Posted on 08/06/2012 7:59:49 AM PDT by IbJensen
July was a tough month for the Pentagon. The Washington Post revealed that three U.S. special-operations soldiers died in Mali when their vehicle plunged off a bridge with three Moroccan prostitutes in the vehicle at the time. The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction issued one of his final reports on U.S. reconstruction efforts in that country and estimated that $6 billion to $8 billion of the $51 billion spent on reconstruction was likely wasted, embezzled or misplaced. The inspector general’s investigations have produced 90 indictments, 72 convictions and $177 million in fines and other penalties, with the highest percentage of convictions coming against military officers and defense contractors. Worse still, this came not long after the bean counters at the Government Accountability Office had issued yet another damning report on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, finding that the cost estimate for developing the F-35 had jumped an additional $15 billion since 2010.
The reaction from the political class was swift and decisive, but not in the way you would think. Republican standard-bearer Mitt Romney called for an additional $2.1 trillion in defense spending over the next decade and called for adding 100,000 additional active-duty military personnel — even as the United States winds down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith of Washington state, made an impassioned plea supporting the Defense Department’s foreign assistance programs. And much of Congress continues to react as if sequestration budget cuts — a sword of Damocles that they themselves voted for — would prove apocalyptic even though they only reduce Pentagon spending to 2006 levels.
The Pentagon has become the federal bureaucracy’s version of a perpetual motion machine. Even though the military budget has roughly doubled over the last decade and the United States spends more on defense than China, Britain, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Germany, India and Brazil combined, most members of Congress continue to see a vote for more defense spending as the safest vote in town.
And for good reason. But because voting for defense spending is a painless vote for members of Congress, more and more lobbyists and interest groups have pushed their activities under the broad umbrella of the Pentagon in order to find safe harbor. This has led to the Pentagon to take on more and more activities that have very little to do with traditional definitions of national security.
Take breast cancer, for example. As The Washington Post notes, the Pentagon has received more than $3.6 billion for cancer research over the last 20 years, despite the fact that no president has ever requested this funding and that breast cancer research has nothing to do with the Pentagon’s traditional limited purview in health — battlefield medicine. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, D, once bragged to his constituents that he had been able to double spending on breast cancer research by putting the additional funds in the Pentagon’s budget. Of course, since the Defense Department doesn’t have much expertise in breast cancer research, it turns around and relies on agencies like the National Institutes of Health, where the money should have been put in the first place, to oversee its grants under these programs.
But Congress is not solely to blame for the Pentagon’s ever growing mandate. The Defense Department itself has become increasingly fixated on the idea of “expeditionary economics.” In a nutshell, the concept is that small teams of military professionals well versed in economics will be deployed to assist in the reconstruction of war-torn and disaster-prone countries.
Any post-conflict expert worth his or her salt agrees that getting economic life restarted after a conflict is vital. However, the idea of putting an institution that has become synonymous with billion-dollar cost overruns in charge of setting economic policy in postwar settings seems risible. Indeed, there is probably no agency in the world that has been more insulated from basic economic realities over the last decade than the Pentagon. But still, no other federal agency is willing to say that the emperor across the Potomac has no clothes.
Let us remember that Pentagon-led projects in Iraq and Afghanistan have been flush with cash but rife with problems. Just this week, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction reported that about $400 million in large infrastructure projects in Afghanistan are badly behind schedule and unlikely to make a dent in the Taliban insurgency. And this only underscores the Pentagon’s power to get what it wants. When every other agency fails, Congress threatens to reduce its budget. When the Defense Department fails or makes grievous mistakes, it is automatically assumed that it went astray because it did not have enough money.
But both Congress and the Pentagon itself should recognize the fundamental long-term risk of turning America’s military budget into a catch-all for everything from breast-cancer research to roving teams of economists in combat boots. Military officers are great at fighting and winning wars because that is what they are trained to do. It’s bad enough that there are already more people in U.S. military bands than in the entire Foreign Service, but does the country really want to train fighting men and women to build swimming pools in Iraq?
The more amorphous America makes the U.S. military’s purpose as an institution, the more likely the Pentagon will turn into a giant, muddled marshmallow of bureaucratic excess. Back in the 1990s, Republicans routinely wrung their hands over the idea that “mission creep” was undermining the military. Those concerns seem to have been quietly set aside as both parties acquiesce in building a military that can’t say no. With major budget battles brewing, don’t be surprised when people try to slip everything from domestic road building to arts funding into the behemoth defense budget.
Oh, wait, those have already happened.
John Norris is executive director of the Sustainable Security program at the Center for American Progress.
The Pentagon AND the military needs to be purged of civilian workers who are mostly leftist ideologues and replaced with uniformed military personnel.
Women need to be excluded from any presence in combat zones or situations and the military needs to cease being an employer of last resort.
Because nowadays you know as well as I that it's not just logistics... it's
BIG TITS THAT WIN A WAR
Money laundering
A healthy offense is better than a good defense.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
No, I guess not....
5.56mm
How hypocritical. MAke the military ineffective and promote the forced enlisting of people into a war on poverty and breast cancer, while calling our battlefield budget greater than others.
THis is completely illegal, but Julia Roberts Justice would say “it’s just a tax”.
Since 1992 and now we hear about it?
“Money laundering” is exactly what it looks like.
I am in full support of breast cancer research, but that issue shouldn’t have ANYTHING to do with our Military funding.
They like to keep abreast of the situation..........
Yet - they cannot find any cuts to make (as required by the upcoming sequestration), other than another round of base closings...
And N.A.S.A. instead of sending folks into space is spending how much on f-ing moose limb outreach???
I was around at that time... in the military as a Medical
Officer. The answer is Pat Schroeder, and we DID “know about it”! Representative Pat Schroeder, from Colorado, was one of the women “Powers” in Congress at the time along with Diane Fienstein, Nancy Pelosi, and Barbra Boxer. She was elected in the Liberal Democrat class of 1972. She was a big proponent of Women’s rights and Women’s Health matters. She also served on the House Armed Services Committee for quite a while.
During the time frame of 1992, we were in the era of the “Peace Dividend”, “Military Downsizing”, and the Base Realignment And Closure (BRAC) process. Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver was on the chopping block. Also recall that was an election year...
Put these ingredients into a pot and stir.... A Liberal Democrat with a penchant for spending other people’s money, a proponent of Women’s Health, a Congress Critter wanting to protect a Military “Base” within her area of concern from the BRAC thus enhancing re-election chances, a person quite familiar with Armed Services funding streams, and you have the recipe for Breast Cancer Research within DoD!
It was NOT a DoD “initiative” but was a piece of Congressional Pork. Nobody within the Military at the time thought it was an appropriate use of Military Resources. As I recall, this funding came as a Congressional directed “line-item” for Fitzsimmons Army Hospital to conduct Breast Cancer Research! It was a blatant effort (or Pork) to keep Fitzsimmons open, but it didn’t work. Fitzsimmons was closed in 1997... the same year Pat Schroeder ended here Congressional career.
If suggest you search for “Women in Congress” and look up Pat Schroeder.
Why wasn’t it ever stopped?
“Why wasn’t it ever stopped?”
Great question! I can only speculate, but I suspect the DoD got VERY comfortable with the money and a self-perpetuating bureaucracy was quickly established that acted very much like lobbyists. In federal bureaucracies the number of people you “control” and number of dollars you “manage” are measures of success. It is the classic “mine is bigger than yours” argument by proxy, and is the major point in every written performance evaluation I have ever seen...
Once a “Line Item” is established by Congress, they are rarely stopped. They are reviewed and modulated, but not eliminated because each one has a “sponsor” who keeps it alive. That is the main reason I see for the “Line Item Veto” power of the Presidency. It is the obvious check on the Log-Rolling, Pork Barrel traits of Congress.
In Congress it probably became a political “hot potato”. Who wants to vote against Breast Cancer Research or anything to do with Women’s Health?
I think a LOT of things that start off as PORK wind up this way. Think about all the “subsidies” that are now UN-stoppable... IMHO, we need a way to STOP PORK if we insist on starting it in the first place.
Since it takes $$$ to get elected, I really don’t see how pork can be eliminated. It’s been going on in some form, since there were politicians.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.