Sunday, February 15, 2009

Barney Frank on the Military Budget (The Nation)

Excerpt from link:

Current plans call for us not only to spend hundreds of billions more in Iraq but to continue to spend even more over the next few years producing new weapons that might have been useful against the Soviet Union. Many of these weapons are technological marvels, but they have a central flaw: no conceivable enemy. It ought to be a requirement in spending all this money for a weapon that there be some need for it. In some cases we are developing weapons--in part because of nothing more than momentum--that lack not only a current military need but even a plausible use in any foreseeable future.

It is possible to debate how strong America should be militarily in relation to the rest of the world. But that is not a debate that needs to be entered into to reduce the military budget by a large amount. If, beginning one year from now, we were to cut military spending by 25 percent from its projected levels, we would still be immeasurably stronger than any combination of nations with whom we might be engaged.

This should really be a no-brainer. The military budget needs to be cut -- now. We all know there is an alarming amount of redundancy and waste in the military and it's time to go over their budget with a fine-tooth comb. After all, our national defense costs are equal to what the rest of the world spends on its defense. Enough already.