In its November/December 2008 newsletter, the privately-funded Center for Defense Information (CDI) argues that our military budget has never been so large while our actual strength is so weak.
…[O]ur Army has fewer combat divisions than at any point in that period; our Navy has fewer combat ships, and the Air Force has fewer combat aircraft. The graphs below show this grisly, decades-old deterioration and the increasing cost.
CDI’s pulls-no-punches thesis is that the defense business gets fat while America gets weak.
As we’ve pointed out before (Madoff Pyramid Scheme: One for bin Laden), greed weakens our national defense.
Defense based on “dubious pork projects” drain America’s strength. Like a building constructed with cheap cement, our weakened defenses will crumble.
Chapter 11, “Understand, then contain America’s Out-of-Control Defense Budget” (Winslow T. Wheeler) is a detailed breakdown of the “real” national defense budget.
Members of Congress who argue that their earmarks are good ideas should have no problem with competent, independent evaluation of their proposals and a good government process for implementing them…. This proposal will be vehemently opposed by the vast majority of today’s Congress. Members will insist on controlling the evaluation of any earmarks and where the contracts for them are awarded. After all, the whole idea is to send the money to a pre-designated client. To affect real reform, Congress needs – and currently lacks – an uncompromising and uncompromised reformer to make the existing system too painful and politically costly to continue further.
This is no time for complacency and greed. The enemy will use our weaknesses against us.
The full text of the report is here: http://www.cdi.org/pdfs/AmericasDefenseMeltdownFullText.pdf
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