Bill
11-26-2008, 11:08 PM
I've said often enough that one of the only places we can realistically make spending cuts large enough to make a real difference is in defense.
Apparently there's a new book and publicly released report that does an analysis of the pentagon and military budget and details how wasteful and inefficient our military actually is...
This was in metafilter (http://www.metafilter.com/) today...
America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress (http://www.cdi.org/pdfs/AmericasDefenseMeltdownFullText.pdf) (2.3 MB PDF). A new report (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-tepper-marlin/experts-slam-dod-waste-in_b_145134.html) from the Center for Defense Information (http://www.cdi.org/program/index.cfm?programid=37) on the DoD's wastefulness, and suggested solutions. Recommended holiday reading (http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/11/a_little_thanksgiving_holiday.php) from James Fallows and Andrew Sullivan (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/11/defense-nerds-o.html).
Here's a bit from Chapter 11: Understand, Then Contain America's Out-Of-Control Defense Budget:
...it is not that the defense budget adequately supports our irrelevant, even counterproductive forces. For that to be the case would be a significant improvement. Instead, to promote armed forces that fight the wrong type of war in the wrong places – liberals, moderates and conservatives in the Pentagon, Congress, think tanks and the White House have over time constructed an edifice that makes our forces smaller, older and less ready to fight, all at dramatically increasing cost. And, we have done so with a system that, quite literally, does not know – or apparently care – what it is doing.
Rep. Barney Frank has already called for a 25 percent cut in the military budget. The budget may be hard to cut that much right away because of the overstretched troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the new book makes clear many ways to save money in the out-of-control military budget without diminishing U.S. security..
The book, America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress, is out just two weeks after the election, exemplifying one of the themes that runs through it, namely the importance of speed and the ponderous nature of America's dug-in military apparatus, which is critiqued as stuck in the century-old second generation of four generations of warfare. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YXqRK0_82SE/SSU-mr9YyXI/AAAAAAAAADI/2TX38GUQgCA/s320/Wheeler-head-shot.jpg (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YXqRK0_82SE/SSU-mr9YyXI/AAAAAAAAADI/2TX38GUQgCA/s1600-h/Wheeler-head-shot.jpg) The eleven chapters of the book are written by 13 retired Pentagon insiders, retired military officers and defense specialists. The book is edited by Winslow T. Wheeler (photo at left), Director of CDI's Straus Military Reform Project. CDI has itself found a home in the World Security Institute. Wheeler worked for 31 years for U.S. Senators from both political parties and the Government Accountability Office. His earlier book, The Wastrels of Defense, was published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press. The book (a 2.3 meg PDF file) can be read for time being online at http://tinyurl.com/6ylwfw (http://tinyurl.com/6ylwfw). I have been up most of last night reading it - it is fascinating.
Apparently there's a new book and publicly released report that does an analysis of the pentagon and military budget and details how wasteful and inefficient our military actually is...
This was in metafilter (http://www.metafilter.com/) today...
America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress (http://www.cdi.org/pdfs/AmericasDefenseMeltdownFullText.pdf) (2.3 MB PDF). A new report (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-tepper-marlin/experts-slam-dod-waste-in_b_145134.html) from the Center for Defense Information (http://www.cdi.org/program/index.cfm?programid=37) on the DoD's wastefulness, and suggested solutions. Recommended holiday reading (http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/11/a_little_thanksgiving_holiday.php) from James Fallows and Andrew Sullivan (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/11/defense-nerds-o.html).
Here's a bit from Chapter 11: Understand, Then Contain America's Out-Of-Control Defense Budget:
...it is not that the defense budget adequately supports our irrelevant, even counterproductive forces. For that to be the case would be a significant improvement. Instead, to promote armed forces that fight the wrong type of war in the wrong places – liberals, moderates and conservatives in the Pentagon, Congress, think tanks and the White House have over time constructed an edifice that makes our forces smaller, older and less ready to fight, all at dramatically increasing cost. And, we have done so with a system that, quite literally, does not know – or apparently care – what it is doing.
Rep. Barney Frank has already called for a 25 percent cut in the military budget. The budget may be hard to cut that much right away because of the overstretched troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the new book makes clear many ways to save money in the out-of-control military budget without diminishing U.S. security..
The book, America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress, is out just two weeks after the election, exemplifying one of the themes that runs through it, namely the importance of speed and the ponderous nature of America's dug-in military apparatus, which is critiqued as stuck in the century-old second generation of four generations of warfare. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YXqRK0_82SE/SSU-mr9YyXI/AAAAAAAAADI/2TX38GUQgCA/s320/Wheeler-head-shot.jpg (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YXqRK0_82SE/SSU-mr9YyXI/AAAAAAAAADI/2TX38GUQgCA/s1600-h/Wheeler-head-shot.jpg) The eleven chapters of the book are written by 13 retired Pentagon insiders, retired military officers and defense specialists. The book is edited by Winslow T. Wheeler (photo at left), Director of CDI's Straus Military Reform Project. CDI has itself found a home in the World Security Institute. Wheeler worked for 31 years for U.S. Senators from both political parties and the Government Accountability Office. His earlier book, The Wastrels of Defense, was published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press. The book (a 2.3 meg PDF file) can be read for time being online at http://tinyurl.com/6ylwfw (http://tinyurl.com/6ylwfw). I have been up most of last night reading it - it is fascinating.