|
WORD COUNT
631
JULY 11, 2007
THE MILITARY BUDGET
ISN’T ALL ABOUT IRAQ – by William A. Collins
Buy that sub
And plane and tank;
Makers rush it,
To the bank.
Life in a
military-industrial state can be a trifle surreal. Take helicopters. We
make them here. Lots of them. But in an attempt to lower labor costs and
to cuddle up to more congress members, Sikorsky has shifted some of its
production to other states. This cost-cutting and political scheming has
worked fine against the company’s real enemy, Boeing, but not so well in
the war. Quality control has suffered. Now the Pentagon and the GIs who
have to fly the things have grown testy. You just can’t please
everyone.
But at least our
helicopters do go to war, ready or not. Our submarines don’t. The Navy
wanted to sail them up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to support the
troops, but the water was too dirty.
And so, instead of
fighting in the Halls of Montezuma or other combat, our subs fight in
the Halls of Congress. How many nuclear submarines should America
produce and which companies should get to do the work? That’s our
central military security issue. Profits and jobs are on the line here.
The enemy is not al Qaida or Iran, but congress members from competing
states. And occasionally the Pentagon commissions a consultant to
produce a study showing that indeed China will become a serious threat
by 2061, so we had better start getting those subs built now.
Other states produce
other white elephants. Aircraft carriers are the biggest. We need a
bunch of them, just in case the Japanese ever rekindle their designs on
Pearl Harbor. We also must push ahead with the F-22 and Joint Strike
fighter now that Vladimir Putin is responding poorly to our new missile
plans.
Still other states
make guided missile destroyers or cruisers, or bombers or aerial
tankers. Some are the sites of ancient intercontinental ballistic
missiles or the new anti-missile missiles. None of these any longer show
much military utility, but their workers are making good salaries, their
manufacturers are making good profits, and their factories are paying
good taxes. Military necessity can’t hold a candle to arguments like
that.
It has been
especially disconcerting to watch one of our able new Democratic members
of Congress here get sucked into this old martial syndrome. Joe Courtney
is a particularly high type politician, but when you only win by a
whisker, you can’t afford to offend the submarine lobby. This is how the
subs keep getting built and the rest of the world looks upon each
christening as yet another military provocation.
The aircraft
carriers, of course, are even more provoking. They’re so big. They also
harbor flying war machines that can undertake thousands of pernicious
small-scale missions. In this role, they helped conduct the low-level
bombing war against Iraq throughout the ’90s, destroying water
purification plants and thus poisoning many thousands of civilians. This
affront effectively fertilized the growing al Qaida hatred of the United
States.
But no matter.
Carriers must be constructed because they have a political constituency.
And their planes must be given missions because that’s why we went to
all the trouble to build them and to train their crews. Luckily, none of
our putative enemies has the capacity to bomb us back. They’re carefully
chosen for that quality.
And let’s not forget
the members of Congress who not only support that budget but actually
favor war and empire. Joe Lieberman and Chris Shays are among these. For
them, a mighty war machine makes it easier to promote combat as our
central international strategy.
For the rest of us
the defense budget is just a big trap. Its main impetus may simply be
jobs, but its message to the outside world is one of aggression. And in
the hands of our current malevolent leaders, that is exactly what has
happened.
--
Columnist William A.
Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk,
Connecticut. A photo of Bill Collins is available
CLICK
HERE
#
# # # # #
|
