[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Indefensible Defense Budgeting

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Indefensible Defense Budgeting

July 25, 2004
 


 

Among the most frightening conclusions of the 9/11
commission's report is that two administrations failed to
grasp the new world in which the most dangerous threats
come as much from informal networks of terrorists as from
national governments, and left the nation with a vast
national security apparatus that did not detect, understand
or thwart Al Qaeda's plotting. That new reality applies
equally to military policy, which the Bush administration
continues to mismanage with the same cold war thinking
deplored by the 9/11 commission when it came to
intelligence gathering. 

In Afghanistan, a war strategy directed toward removing the
Taliban government left Al Qaeda leaders in their mountain
redoubts. In Iraq, the administration vastly overestimated
the military threat posed by a cornered dictator and was
totally unprepared for the violent resistance that followed
his swift overthrow. And when it comes to the military
budget, President Bush has failed to acknowledge either the
real costs of his policies or the need for a radical shift
from expensive superweapons to increased numbers of
adequately trained and equipped ground forces. 

Just as the commission's report should bring major reforms
in the management of America's intelligence agencies, it is
as important that it lead to a thorough reconfiguration of
the military budget. If the White House and the Pentagon
cannot do it, the Congressional appropriators who too
readily rubber-stamp Defense Department requests will have
to subject military budgets to far more aggressive scrutiny
than the bloated $416 billion spending package they
approved last week. 

That legislation incorporates a special $25 billion request
for immediate needs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and adds, at
least temporarily, a desperately needed 30,000 troops to
the active duty Army. If past patterns hold, even that $25
billion may not be enough, and the Pentagon continues to
resist permanently moving resources from unneeded weapons
to badly needed troops. Taken as a whole, this year's
budget, like previous ones, lavishes enormous sums on
costly futuristic gadgets like stealth fighters and missile
defense systems, for which there are no clear, current
military justifications, and pinches pennies when it comes
to anticipating the real needs of American ground troops
already in combat. 

A new report from the Government Accountability Office of
Congress shows that the administration has consistently
underestimated the actual costs of the Iraq war, forcing
the military to cut corners in ways that increase today's
risks and tomorrow's expenses. While waiting for the latest
supplemental spending, the military has had to postpone
repairs of worn-out equipment and delay training exercises
- and it still had to take money meant for other things to
meet immediate needs. It's inexcusable that a country
spending more than $400 billion a year on defense is facing
squeezes like this. The main cause was the administration's
unrealistic assumption that it would be able to make do
with far fewer troops in Iraq right now, despite continuing
insurgent attacks, the unreliability of Iraqi security
forces and the general unwillingness of other countries to
help. 

The Pentagon now acknowledges that roughly 138,000 United
States troops will be in Iraq for the foreseeable future.
That is a lot, but a country with more than 40 million
people between the ages of 18 and 30 could have managed it
much better. By waiting as long as it has to expand
recruitment quotas for the Regular Army, the Pentagon found
itself compelled to turn to unwise and unfair expedients
like forced extensions of combat duty tours and involuntary
recalls of discharged veterans. It also resorted to a
clearly unsustainable overuse of National Guard divisions
in overseas combat zones. Roughly 40 percent of American
troops in Iraq now come from National Guard or Reserve
units. This undermines the country's ability to respond to
domestic terrorism, especially since many Guard members
work as firefighters and in other emergency response jobs
in civilian life. 

America's post-cold-war Army was never designed for an
extended, largely unilateral occupation in the face of
multiple armed resistance groups. The challenge became even
harder after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld airily
dispensed with serious postwar planning and insisted,
against the advice of experienced commanders, that the
occupation begin with far fewer ground troops than were
needed to prevent looting and establish security. 

There is no question that the escalating costs of this
misconceived war in Iraq have become a continuing drain on
America's ability to fight terrorism elsewhere. Until
Washington finds a way to internationalize the
responsibility for solving the problems it has unleashed,
it needs to factor those costs honestly into the military
budget. The rational way to do that is to shift funds away
from unneeded cold war weapons, not to force the Army to
defer repairs and training and damage future recruiting by
involuntarily calling back those who have already served. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/25sun1.html?ex=1091777368&ei=1&en=9bab96cbb3cf1cdc


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