Prometheus 6

Picture the impact on the economy (by which I mean the particular statistics on which folks base their political and economic judgments) of deciding NOT to buy those unnecessary Cold War era weaponry.

And consider the priorities the reaction to that potential impact implies.

…Just as the commission's report should bring major reforms in the management of America's intelligence agencies, it is as important that it lead to a thorough reconfiguration of the military budget. If the White House and the Pentagon cannot do it, the Congressional appropriators who too readily rubber-stamp Defense Department requests will have to subject military budgets to far more aggressive scrutiny than the bloated $416 billion spending package they approved last week.

That legislation incorporates a special $25 billion request for immediate needs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and adds, at least temporarily, a desperately needed 30,000 troops to the active duty Army. If past patterns hold, even that $25 billion may not be enough, and the Pentagon continues to resist permanently moving resources from unneeded weapons to badly needed troops. Taken as a whole, this year's budget, like previous ones, lavishes enormous sums on costly futuristic gadgets like stealth fighters and missile defense systems, for which there are no clear, current military justifications, and pinches pennies when it comes to anticipating the real needs of American ground troops already in combat.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office of Congress shows that the administration has consistently underestimated the actual costs of the Iraq war, forcing the military to cut corners in ways that increase today's risks and tomorrow's expenses. While waiting for the latest supplemental spending, the military has had to postpone repairs of worn-out equipment and delay training exercises - and it still had to take money meant for other things to meet immediate needs. It's inexcusable that a country spending more than $400 billion a year on defense is facing squeezes like this. The main cause was the administration's unrealistic assumption that it would be able to make do with far fewer troops in Iraq right now, despite continuing insurgent attacks, the unreliability of Iraqi security forces and the general unwillingness of other countries to help.

The Pentagon now acknowledges that roughly 138,000 United States troops will be in Iraq for the foreseeable future. That is a lot, but a country with more than 40 million people between the ages of 18 and 30 could have managed it much better. By waiting as long as it has to expand recruitment quotas for the Regular Army, the Pentagon found itself compelled to turn to unwise and unfair expedients like forced extensions of combat duty tours and involuntary recalls of discharged veterans. It also resorted to a clearly unsustainable overuse of National Guard divisions in overseas combat zones. Roughly 40 percent of American troops in Iraq now come from National Guard or Reserve units. This undermines the country's ability to respond to domestic terrorism, especially since many Guard members work as firefighters and in other emergency response jobs in civilian life.

…There is no question that the escalating costs of this misconceived war in Iraq have become a continuing drain on America's ability to fight terrorism elsewhere. Until Washington finds a way to internationalize the responsibility for solving the problems it has unleashed, it needs to factor those costs honestly into the military budget. The rational way to do that is to shift funds away from unneeded cold war weapons, not to force the Army to defer repairs and training and damage future recruiting by involuntarily calling back those who have already served.