Published: March 11, 2009 10:13 pm      

Military’s budget is a threat to our country

The disastrous reign of George W. Bush has ended, but left economic, environmental and other messes. Many of Obama’s promises must be put on the back burner because of this.

Almost nothing is safe in the budget. I’ve heard nary a word from the new President about cutting the defense budget, that obscene, gluttonous swine that has weakened our country, both its infrastructure and economic well-being and its standing in the world community.

Dr. Robert Higgs of The Independent Institute researched our national budget in search of how much we spend on defense in a given year and came up with is one trillion dollars per year. How much is a trillion? A trillion seconds equals 32,000 years.

Higgs notes the published defense budget for the most recent fiscal year was roughly $500 billion. Then he looked at hidden costs. Such things as nuclear missile costs in the Department of Energy budget ($17 billion), the Department of Homeland Security ($69 billion), the Department of State for defense related purposes ($25 billion), the Department of Veterans Affairs ($70 billion), the Department of the Treasury for military retirement ($38 billion), and the interest paid on our national debt that relates to past debt-funded defense spending ($207 billion). Roughly one trillion dollars total.

Dr. Higgs writes, “a well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon’s (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it. We may overstate the truth, but if so, we’ll not do so by much.”

One area we should be concerned about is foreign military bases — a staggering 721 around the world. The sun never sets on this “empire of bases” as Chalmers Johnson calls it. Who decided to garrison the world? Where were discussions in Congress? In the media? There weren’t any. The military-industrial complex did what it wanted, and we are paying for that lack of oversight.

How does this massive amount of money spent on war making and preparations for war compare to money spent on protecting and enhancing life? According to Professor Paulos of Temple University, “The (Environmental Protection Agency’s), for example, annual budget is about $7.5 billion. So a trillion dollars would fund the EPA in present dollars for 130 years — more than a century. Or the National Science Foundation or National Cancer Institute have budgets of $5 (billion) or $6 billion. You could fund those for almost 200 years.”

Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies writes, “War production doesn’t create real economic health.”

We account for approximately half of all global military spending. Our military budget is larger than what the next 45 nations together spend, much wasted on fantasy weapons like Reagan’s silly missile defense system or outmoded weapons systems like aircraft-carrier battle groups.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure deteriorates. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave it a grade of D. Thirty-five million citizens go hungry or face hunger on a regular basis. Forty-five million people have no health insurance and millions more don’t have enough. But we throw away trillions on war, especially the war on terror, which, as Meriam Pemberton of the Institute for Policy Studies and Lawrence Korb write, “is one that is not working (while) diplomacy, peacekeeping, and international police work are the ones that are.”

Here’s a profound irony, as Mark Engler writes, “As U.S. economic difficulties worsen, the belief that the country can afford to maintain this (aggressive military) posture may itself prove to be the most profound threat to our national security.”

Craig Etchison

Fort Ashby, W.Va.