Military Spending

Over at Opinione there's a great article, We have met the enemy and he is us. It's all about military spending.

It is virtually impossible for a member of Congress or an ordinary citizen to obtain even a modest handle on the actual size of military spending or its impact on the structure and functioning of our economic system. Some $30 billion of the official Defense Department (DoD) appropriation in the current fiscal year is “black,” meaning that it is allegedly going for highly classified projects.

I remember some years ago it came out that the Pentagon had budgeted huge sums on simple tools that had been marked up to twenty or thirty times their usual cost. The scandal was such that everyone was outraged, but was anything done? Are things different today?

For fiscal year 2006, Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute calculated national security outlays at almost a trillion dollars - $934.9 billion to be exact - broken down as follows (in billions of dollars):
Department of Defense: $499.4
Department of Energy (atomic weapons): $16.6
Department of State (foreign military aid): $25.3
Department of Veterans Affairs (treatment of wounded soldiers): $69.8
Department of Homeland Security (actual defense): $69.1
Department of Justice (1/3rd for the FBI): $1.9
Department of the Treasury (military retirements): $38.5
NASA (satellite launches): $7.6
Interest on war debts, 1916-present: $206.7

Totaled, the sum is larger than the combined sum spent by all other nations on military security.

Do you find these numbers excessive? Have they increased over the last eight years, or does this kind of thing predate the last administration's bumbling attempts at running the world?

Another way to describe the impact of this spending on the average person is this:

According to calculations by the National Priorities Project, a non-profit research organization that examines the local impact of federal spending policies, military spending today consumes 40% of every tax dollar.

Is this something we can expect the new administration to do something about? Is it something that they should do something about, in your opinion? What do you think?

I've heard lots about leaving Iraq, but at the same time they were talking about building up Afghanistan? What gives with that? It seems to me that the underlying element is that a huge chunk of everybody's money must go for military spending, once that's a given, then we can discuss what wars and what operations get funded? Does that sound too cynical?

What's your opinion?

In Dreams I Walked With You

Afghanistan - Another Iraq?

The New York Times has a piece today about the difficulty Obama will face with Afghanistan. Everyone seems to agree that winning a war there is a next-to-impossible task. As President Bush placed most of the emphasis on Iraq, the Taliban grew in strength in Afghanistan, controlling huge areas of territory outside of the major urban areas.

Enter Mr. Obama. During the campaign he promised to send two additional brigades — 7,000 troops — to Afghanistan. During the transition, military planners started talking about adding as many as 30,000 troops. And within days of taking office, Mr. Obama announced the appointment of Richard Holbrooke, architect of the Balkan peace accords, to execute a new Afghanistan policy.

But even as Mr. Obama’s military planners prepare for the first wave of the new Afghanistan “surge,” there is growing debate, including among those who agree with the plan to send more troops, about whether — or how — the troops can accomplish their mission, and just what the mission is.

I don't know about anyone else, but that sounds ominously familiar to me; an ill-defined plan, inadequate resources for the immense task at hand. Even before the election, I wondered what was going on here. Does Barack Obama really need to perpetuate the supposed man-hunt for the phantom bin Laden? Is that what it's all about? Or is Obama beholden to the military industrial complex? Perhaps this was part of the deal. Is it too cynical to suppose that deals like this are made in Washington?

On Reuters there's a wonderful article by Bernd Debusmann which explores the possibility of a solution to this dilemma. Since the real problem is the illegal opium production, controlled by the Taliban, why don't we buy the entire crop? It would cost far less than the war, and would afford other opportunities concerning the world-wide heroin problem.

Richard Holbrooke, the man President Barack Obama has just picked as special envoy for Afghanistan, said: “Breaking the narco-state in Afghanistan is essential or all else will fail.”

The problem is it may be easier said than done. Which makes me wonder what these guys are up to. Do they really want to do what they say?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, addressing the Senate Armed Services Committee this week, described Afghanistan as “our greatest military challenge right now” but said there could be no purely military solution — not even with the additional 30,000 troops Obama plans to dispatch over the next 18 months.

James Nathan, a political science professor at Auburn University in Alabama and former State Department official, outlines the radical solution.

Purchasing the whole crop would take it away from the traffickers without cutting more than half the economy of Afghanistan,” Nathan said in an interview. “Such a purchase would directly confront Afghanistan’s most corrosive corruption. It would end the Taliban’s money stream.”

And the cost? By Nathan’s reckoning, between $2 billion and $2.5 billion a year, no pocket change but not a large sum compared with the around $200 billion the U.S. taxpayer has already paid for the war in Afghanistan. The idea may sound startling but its logic is not far from the farm subsidies paid to U.S. and European farmers.

On a more modest scale than Nathan’s buy-it-all idea, a European think tank, the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS), is lobbying for an alternative to traditional counter-narcotics policies dubbed Poppy for Medicine.

What's your opinion? Is that a reasonable solution? What's wrong with it? Isn't it better than spending the next five or ten years stuck in another war?

Is it too much of a stretch to suspect secret deals behind the scenes in Washington? Could the new administration be just a corrupt as the old one as far as this stuff goes? Does that make me a conspiracy theorist? I admit, I never thought Oswald was the lone gunman.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

Two-Tiered Justice System

Glenn Greenwald has a wonderful article over at Salon. In it, he very forcefully describes the terrible dichotomy inherent in the American justice system in which high-level politicians are pardoned while low-level criminals are severely punished.

Aside from the intrinsic dangers and injustices of arguing for immunity for high-level government officials who commit felonies (such as illegal eavesdropping, obstruction of justice, torture and other war crimes), it's the total selectivity of the rationale underlying that case which makes it so corrupt. Defenders of Bush officials sing in unison: We shouldn't get caught up in the past. We shouldn't be driven by vengeance and retribution. We shouldn't punish people whose motives in committing crimes weren't really that bad.

I actually hadn't heard that song from conservatives. What I've heard is a complete denial of the charges, even those President Bush and Vice-President Cheney admitted to themselves. In any case, the point of Greenwald's article is made with a number of examples of the overly severe treatment of petty criminals, as well as these incredible prison statistics.

Currently in the U.S., close to 7,000 people are serving sentences of 25 years to life under our merciless "three-strikes-and-out" laws -- which the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional in a 5-4 ruling -- including half for nonviolent offenses and many for petty theft.

As I've noted many times before, the United States imprisons more of its population than any other country on the planet, and most astoundingly, we account for less than 5% of the world's population yet close to 25% of the world's prisoners are located in American prisons.

Often I seem to hear that we're too soft on criminals. Does anyone think that in the light of these stats? Does anyone think we need to lock more people up than we do now?

Here's my three-part plan:

1. White collar criminals get out immediately, but it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card. They'd have to pay heavy fines and submit to severe supervision.

2. Then, we remove all the alcoholics and drug addicts from prisons and give them the mental health care they need.

3. After that we release the 25% least dangerous prisoners, right across the board, under the same conditions as the white collar guys.

With all the savings generated we could afford the proper upkeep of the present facilities including the mental hospitals and make the necessary increases in the probation departments.

As far as the former administration goes, I believe they should answer for what they've done. They should be investigated and if found appropriate, tried for their crimes. Perhaps under my system outlined above, they would fall into the white-collar group, but they should pay for their crimes like everyone else.

What's your opinion? Does this sound like crazy liberal talk? Or do some of my ideas make sense to you?

Please leave a comment.

Reverend Al Talks about the Liberty City Shooting

After that terrible shooting in Miami last week, there've been several meetings of community leaders and news conferences. The police say their investigation is no further along than it was on the first day. Here's a fascinating video of the Rev. Al Sharpton and other ministers addressing the community.




Sharpton said the idea of not snitching goes back to the civil rights days when black people were disobeying immoral laws. Nowadays, people are misusing that idea. He called those who would withhold information "traitors to the race," exhorting them to come forward.

What do you think about that? Are the histrionics helpful, do you think? Wouldn't the idea of not ratting out your friends predate the civil rights movement? I always thought it started with James Cagney movies.

Naturally they had a few things to say about the Assault Weapons Ban. From the local pastor we had this:

Don't wait till the bullet come in your door to do something about it... Long as them Uzis and AKs keep snappin' ... No community is safe long as a AK an' Assault Rifle is in our community. Our job is to fight to ban these type o' guns.

The Baptist-style crowd approval seems to indicate widespread agreement with the reverend, at least in this gathering. Do you think there's a growing movement across America to ban "these guns?"

There was one point unclear to me in the original story. Witnesses said the shooter pulled the gun out of his waist band and started firing. How could that be an AK-47? Aren't they too long for that kind of concealment? Why weren't they calling it an UZI or an UZI pistol or something that can be carried like that? Any ideas?

Please leave a comment.

Japan Executes Four by Hanging

CNN reports on the execution in Japan of four men convicted of murder.

All four men were hanged, Japan's primary method of execution, the Justice Ministry said. The ministry identified the inmates as: 58-year-old Tadashi Makino, convicted of murdering four women in separate home invasion robberies; 44-year-old Yukinari Kawamura and 39-year-old Tetsuya Sato, both convicted of killing two women and burning their bodies in steel barrels; and 32-year-old Shojiro Nishimoto, convicted of murdering four people in separate home invasion robberies.

Unlike the typical executions in the United States, these four were accompanied by very little public opposition. Amnesty International spokesman Makoto Teranaka said that the "Japanese government's explanation was that public opinion favored the executions of these men."

That's a pretty strong public opinion. In America, it seems that even a minority of people opposed to capital punishment visibly demonstrate their displeasure.

Here's the part that really caught my attention.

According to Amnesty International, 59 nations still allow the death penalty for what the organization calls "ordinary crimes." The group describes "exceptional crimes" as those committed in circumstances such as war.

The vast majority of executions occur in a handful of nations: the United States, China, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International said.

How do American proponents of capital punishment feel about being in this company? Aren't those who favor the death penalty often among the most vocal detractors of these countries? What could explain this? What's your opinion?

Please leave a comment.

Army Suicide Rates Highest Ever

CNN reports on a sad story about the suicide rate among soldiers being the highest in the 28 years they've been tracking the data.

Statistics obtained by CNN show the Army will report 128 confirmed suicides last year and another 15 suspected suicides in cases under investigation among active-duty soldiers and activated National Guard and reserves.

The confirmed rate of suicides for the Army was 20.2 per 100,000. Army officials were reviewing the suspected suicides Wednesday. If any of them are confirmed, the rate would rise.

The obvious factors are mentioned, war-related stress especially. Army officials said that although the national figure is slightly lower, it's not fair to compare the two.

Another factor is that military suicides tend to be committed by young men with access to weapons.

I suppose that means that the availability of guns makes a suicide attempt easier and more likely to succeed. Isn't that an obvious logical conclusion?

The Los Angeles Times reported recently on the Marine Corps situation. For reasons that to me are unclear, they come in lower than either the Army or the civilian population.

Forty-one Marines are listed as possible or confirmed suicides in 2008, or 16.8 per 100,000 troops, the Marine Corps report said. Nearly all were enlisted and under 24, and about two-thirds had deployed overseas.

To make further comparisons, I found this fascinating table on Wikipedia. The main thing that jumped out at me was the fact that the top countries are all former-Russian or other Iron Curtain countries. Why is that?

I'm reminded of some of our other discussions on whether suicide is an individual right. The talk of young military men taking their own lives saddens me deeply. I feel these suicides point out the terrible mistake that suicide is, in most cases. Here we're not discussing the terminally ill patients or quadriplegics trapped in an intolerable lifestyle; rather we're talking about young people in the flower of youth. What could be a greater waste than that? Everything and anything should be done to prevent it. What do you think?

The numbers are interesting too, in light of the murder statistics we've seen. If anything, my arguments about gun availability are strengthened by adding suicides to the equation. Besides the 5 or so murders per 100,000, it looks like we've got two or three times that number of suicides. Do you see what I mean?