable in today’s world. This includes our 10,000 nuclear warhead arsenal, our nuclear-tipped missile force, our aircraft carriers and their supporting fleets and our billion dollar bombers. In spite of these problems, the cement-heads in Washington seem bent on further extending American presence throughout the world. Currently, at least nine major permanent military bases are being built in Afghanistan in addition to the permanent bases being built in Iraq.

Considering the quantity and dispersion of America’s military presence in the world, each of these bases represent a vulnerability, and not a strength. Each base, should it be attacked, also represents a risk that America will get involved in an unplanned and unwanted war.

The more our troops are forced to serve double, triple and quadruple tours of duty, the harder it becomes to recruit new men. The harder it is to recruit new men, the more our troops are forced to serve double, triple and quadruple tours of duty. It just accelerates the vicious cycle when the war is illogical and unpopular. There is no easy out for the neocons because reinstating the draft would be political suicide for them. All this has left America with a disgruntled and understaffed fighting force.

Another reason America is not a superpower is because the nature of war has changed. Everyone (even most Liberals) seems to agree that the quagmire in Iraq happened because we did not use enough troops to get the job done. I’d like to disagree. We had plenty of experienced and well-armed troops to cut through Saddam’s rag-tag forces and quickly reach Baghdad. However, even two or three times that many troops could not defend against suicide bombers, car bombs and ambushes by people dressed as civilians. When troops cannot tell the difference between people they are supposed to protect and people who would kill them, they are involved in a conflict in which their overwhelming firepower is useless. This type of conflict could easily have been foreseen. Did Rummy expect the conquered Iraqis to just do nothing, or to charge their camels against our tanks? To make things worse, Rummy left Saddam’s explosives out in the desert for the insurgents to scoop up, and then sent in our troops with armor that was inadequate to protect them from the resulting attacks.

The long deployments and repeated tours of duty are taking a severe psychological toll on our troops and their families. Divorce rates for deployed troops have nearly doubled since the start of the war. Couples forced to live apart are more prone to loneliness, depression alcoholism, drug dependencies and extramarital affairs. The children of these couples suffer even more.

The quality of American troops has also been deteriorating. Repeated tours of duty have left our soldiers angry and disheartened. Many feel as if their burden is not being appropriately shared by the rest of the nation. The more educated and able troops are anxious to get back to civilian life. Those who cannot find good employment in civilian life, and who may lack leadership qualities are more willing to stay in Iraq and risk death or injury.

LHS