It's my firm belief that the DoD is just too god damned big

[MrScorpio]

And frankly, I think that that's a bad thing for America.

In all the years I've spent on DU, I would have never thought that I would ever need to defend that position.

So, can anyone here explain to me what the hell is going on?

Because, for the life of me, I really don't know.

[LWolf]

1. It's not only too damned big, it's not even about defense.

Why not just call it the dept. of war and be done?

[MrScorpio]

4. Damn Skippy

That's a step in the right direction

[Warpy]

2. We're an empire that interferes in countries around the globe

The one thing the rich in this country won't allow any president or Congress to cut is the thing that protects their empire, the DOD. That they refuse to pay its cost is something for another post. Just don't try to cut down on empire. Ever. They don't care if they starve the lot of us in the process.

It is going to take more than raw courage to start cutting the Pentagon and relinquishing Empire. It's going to take a willingness to be a martyr.

I think the empire will have to be wrested from the grasping hands of the rich, either through war or revolution.

I hate that it's so, but the lessons of history are crystal clear.

[sharesunited]

3. Department of Global Colonization. That's would Chalmers Johnson would say.

[Kalun D]

5. Ya Think?

When was it, Sept 10, 2001. Deathskull Rummy went to the podium and announced that there was $3 TRILLION dollars un-accounted for on the Pentagon books. (IE Arthur Anderson/Enron accounting methods)

IOW $3 Trillion dollars just disappeared.

the date is pretty strange too, Rummy must have known something very big was going to happen the next day. Something so big that the huge turd in the punchbowl wouldn't even be noticed.

(kick and recommend)

[NYC_SKP]

6. Graph: DoD budget as a percentage of GDP over time:

1948 through 2017 (projected):




(from a thinkprogress article: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/02/defense-spending/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+matthewyglesias+(Matthew+Yglesias)


I'm glad the Bush Era has passed:


:patriot:

[MajorChode]

11. I'm not really sure how relevant graphs like that are

In the years before and after WWII, most defense spending was contained within DOD. Now about half or more of defense spending is outside of DOD's budget, which means many of the costs are disguised or hidden when you only consider DOD's budget.

[mmonk]

12. You're correct. Dept of Energy is one for example.

That's not counting secret expenditures and emergency off budget items. It all comes to about 53% of your federal tax bill.

[mmonk]

7. The universe agrees.

It is too large. Americans are generally sheltered from this information.

[Ozymanithrax]

8. Keep saying it is too big, and some one will add to fail...

and they will continue rescuing it.

[jmowreader]

9. It's my firm belief it's not big enough

I have two pieces of evidence to support that.

1) KBR. Can anyone, please, tell me why we are paying people $85,000 per year to go to Afghanistan and flip burgers in troop dining facilities? Or why we paid them that to go to Iraq and do the same thing? The simple reality of the current DOD is, the Squatter in Chief didn't have the balls to go to Congress before he invaded Iraq to tell them the army needed to be returned to Cold War endstrength (760,000 troops) in order to fight a protracted war against anyone--and he KNEW this war was going to go on for years. Rather, he took all the Combat Service Support people he could get his hands on, had them retrained into the combat arms, and hired mercenaries (a civilian who goes to war for monetary gain is a mercenary, whether he's fighting as an infantry soldier or turning wrenches in a motor pool) to fill in the gaps. I think this was what he had to do--if he would have asked for the Army to be expanded by a quarter-million people Congress would probably have investigated, and when it was discovered Iraq actually posed no threat to anyone they would have impeached President Cheney and his hurdy-gurdy monkey too.

2) The lack of a Humanitarian division. Hurricane season is coming, and if one hits the Gulf they are going to send US Army combat troops to help remediate. The two problems with this are:

a) Sending combat troops to a disaster area takes away their battle-hardened edge.
b) Combat troops aren't trained for disaster relief--ESPECIALLY since in this hurricane season the biggest challenge is going to be hazmat remediation.

Training a humanitarian division--one with no heavy weapons like tanks, artillery, attack helicopters or mortars, but lots of truck transport, logistics and engineers, with attached US Marshals to solve Posse Comitatus issues--would be very useful.

[MajorChode]

10. Then you really don't want to see the non-DOD defense budget

Which is actually about the same, if not more, than what we spend on DOD itself. When you consider military and DOD civilian pensions, DOE nuclear armament spending, homeland security defense spending, military satellite spending by NASA, foreign military aid, FBI and CIA defense related spending, and the interest on debt related to deficit defense spending, the ~$700 billion DOD budget pretty much doubles.

Someone really has the guns vs butter formula really fucked up.

[midnight armadillo]

13. I don't understand

Who exactly on DU is arguing that the DoD budget needs to be increased?

Which brings to mind...sometime very recently I heard about some DC commission being started to study the fed budget. NPR reported that "everything was on the table" and listed SS, Medicare, etc. No mention of the military budget by anyone in the story or the reporters.

The DoD budget will never be cut. Ev-ar.

[XemaSab]

14. I think it's a problem

that we can set out to kill one dude, level a whole goddamn city, and have no clue whether we got the guy.